Meeting with Young People in Jasna Gora (18 June 1983)

On Saturday, 18 June 1983, the Holy Father met with young people in Jasna Góra. He began his speech wiith a prayer to the Mother of God, speaking of the sixth centenary  of the image of "Mary, Queen of Poland."

1. At the moment of Jasna Góra's appeal I am, O Mother, before your beloved effigy to greet you.

I greet you as a pilgrim , coming from the See of Saint Peter in Rome, and also as a son of this land , in the midst of which, for six hundred years, you have been present in your effigy of Jasna Góra.

Here I have come many times with the cry of my heart: every Wednesday I spoke to you before the participants in the General Audiences in the Vatican. I have thus lived the jubilee of six hundred years together with all who venerate You, together with my entire Nation.

Today it is given to me to be once again in this sacred place, and to contemplate your face of Jasna Góra.

I greet You at the time of the evening appeal , after the Holy Mass celebrated by the Primate of Poland together with the spiritual assistants of the young people. I greet you together with all the participants in this meeting and, above all, with the Polish Youth .

I feel happy that we are here together, before the Mother of our Nation. I rejoice, dear young people, to be able to greet you once again with the words of tonight's liturgy: "Blessed are You, daughter, before the Most High God, more than all the women who live on earth: You, splendid honor of our people !

2. I feel happy because, together with you, Polish youth, I will be able to meditate on the concise, yet so rich content of the Jasna Góra appeal, which has become almost a particular heritage of the Millennium of the baptism of Poland.

Already during the preparation for that great anniversary, in 1966, every day, at 9 pm, singing or reciting we repeated these words:

"Mary, Queen of Poland, I am close to You, I remember You, I am vigilant" .

Concise but eloquent words took root in our memory and in our hearts. The Millennium year has passed, but we continue to feel the need to repeat them.

I feel happy because it is given to me today to greet the Lady of Jasna Góra , first meditating, and then singing the call of Jasna Góra together with the Polish youth.

3. When we pronounce these words: "Mary, Queen of Poland, I am close to You, I remember You, I am vigilant", we are not only giving testimony to the spiritual presence of the Mother of God among the generations living in the Polish land.

These words further prove that we believe in the love that always surrounds us . This love was born at the foot of the Cross, when Christ — as tonight's Gospel reminded us — entrusted his disciple John to Mary: "Behold your son" ( John 19:26). We believe that, in that one man, Christ entrusted every man to him , and at the same time awakened in his Heart a love such that it was the maternal reflection of his own redeeming love.

We believe that we are loved by this love , that we are surrounded by it, that is, by the love of God, which revealed itself in the Redemption, and by the love of Christ, who carried out this Redemption through the Cross, and finally by the love of the Mother , who was next to the Cross and the Heart of the Son, accepted each man into his Heart.

If we pronounce the words of Jasna Góra's appeal it is because we believe in this love. We believe that it has been present among the generations that inhabit the Polish land for centuries. We believe that in a particular way he is present in the sign of the Efigie of Jasna Góra .

We resort to this love. The awareness that there is such a love, that it has its particular sign in the Polish land, that we can resort to it, gives our entire Christian and human existence a certain fundamental dimension : a security greater than all experiences and disappointments, which life can prepare us for.

4. If we pronounce the words of appeal of Jasna Góra, we do so not only to appeal to this redemptive and maternal love, but also to respond to this Love .

The words: "I am close to You, I remember You, I am vigilant", in fact, are at the same time a confession of love , with which we wish to respond to the love, with which we are eternally loved.

These words are also an inner program of love . They define love not according to the measure of feeling, but according to the inner attitude that it constitutes. Love means: being with the person you love ("I'm with you"); It also means: being close to love , with which I am loved. Loving means after: remembering. Walking, in a way, with the image of the loved one in your eyes and in your heart. It also means: meditating on this love , with which I am loved, and deepening its divine and human greatness more and more. Ultimately, loving means: being alert . Allow me to develop together with you, in particular, this characteristic of love.

It is an extremely important thing that in youth — that is, at an age when new feelings of love awaken, feelings that sometimes determine one's entire life — one walks with such a mature inner program of love as the appeal of Jasna Góra speaks of!

By responding to the love with which we are eternally loved by the Father in Christ, by responding to it in the same way as to the maternal love of the Mother of God, we ourselves learn love .

The Lady of Jasna Góra is a teacher of beautiful love for all. And this is particularly important for you, dear young people. In you, in fact, that form of love is decided that your entire life will have and, through you, human life on Polish land. Not only marital, family, social and national life, but also priestly, religious and missionary life. Each life is determined and evaluated through the inner form of love . Tell me what your love is, and I will tell you who you are.

5. I am vigilant! How beautiful it is that this word is found in the appeal of Jasna Góra. It has a deep evangelical genealogy : (Christ often says: "Watch" ( Mt. 26, 41). Perhaps from the Gospel it has also passed into the scouting tradition. In the appeal of Jasna Góra it is the essential element of the response which we desire to give to love, by which we are surrounded in the sign of the Holy Effigy.

The response to this love must be precisely the fact — that I am vigilant!

What does it mean: "I am vigilant"?

That is to say: I strive to be a man of conscience. I do not repress this consciousness or distort it; I call good and evil by name, I do not overshadow them; I seek for good to grow in sight, and I apply myself to correcting evil, overcoming it in myself. This is a fundamental problem, which can never be minimized or transferred to a secondary level. No! It is everywhere and always a major problem. And all the more important, the more numerous the circumstances that seem to favor our tolerance of evil and the fact that we easily absolve ourselves of it , especially if adults do so.

My dear friends! It depends on you to put up a firm barrier to immorality, a barrier — I repeat — to those social vices, which I will not name here, but of which you yourselves are aware. You must demand this of yourself, even if others do not demand it of you. Historical experiences tell us how much the immorality of certain periods cost the entire Nation. Today, when we fight for the future form of our social life , remember that this form depends on what man will be like. Therefore: watch!

Christ said to the apostles, during prayer in Gethsemane: "Watch and pray, lest you fall into temptation ( ibid . 26, 41).

6. I am vigilant means in addition: I see someone else . I don't close myself off in the narrow circle of my own interests, my own judgments. I am vigilant means: love for others; means: fundamental inter-human solidarity .

Before the Mother of Jasna Góra, I wish to thank all the proofs of this solidarity, which were given by my compatriots, including the Polish youth, in the difficult period of months not far away. It would be difficult for me to enumerate here all the forms of this concern that surrounded people hospitalized, imprisoned, people on leave from work and also their families. You know this better than me. Only sporadic news reached me, although frequent.

May this good , manifested in so many places and in so many ways, not cease in Polish land . May that "I am vigilant" of Jasna Góra's appeal be constantly confirmed, which is a response to the presence of the Mother of Christ in the great family of Poles.

7. I am vigilant also means: I feel responsible for this great common heritage, whose name is Poland. This name defines us all. This name commits us all. This name costs all of us.

It may be that we sometimes envy the French, the Germans or the Americans, because their name is not linked to such a price in history, and because they are much more easily free. While our Polish freedom is so expensive .

My dears, I will not do a comparative analysis. I will just say that precisely what it costs constitutes the value . One cannot, in fact, be truly free without an honest and deep relationship with values. We do not want a Poland that costs us nothing . We are vigilant, on the contrary, alongside everything that constitutes the authentic heritage of generations, seeking to enrich it . A Nation, then, is above all rich in men. Rich man. Rich in youth. Rich in everyone who is vigilant in the name of truth : this, in fact, gives shape to love.

8. My young friends! Before our common Mother and Queen of hearts, I would like to say to you to conclude, that She knows your sufferings , your difficult youth, the sense of injustice and humiliation, the lack of prospects for the future so often felt, perhaps the temptations to escape to some other world.

Although I am not among you every day, as was the case in the past for so many years, I still carry a great concern in my heart . Great and enormous solicitude. A request for you. And precisely because “the future depends on you”.

I pray for you every day.

It's good to be here together at the time of Jasna Góra's appeal. In the midst of the trials of the present time, in the midst of the test that your generation is going through, this Millennium Appeal continues to be a program .

It contains a fundamental solution. Because the solution in any dimension: economic, social and political must first occur in man. Man cannot remain without a solution.

Mother of Jasna Góra, who was given to us by Providence for the defense of the Polish Nation, accept this night this appeal from Polish youth together with the Polish Pope, and help us to persevere in hope! Amen.

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