Meeting with Young People (15 August 1983)

On Monday, 15 August 1983, the Holy Father met with young people in the Basilica of Saint Pius X, Lourdes, where he led them in a meditation on Mary's faith.

Dear young people from France, Europe and other continents.

1. I am happy to be able to continue this beautiful meditation with you.

We have allowed the conviction of the prophet Isaiah to penetrate within us: "God is always a savior." The vision of the first Christian community in Jerusalem, so fraternal, united around the Apostle Peter, and so close to Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is also engraved in us. These men and women who preceded us are our fathers and mothers, but also our contemporaries in the faith. Our praises have just echoed in our hearts the wonders of God's Covenant with humanity. We can then return to the Magnificat , which sprang from the humble heart and ardent faith of Our Lady.

Some of you have asked me some questions. Without answering them one by one, I will have them present in my mind throughout this meditation.

2. "My soul glorifies the Lord!" ( Lc . 1, 46).

I must first of all thank God for our deep communion: young people with the Pope, and the Pope with you!

Blessed are you. Lord, for all these young people, who came to Lourdes to have an experience of prayer, fraternal friendship, service to the sick, an experience of Church.

Blessed are you, Lord, for everything you grant us to live in Lourdes, a place of hope for so many suffering brothers, a place of conversion for those who sincerely seek God! This hope and this conversion are linked to the presence, among us, of Mary. And She herself does not visit us, mysteriously, except to reveal another, stupendous presence, the presence of the same God, in the person of her much-loved Son. She invites us, like the first disciples, to come to Him with complete confidence.

3. "Happy Mary who believed!" ( Lc . 1, 45).

Mary, first of all, leads us to believe.

Believing in the love of God the Father that constantly surrounds us: it is not us who loved God, it is He who loved us first.

To believe in the power of Christ manifested in Redemption. He is the saving God, predicted by Isaiah. He is the source of life, superabundant. He is the truth of God and the truth of our poor existence. He is the way of God and the way of man, the only man fully in accordance with his vocation.

Believing in the Holy Spirit that Mary welcomed without reservation and gave to us too.

We are sure of this love of God the Trinity; It is by opening ourselves to Him through faith that we will be happy, with Mary, and that we too will receive the gesture and strength to love.

Through baptism, confirmation, the sacrament of reconciliation, the Eucharist, and through other community gestures of the Church, Christ came to us, without any merit on our part, sometimes without our having previously recognized Him.

May Mary help us, therefore, to welcome the proclamation of God's love with a simple heart. To believe in him despite the doubts, that society and our own spirit beat our hearts! Let us not fear! And if the difficulties remain, we will pray to progress in faith, despite them or rather because of them, because it is in them that our trust and our fidelity are proven. We will know how to nourish our faith with the in-depth study of the Word of God and the uninterrupted reflection of the Church, of the living Tradition. And we will seek to fulfill the truth in our lives, to reach the light.

I hope we have Bernadette's clear and profound faith: from the dawn of her 15th birthday, sure of the message transmitted by Mary, she had the tenacious courage to face the suspicions of the adult world, to be faithful to what she had received and to testify to it.

4. "Nothing is impossible with God!" ( Lc . 1, 37),

We welcome this promise from the angel to Mary. We need hope, which is an extension of faith. Many today feel upset, restless, or helpless in the face of the demands of our time: what will be the future? What job can you find? Who will be willing to overcome society's vices? What efforts can bring solutions to the major global problems of hunger, war and attacks on human rights? What is our goodwill worth to so many people? And finally, what is the meaning of this life? Many feel useless in an aging world, incapable of doing anything in a closed world: they come to doubt the value of their condition as Christians.

We will certainly not be exempt from imagining and making a costly and patient investment of our freedom: hope does not exempt us from this. But God tells us what we should ask Him for before anything else: the Holy Spirit, His Spirit, who renews the face of the earth, because he renews our spirit, our heart. Mary is open to the Holy Spirit. The Powerful One did wonders for her. He will do great things in us. He will make us follow Christ: in detachment from the temptations of power, wealth, pride, and in adherence to the ideal of beatitudes. Did He not inaugurate a truly new world? In hope, let us count on Him, He will not disappoint us.

5. "Mary hurriedly went to her cousin Elizabeth's house!" ( Lc . 1, 39-40).

Faith and hope lead to love for others. The entire existence derives its value from the quality of love. Tell me what your love is and I will tell you who you are.

Mary guides our gaze, our heart, our hands towards others, as in Elizabeth's house, as in Cana. We cannot close ourselves in the narrow circle of our interests, of our judgments. Solidarity fundamentally connects us to those who are close to us, the members of our family, those from our country, those with whom we must behave as close, for example, those from the third world, because we must always be open to each other. to the universal. Love according to God has no borders. Happy are those who welcome the son who arrives, and who is rejected by some. The person that society considers useless. The person who suffers in body and spirit. The one who forgot her human dignity.

It is the same openness of heart that calls on you to be concerned about everything that can improve the lot of men: respect for life and human dignity, the advent of greater justice, the sharing of goods, fraternity and peace between peoples and social classes, welcoming foreigners, sanitizing customs, promoting a culture worthy of the name, etc... May you dedicate yourselves to this, may you work, with concrete efforts, and thus develop their talents to better serve man in all these dimensions, the. eyes fixed on Jesus, the only model of humanity.

In Lourdes, we learned what the love of life consists of: in the Grotto and in hospitals, it consists of helping the sick. Up there, in the Chapel of Confessions, it consists of listening to moral miseries, in Christ's comforting forgiveness. Love is inseparable from the spirit of service, which gives value to life, to the lives of young people. This spirit is not just a help: it is an exchange, an offer of communion.

6. Simeon said to Mary: "This Child is here to be a sign of contradiction"... "Next to the cross of Jesus was His mother!" ( Lc . 2. 34: Jn . 19, 25).

The path of love according to Christ is a difficult, demanding path. We have to be realistic. Anyone who talks to you only about spontaneity, about ease, is deceiving you. The progressive mastery of our lives, learning to be what God wants, already requires a patient effort, a struggle over ourselves. Be men and women of conscience. Do not suffocate your own conscience, do not deform it, call good and evil by its name. Inevitably you will come to know the contradictions of a society whose vices are well known. Without separating ourselves from charity, but with courage, we must build within ourselves, first and foremost, the form of society we want for tomorrow. Faith is a risk.

Christ was a sign of contradiction, he offered, until his death, his friendship to everyone, with Mary standing next to the Cross. Bernadette also knew contradiction and suffering. It was not just to others that she transmitted the Virgin's word: "penance". And she had been warned by Maria about the hardness of the path: "I don't promise you to be happy in this world but in the next".

Let us not be afraid: responding to this demand truly unites us with the Christ who offers life, is a source of inner joy, and a condition for the effectiveness of the church in the world.

7. "Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her to sanctify her... to present her to Himself as a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle, but holy and without blemish!" ( Eph . 5, 23-27).

We too love the Church. How we would like it to be more transparent, more free from all commitment! But we are the Church! We cannot criticize it as if it were external to us. If we love those she brings together, if we are available to serve her, we will be able to seek and find new forms of life with her, a true language. We will be able to discover places where everyone can more easily respond to their vocation. We will also rediscover that the parish is the place where we form one Body, with our brothers and sisters from all horizons and all generations. With the Church we will serve, in the cause of men: With her, in love and respect for others, we will not be afraid to testify, manifest and proclaim our faith, otherwise, how can this indifferent world know it? We will contribute to returning the youth of the Spirit to the Church, to each of its parishes, its movements, its seminaries!

"Go therefore and teach all nations"! This commandment of the Lord was entrusted to Peter and the other Apostles.

And I, in turn, send you all on mission, as baptized and confirmed. And dear Young People, I have something important to say to you: I hope that some of you respond "yes" to the Lord's call, to dedicate all your strength to His exclusive service! This may be the place and this is the time to reflect on the vocation before Mary.

Mary, the mother of the Church, continues to form the mystical body of Christ! May she teach us to serve the Church!

8. On the day of Pentecost, "the disciples went up to the upper room, and devoted themselves assiduously to prayer, in the company of Mary, mother of Jesus!" ( Acts 1, 13-14).

Mary, teach us to pray. Like Mary, let us allow ourselves to be possessed by the impetus of the Holy Spirit. Many of us have rediscovered the joy of prayer: thinking about God loving Him, praising Him in community and listening to His Word. Prayer is not primarily our satisfaction. It is the stripping of ourselves to make ourselves available to the Lord, to let Him pray in us. She is the breath of the Church and its tune with God. It constitutes an essential service of the Church, the service of praise, and the service that allows men to open themselves to the Redeemer. It is the source and result of our efforts. I hope we never separate action from contemplation. And may our prayers focus on the Eucharist, where Christ himself takes our life to offer it with his own and make it bear fruit.

Everything we have evoked allows us to glimpse true life. Christ wants us to love life , to spread the joy of living and loving around us. He came so that we might have life in abundance.

O Mother, blessed among all mothers, I entrust to You the young people present here, the young people of the entire world. I beseech You for each and every one: grant them the grace to love life, to place all their trust in your Son Jesus Christ, to collaborate in the correct way in the Church, in its mission of truth, justice and peace!

And now, with all of you, we give thanks to God, returning to Mary's words.

With particular affection I now greet the many young people coming from different parts of Spain and Latin America.

Dear friends: as a result of this meeting, I encourage everyone to contemplate with renewed enthusiasm the ever-living figure of the Mother of the Redeemer . May they know, like Her, to always be faithful to Christ and the Church. And, united by identical feelings of love for life and your brothers, walk together on the path that leads to the Father. With my sincere gratitude for your affectionate welcome, I bless you with all my heart.

I want to add a word to all English-speaking young people. When reflecting on the life of faith, hope and charity, which we are called to live as members of the Church of Christ, we immediately discover the need for prayer. Dear young people, it is prayer that keeps us united to Christ. Prayer enables us to persevere in true and generous love for one another and to make a lasting contribution to the service of the world. Let us pray today and always together with Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary and our brother, the Son of God and Savior of the world.

Dear young people from German-speaking countries! With all my heart I hope that you can often experience a fraternal union similar to the one we experience in these hours here in Lourdes. Thus you will be joyful in faith and strengthened in your union with Jesus Christ and his Church. May Mary accompany you on this path with her motherly intercession.

Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana