Mass for Young People (1 July 1980)

On 1 Tuesday, 1 July 1980, the Holy Father celebrated Holy Mass for young people in Israel Pinheiro Square, Belo Horizonte. In  his homily, the Pope was inspired by the exhortation of Isaiah the Prophet, that we do our duty and practice justice.

Before pronouncing the homily, John Paul II improvised these words 

I thank everyone present and all those I have met along the way to get here. I thank everyone. Pastors and faithful. Thank you. Allow me to dedicate this homily to all the youth of Brazil. Looking back at these mountains, I understand why the name of Belo Horizonte; ( and addressing the young people, he added) Looking at you makes me want to say that "Belo Horizonte" is you.

* * *

Dear young people and friends of mine:

1. You will not be surprised that the Pope begins this homily with a confession. I had read many times that your country has half of its population under twenty-five years of age. Contemplating since my arrival in Brasilia, everywhere I passed, an infinity of young faces; passing, upon reaching this city, through crowds of young people; Seeing you, young people, in such great numbers around this altar, I confess that I understood better, through this concrete vision, what I had learned in an abstract way. I think I have also better understood why the bishops of Puebla speak of a preferential option —not exclusive, certainly, but a priority— for young people.

This option means that the Church assumes the commitment to incessantly announce to young people a message of full liberation. It is the message of salvation that she received from the lips of the Savior himself and must transmit with all fidelity.

2. In this Mass that I have the joy of celebrating in your midst and for your intentions, this message appears with its essential content in the readings that we listen to.

"Do your duty, practice justice", exhorts the prophet Isaiah, with a force that has not been exhausted two thousand five hundred years away ( Is 56, 1). And he adds: it is important, above all, to "remain firm in the Alliance" that God sealed with man. It is an invitation to consistency and fidelity, an invitation that affects young people very closely.

In the Letter of Saint Paul to the Christians of Corinth there is an energetic and convincing phrase, as those of the great Apostle tend to be: if someone wants to build his life, he must not lay any other foundation than the one that is already laid: Christ Jesus (cf. 1 Cor 3, 10). He knew well what he was saying, this Paul. As a teenager, he had persecuted the Church of Christ. But one fine day, on the road to Damascus, he had that unexpected encounter with Jesus himself. And it is the testimony of his own life that makes him say: There is no other possible foundation. It is urgent to place Jesus as the basis of existence.

And in the Gospel of Saint Matthew there is the page that no one reads without emotion: "Who do men say that I am?" Jesus asks the Apostles. And after they transmit a series of opinions, the underlying question comes: "But for you, who am I?" We all know that moment when it is not enough to talk about Jesus repeating what others have said, but rather to say what one thinks; it is not enough to collect an opinion, but it is necessary to give testimony, feel committed by the testimony and then go to the extremes of the demands of that commitment. The best friends, followers, apostles of Christ were always the ones who one day perceived within themselves the definitive question, which has no two ways about it, before which all the others are secondary and derived: "For you,

3. And from these messages offered by the Word of God I would like to extract the simple message that I leave you in this meeting and that allows me to feel the seriousness with which you face your existence.

The greatest wealth of this immensely rich country is you. The real future of this country of the future is contained in your present. For this reason, this country, and with it the Church, look at you with eyes of expectation and hope.

Open to the social dimensions of man, you do not hide your desire to radically transform. the structures that seem unfair to you in society. You rightly say that it is impossible to be happy seeing a multitude of brothers lacking the slightest opportunities for a human existence. You also say that it is not right for some to waste what is lacking at the table of others. And you are determined to build a just, free and prosperous society, where each and every one can enjoy the benefits of progress.

4. I lived those same convictions in my youth. And I proclaimed them, being a young student, with the voice of literature and with the voice of art. God wanted them to be refined in the fire of a war whose atrocity did not respect my home. I saw those convictions violated in many ways. I feared for them seeing them exposed to the storm. One day I decided to confront them with Jesus Christ; I thought that he was the only one who revealed to me its true content and value and protected them against I don't know what inevitable wear and tear.

All this, this tremendous and valuable experience taught me that social justice is only true if it is based on the rights of the individual. And those rights will only be truly recognized if the transcendent dimension of man is recognized, created in the image and likeness of God, called to be his son and brother to other men, destined for eternal life. To deny this transcendence is to reduce man to an instrument of domination, whose fate is subject to the selfishness and ambition of other men, or to the omnipotence of the totalitarian State, erected as a supreme value.

In the very interior process that led me to the discovery of Jesus Christ and drew me irresistibly towards Him, I perceived something that was clearly expressed much later by the Second Vatican Council. I perceived that "the Gospel of Christ announces and proclaims the freedom of the children of God, rejects all slavery, which ultimately derives from sin; wholly respects the dignity of conscience and its free decision; constantly warns that all human talent it must redound to the service of God and the good of humanity; finally, it entrusts all to the charity of all. This corresponds to the fundamental law of Christian economy" ( Gaudium et spes , 41).

5. I learned that a Christian man stops being young and will not be a good Christian when he allows himself to be seduced by doctrines and ideologies that preach hatred and violence. Well, a just society is not built on injustice. A society that deserves the title of human cannot be built by ceasing to respect and, worse still, destroying human freedom, denying individuals the most fundamental freedoms.

Participating, as a priest, bishop, and cardinal, in the lives of countless young people at the university, in youth groups, on hikes in the mountains, in circles of reflection and prayer, I have learned that a young man begins to age dangerously when left alone. deceive by the easy and comfortable principle that "the end justifies the means"; when he comes to believe that the only hope to improve society lies in promoting struggle and hatred between social groups, in the utopia of a classless society, which soon reveals itself as the creator of new classes. I became convinced that only love approximates what is different and brings about union in diversity. The words of Christ "A new commandment I give you: that you love one another, as I have loved you" ( Jn13, 34), seemed to me then, beyond their incomparable theological depth, as the germ and beginning of the only transformation radical enough to be appreciated by a young person. Seed and beginning of the only revolution that does not betray man. Only true love builds.

6. If the young man that I was, called to live youth at a crucial moment in history, could say something to the young people that you are, I think I would say: Do not let yourselves be exploited!

Try to be well aware of what you want and what you do. And I see that the bishops of Latin America told you the same thing, when they met in Puebla last year: "Young people must develop a critical sense in the face of the cultural countervalues ​​that the various ideologies try to transmit to them" (Puebla Document, no. 1197 ), especially ideologies of a materialistic nature, so that it is not manipulated by them. And the Second Vatican Council says: "The social order must be developed daily, founded on truth, built on justice, enlivened by love. But it must find an increasingly human balance in freedom" (Gaudium et spes , 26 ).

A great predecessor of mine, Pope Pius XII, adopted as his motto: "Build peace in justice." I think it is a motto and above all a commitment worthy of you, young Brazilians.

7. I am afraid that many good wishes to build a just society are shipwrecked in the lack of authenticity and dissipate like soap bubbles because they lack the support of a serious decision of austerity and frugality. In other words: it is essential to know how to overcome the temptation of the so-called "consumer society", of the ambition to always have more, instead of always trying to be more, of the ambition to always have more, while others always have less. I believe that here in the life of each young person the beatitude of poverty of spirit acquires force and concrete and current meaning; in the rich young man, so that he learns that what he has in excess is almost always lacking in others and so that he does not retire sad (cf. Mt19, 22), when he hears in the depths of his conscience the Lord's call to abandon everything; in the young person who lives the harsh contingency of uncertainty regarding tomorrow and even goes hungry, so that, seeking the legitimate improvement of conditions for himself and his loved ones, he is attracted by human dignity, but not by ambition, for profit, for the fascination of the superfluous.

My friends: You are also responsible for preserving the true values ​​that have always honored the Brazilian people. Do not allow yourself to be carried away by the exasperation of sex, which distorts the authenticity of human love and leads to the disintegration of the family. "Do you not know that your body is a temple and the Holy Spirit dwells in you?", writes Saint Paul in the text we just heard.

That the young women seek to find true feminism, the authentic realization of women as a human person, as an integral part of the family and as part of society, in a conscious participation, according to their characteristics.

8. To finish, I remember the key words that we gather from the readings of this Mass:

— perform duty and practice justice;

— not build on any other foundation than Jesus Christ;

— to have an answer to give to the Lord, when he asks: "for you, who am I?".

This is the sincere and trusting message from a friend. I would like to shake hands with each of you and speak to each of you. In any case, what I say to all of you is valid for each one: young people from Belo Horizonte and from all over Brazil, the Pope really loves you very much! The Pope will never forget you! The Pope takes a great memory of you from here!

Receive, dear friends, the apostolic blessing that I am going to give at the end of the Mass, as a sign of my friendship and trust in you and in all the young people of this country.

Before proceeding to the Eucharistic liturgy, properly, one more word: only love builds, only love brings closer, only love achieves the union of men in their diversity.

I was recently in France and the young people I met there, in a spontaneous gesture, asked me to bring you some messages of friendship, which I did with great pleasure. May this gesture of shaking hands serve as a stimulus to build more and more human, Christian and ecclesial fraternity in the world. Where are you going? With you I ask this question, with you, beloved young people, I will also offer everything that is noble in your hearts, everything that is beautiful that we live here together, for the good success of the Eucharistic Congress of Fortaleza, towards which I am on pilgrimage. together with the Church that is in Brazil "Where are you going?". Amen.

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