This month the Pope asks us to pray ‘that the World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, may inspire young people and make them the seed of hope for a new humanity’. Fr Leon Ó Giolláin SJ explains who are the young people who will be at Sydney and are the seed of hope for a new humanity”.
One may well wonder what brings an estimated half a million young people to Sydney for World Youth Day. Why travel such long distances for a youth-fest when you could get the same – or maybe a better – buzz from a rock concert closer to home and at far lesser cost? What is behind this outpouring of religious fervour?
Who are these young people who join unselfconsciously in the chorus of Guy Sebastian’s haunting lyrics, Receive the Power? This is the theme song of WYD 2008 which they sing as they welcome Pope Benedict XVI to ‘this southern land of the Holy Spirit’. After this enthusiasm, they listen respectfully to his exhortations based on Acts 1:8: ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses’ (the theme of WYD 2008). What are these bold young pilgrims saying to the modern world so often inimical to faith or shy of declaring its allegiance to an institution or Church?
They come from many different backgrounds. There are, of course, the seekers – those who are merely curious about this convergence of young Catholics in a far-away land and have decided to ‘come and see’ for themselves. The many youth festivals, concerts, seminars and conferences organized for them over the days in Sydney give them ample scope to explore their questions in freedom.
Others have had their Catholic faith nurtured in homes already evangelized and sustained by one or other of the many contemporary ecclesial communities that sprang up in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. One thinks of Focolare, the Charismatic Movement, Communion and Liberation, Neo-catechumenate, San Egidio communities, Équipes de Notre Dame; the list goes on. Such is the evidence in our time of a ‘new Pentecost’, an ‘outpouring of the Spirit’ gracing the Church once again with new life, new hope and renewed faith.
Others have been more prodigal in their lifestyle and have gone with the flow of contemporary secularization and abandoned the Church and its teachings for a time. Finding their lives thereafter empty and meaningless, they have turned – almost in despair – to the Source of hope and rediscovered a peace and a joy ‘that the world cannot give’. They are the converted adherents, on fire with a mission to warn their contemporaries of the ‘lie’ in the liberal agenda and to guide them into the way of truth, the way of peace.
There are also the disciples of Pope John Paul II who deeply admired the clarity and strength of his moral authority in a world that preached a message of moral relativism. These are the disciples who heeded the call of their Supreme Pastor to be the evangelizers of their peers – Youth 2000 being a magnificent example of a forceful and effective response.
There are those too, who in an age of trivialized sexuality, found again through John Paul’s catechesis on the Theology of the Body the true value of the human person in his or her totality and the true meaning of sex as a sacred unitive and procreative act within marriage. The Pure in Heart mission here in Ireland to promote the proper understanding and practice of chastity among the young, is just one sign of the Spirit at work in the hearts and minds of impressive young leaders in this sphere.
Then there are the wounded, those who have suffered deeply from the unfaithfulness of their parents – unfaithfulness to religion and relationship – the grown-up children of broken families who have felt cheated and who have often been left rudderless on the sea of life and who now turn to religion for the solace and sense of direction they so desperately need. They, unlike their parents or guardians, see in the Beatitudes the moral compass that leads to life, life to the full. They listen to God’s word and discern immediately the contrast between its liberating power and the vain search for wealth, success, status and the false ‘freedom’ that resulted in their being left largely to their own devices.
These are the young people at World Youth Day in Sydney. They are the ones who truly understand the words of their beloved Pope Benedict XVI, exhorting them to seize this ‘exceptional opportunity to proclaim the beauty and joy of the Gospel to a society that is secularized in so many ways’.
Not a few surely paused for thought as they witnessed this sea of young pilgrims joyfully and reverently following the Way of the Cross through the streets of Sydney. They then took the 10 km walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge for the overnight Vigil at Randwick racecourse, which would end with morning Mass the following day, Sunday, with Pope Benedict XVI.
This is a generation that has been sold a cheap substitute for the real deal and therefore is awake to the true Commander-in-Chief, Christ Our Lord, as he speaks words of profound truth and wisdom through his chosen instruments on earth. The following words of Pope Benedict XVI, originally addressed
to his Bishops, hold a profound resonance in the hearts of today’s youth, who reject the relativism and atheism of our times:
Continue dauntlessly to proclaim that prescinding from God, acting as if he did not exist or relegating faith to the purely private sphere, undermines the truth about man and compromises the future of culture and society. On the contrary, lifting one’s gaze to the living God, the guarantor of our freedom and of truth, is a premise for arriving at a new humanity. Nowadays, in a special way the world needs people capable of proclaiming and bearing witness to God who is love, and consequently the one light which in the end, illumines the darkness of the world and gives us strength to live and work (cf. Deus Caritas Est, 39).
The public display of religious faith on the streets and in the parks of Sydney this summer acts as a direct and powerful challenge to secularism and its attempt to create a world where God has no place and no relevance.
Let us pray fervently for this new generation of young Christians, that the seed of hope that has taken root in their hearts will not be choked by `the world’ with all its allurements and seductions. Rather, this seed will flourish and bear much fruit not only for this generation, but for the whole of humanity. Humanity needs hope, a ‘trustworthy hope by virtue of which we can face our present’.
‘The present,’ Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, ‘even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey’ (Spe Salvi).
Surely the long journey to Australia this summer undertaken by so many young people witnesses to a transcendent goal that alone satisfies the deepest hungers of the human spirit. In an age where suicide among the young has reached unprecedented levels, the hope of the Gospel holds an irresistible attraction and this, at the end of the day, is at the heart of these Tabor days in Sydney, for…
Anyone who does not know God, even though he may entertain all kinds of hopes, is ultimately without hope, without the great hope that sustains the whole of life (cf Eph. 2:12).
Man’s great, true hope which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God – God who has loved us and who continues to love us ‘to the end,’ until all ‘is accomplished’ (cf. Jn. 13-1,19:30)
Spe Salvi, 27.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (July 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
