Holy Mass for Students (11 May 1980)
ShareOn Sunday, 11 May 1980, the Holy Father celebrated Mass in Yamoussoukro (Ivory Coast) for the students in Côte d'Ivoire. In his homily, the Pope advised that for every person who suffers physically or morally, "the patient cannot be cured if he does not take the necessary remedies himself."
Dear students, dear young priests, who concelebrate with me this evening, and who give me great joy, the joy of knowing the future of the Church in Côte d'Ivoire assured by her own sons,
1. How can I thank you for having come in such numbers, so joyful and so confident around the Father and the Head of the Catholic Church? I wish and I ask God that this meeting be a moment of deep communion of our hearts and minds, an unforgettable moment for me and a determining moment for you.
Your problems and your aspirations as Ivorian students have come to my attention. I am both happy and moved. It is therefore to young people, concretely situated and bearers of great human and Christian hopes, that I address myself with complete confidence. The Liturgy of the Word which has just ended has certainly contributed to putting your souls in a state of receptivity. These three readings constitute an ideal framework for the demanding meditation that we will do shortly. The Church, to which you are associated by the sacraments of baptism and confirmation ― moreover, I will have the joy of conferring the latter on several of you ―is a Church open, from its foundation, to all men and to all cultures; a Church assured of a glorious end through the humiliations and persecutions inflicted on her throughout history; a Church mysteriously animated by the Spirit of Pentecost and passionate about revealing to men their inalienable dignity and their vocation as "familiars of God", creatures inhabited by God, Father, Son and Spirit. How invigorating it is to breathe this atmosphere of a Church always young and resolute!
Your bishops have therefore recently addressed to you, but also to your parents and your leaders, a letter which was intended to diagnose the dangers which threaten youth and to provoke, in their ranks as among adults, a generous spiritual upsurge. Many of you are well aware of the difficulties and miseries which affect the circles of young people. Without generalizing, they are not afraid to call things by their name and to question their elders by referring to the famous words of the prophet Ezekiel: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, the teeth of the sons are set on edge" [ 1 ].
2. Today, for my part, I would like to convince you of a common-sense but capital truth, which is valid for every man and every society who suffers physically or morally; namely that the patient cannot be cured if he does not take the necessary remedies himself. This is what the Apostle Saint James wanted the first Christians to understand [ 2 ]. What is the point of diagnosing the disease in the mirror of the individual and collective conscience, if we immediately forget it or if we refuse to treat it. Everyone in society bears responsibilities with regard to this situation, and everyone is therefore called to a personal conversion which is indeed a form of participation in the evangelization of the world [ 3]. But to you, I ask you: is it not true that if all young people agree to change their own lives, the whole of society will change? Why wait any longer for ready-made solutions to the problems you suffer from? Your dynamism, your imagination, your faith are capable of moving mountains!
Let's look together, calmly and realistically, at the paths that will lead you to the society of your dreams. A society built on truth, justice, brotherhood, peace; a society worthy of man and in conformity with God's plan. These paths are inevitably those of your ardent preparation for your responsibilities of tomorrow and those of a real spiritual leap.
Young Ivorians, find together the courage to live! The men who advance history, at the most humble or the highest level, are indeed those who remain convinced of the vocation of man: vocation of researcher, fighter and builder. What is your conception of man? This is a fundamental question, because the answer will be decisive for your future and the future of your country, because you have a duty to succeed in your life.
3. You have indeed obligations vis-à-vis the national community. Past generations carry you invisibly. They are the ones who gave you access to studies and a culture destined to make you the executives of a young nation. The people are counting on you. Forgive him for considering you privileged. You really are, at least in terms of the distribution of cultural property. How many young people your age ― in your country and in the world ―are at work and are already contributing, as workers or farmers, to the production and economic success of their country! Others, alas, are without work, without a job, and sometimes without hope. Still others do not have and will not have the chance to access quality schooling. You have a duty of solidarity towards everyone. And they have the right to be demanding of you. Dear young people, do you want to be the thinkers, the technicians, the leaders that your country and Africa need? Avoid carelessness and easy solutions like the plague. Be indulgent towards others and severe towards yourselves! Be men!
4. Let me emphasize once again a very important aspect of your human, intellectual and technical preparation for your future tasks. This too is part of your duties. Keep your African roots well. Safeguard the values of your culture. You know them and you are proud of them: respect for life, family solidarity and support for parents, deference to elders, a sense of hospitality, the judicious maintenance of traditions, a taste for celebration of the symbol, the attachment to dialogue and palaver to settle disputes. All this constitutes a real treasure from which you can and must draw something new for the construction of your country, on an original and typically African model, made of harmony between the values of its cultural past and the most admissible data of civilization. modern. At this precise level, remain very vigilant, in the face of models of society which are based on the selfish search for individual happiness and on the god-money, or on the class struggle and the violence of means. All materialism is a source of degradation for man and enslavement of life in society.
5. Let's go even further in the clear vision of the road to follow or resume. What is your God? Without ignoring anything of the difficulties that the socio-cultural mutations of our time cause for all believers, but also thinking of all those who struggle to keep the faith, I dare to say briefly and insistently: Raise your heads! Look with fresh eyes to Jesus Christ! I allow myself to ask you in a friendly way: have you seen the letter that I wrote last year to all Christians on Christ the Redeemer? In the wake of the Popes who preceded me, Paul VI especially, I have endeavored to ward off the temptation and the error of contemporary man and of modern societies to relegate God and put an end to the expression of religious feeling. The death of God in the hearts and lives of men is the death of man. I wrote in this letter: “The man who wants to understand himself thoroughly must not be satisfied for his own being with criteria and measures which would be immediate, partial, often superficial and even only apparent; but he must, with his anxieties, his uncertainties and even with his weakness and his sin, with his life and his death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into Christ with his whole being, he must "appropriate" and assimilate the whole reality of the Incarnation and of the Redemption in order to find himself again. If he allows this process to take place deep within him, then it produces fruits not only of adoration towards God, but also of deep wonder for oneself. What value must man have in the eyes of the Creator if he "deserved to have such and such a great Redeemer", if "God gave his Son" so that he, man, "would not be lost, but may he have eternal life! » [4 ]. Yes, dear young people, Jesus Christ is not a captor of man, but a Saviour. And he wants to liberate, to make each and every one of you saviors in today's student world and in the important professions and responsibilities you will assume tomorrow.
6. So stop whispering or saying out loud that the Christian faith is only good for children and simple people. If it still appears like this, it is because adolescents and adults have seriously neglected to grow their faith in step with their human development. Faith is not a pretty garment for the time of childhood. Faith is a gift from God, a stream of light and strength that comes from Him, and should illuminate and energize all areas of life, as it takes root in responsibilities. Make up your mind, make up your friends and your fellow students, to take the means of a personal religious formation, worthy of the name. Take advantage of the chaplains and animators at your disposal. With them, train yourself to make the synthesis between your human knowledge and your faith, between your African culture and modernity, between your role as citizens and your Christian vocation. Celebrate your faith and learn to pray together. You will thus rediscover the meaning of the Church which is a communion in the same Lord between believers, who then go to the midst of their brothers and sisters to love them and serve them in the manner of Christ. You have a vital need for integration into Christian, fraternal and dynamic communities. Visit them regularly. Animate them with the breath of your youth. Build them, if they don't exist. This is how your temptation to look elsewhere will fall You will thus rediscover the meaning of the Church which is a communion in the same Lord between believers, who then go to the midst of their brothers and sisters to love them and serve them in the manner of Christ. You have a vital need for integration into Christian, fraternal and dynamic communities. Visit them regularly. Animate them with the breath of your youth. Build them, if they don't exist. This is how your temptation to look elsewhere will fall You will thus rediscover the meaning of the Church which is a communion in the same Lord between believers, who then go to the midst of their brothers and sisters to love them and serve them in the manner of Christ. You have a vital need for integration into Christian, fraternal and dynamic communities. Visit them regularly. Animate them with the breath of your youth. Build them, if they don't exist. This is how your temptation to look elsewhere will fall― in esoteric groups ― what Christianity brings to you in fullness.
7. Logically, the personal and community deepening of which we have just spoken must lead you to concrete apostolic commitments. Many of you are already on this path, I congratulate them. Young people of Côte d'Ivoire, today Christ calls you through his representative on earth. He calls you as he called Peter and Andrew, James and John, and the other Apostles. He calls you to edify his Church, to build a new society. Come in droves! Take your place in your Christian communities. Royally offer your time and your talents, your heart and your faith to animate the liturgical celebrations, to take part in the immense catechetical work with children, adolescents and even adults, to insert yourselves into the many services for the benefit of the most poor, illiterate, disabled, isolated people, refugees and migrants, to animate your student movements, to work in bodies for the defense and promotion of the human person. In truth, the site is huge and exciting for young people who feel overflowing with life.
The time seems to me quite appropriate to address the young people who are going to receive the sacrament of confirmation, precisely to enter a new stage of their baptismal life: the stage of active service on the immense site of evangelization of the world. The laying on of hands and the anointing of holy chrism will really and effectively signify the full coming of the Holy Spirit to the depths of your person, at the crossroads of your human faculties of intelligence in search of truth and freedom in search of the ideal. Your confirmation today is your Pentecost for life! Realize the gravity and greatness of this sacrament. What will your lifestyle be like now? That of the Apostles at the exit of the Cenacle! That of Christians of all times, energetically faithful to prayer,5 ]. Confirmed young people of today or yesterday, all advance along the paths of life as fervent witnesses of Pentecost, an inexhaustible source of youth and dynamism for the Church and for the world.
Expect to meet at times opposition, contempt, mockery. True disciples are not above the Master. Their crosses are like the passion and the cross of Christ: a mysterious source of fruitfulness. This paradox of offered and fruitful suffering has been verified for twenty centuries by the history of the Church.
Finally, let me assure you that such apostolic commitments prepare you not only to bear your heavy responsibilities to come, but also to found solid homes, without which a nation cannot long stand; and what is more, Christian homes, which are so many basic cells of the ecclesial community. These are commitments that will lead some of you towards total gift to Christ, in the priesthood or religious life. The dioceses of Côte d'Ivoire, like all the dioceses of Africa, have the right to count on your generous response to the call that the Lord is certainly making to many of you: "Come, follow me". .
Flash in the pan, this celebration? Flash in the pan, this meditation? The liturgical texts of this sixth Sunday of Easter tell us the opposite. The Gospel of John assures us that the Holy Spirit dwells in the loving and faithful hearts of the disciples of Christ. Its role is to refresh their memory as believers, to enlighten them in depth, to help them respond, in the peace and hope of this new world evoked in the reading of the Apocalypse.
May this same Holy Spirit unite us all and consecrate us all to the service of God our Father and of men our brothers, through Christ, in Christ and with Christ! Amen.
[ 1 ] Eze 18, 2.
[ 2 ] Cf. Jas 1, 23-26.
[ 3 ] Cf. Evangelii Nuntiandi , nn. 21, 41.
[ 4 ] Redemptor Hominis , n. 10 .
[ 5 ] Cf. Ac 2, 42-47.
© Copyright 1980 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
