A GREAT OCCASION: THE JUBILEE OF THE YEAR 2000

 

The year 2000, this year of Jubilee, provides a good occasion for us all to stand back and reflect. Let us not just wait for that magic which the Jubilee celebration may bring us: this will come in as much as we desire it to come. Several challenges can, above all, help us reflect on what we can offer those young people who trust us and who seek from us help in finding their way in life.

  1. Managing the Earth. If we forget that God has charged us with governing the world in His name, we could either lose ourselves in the world or destroy the world believing ourselves to be gods. Let us rather reflect on the Book of Genesis: Mankind is part of creation since Mankind is made in God’s own image and is expected to grow, to multiply and to work the land. We must learn to live in our world as we would live in a garden, which is given over to our care.
  2. Overcoming Freedom. My own dignity constitutes the fact that I am unique and able to plough my own furrow in life because I am responsible for my own existence. However, this very feature, this right of responsibility and freedom, which we claim, is also the root of a particular demand: my life will be the reflection of my will or of my lack of will.

    3. Autonomy does not mean independence. If I act only according to my feelings, then I am like a horseman on a crazy horse; if I alone decide to declare certain values as authentic values, then my horizons may become more and more limited. The individual can suffer as a result of the search for well-being and may even be smothered in the attempt. The truth is that one is not free until one recognizes that some rules are more important than others.

  3. Promoting the Common Good. Science advances, new technologies surpass old technologies at breakneck speed, the great problems concerning humanity are put off, but they are not resolved.

    4. Therefore, if solutions to the problems of society do not lie exclusively in progress or in structural reform, where can they be found? We must rebuild the very heart of mankind. We must educate in trust, we must be able to see beyond appearances and discover all that is good and beautiful in those around us.

    But that in itself will not be sufficient: the produce of our labor alone depends on our motivations: the outside world depends objectively on the interior world of mankind. This we know very well: nobody can give that which he does not possess.

  4. Promoting and Defending Life. Mankind, as a rational being, is the only living creature aware of its own mortality. Death is a question mark. We fear death. We try to control death and to exorcise it. We need only think of the horrors of euthanasia, genetic manipulation, abortion and sterilization. These are no more than the expression of a cynical practice, which was seen before during the Nazi period and which today has become more and more widespread. Man is the Son of God, created in His image and in His likeness. This is the greatest dignity of Mankind. If he loses contact with God, he loses contact with the sense of his own life. But if the horizon of life is merely physical death, then anything goes and we fall victim of the greatest cynicism. The logic that controls life and death is the same logic which allows the strong control the weak and which generates violence among men. Without God, and history is full of examples, the result is man’s inhumanity to man.
  5. A Loving Family. No family model can be accepted if it is not in harmony with that deep vocation in the nature of men and women. We know that it is still possible to live today in a successful family, but we must have the courage to propose this way and to live this way ourselves. It is hypocritical to play with love, to give and then to take away, to place limits on love, to make believe that one loves when in fact one simply seeks pleasure. It is hypocritical to glorify false love, the "love" which abandons home, family and children for something unfairly called "new love". It is hypocritical to use words without thinking, to passionately grasp someone’s body without looking into their interior life. Love is total, demanding. If it is not this, it is not love.

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  6. A Search for Truth. We can accumulate many truths... scientific, technical, philosophical.... It is only then we realize that we lack one single truth that puts all the others into perspective. No man, however clever, no human civilization, however developed, no opinion, however fashionable it may be can truly offer an answer to the questions that concern mankind. To have the answer, it is necessary to possess the key to the universe and the secret of life and death. If mankind and civilization have no satisfactory answer to the question, then we can turn the question on its head. Does the truth seek me? If I alone cannot come close to the truth, could not the truth come to me to tell me what it is and to tell me why the world exists?

Is God speaking to you? How does He speak to you? He tells us that He holds the secrets of the universe as no other can because He is the creator. He tells us that he fully understands mankind because He created mankind. It was His will.

Therefore, the truth is not a great theory or a great system. It is not an ideology, which pretends to have an answer for everything. The truth is someone. The Jubilee is our occasion to meet this someone who is Jesus. We must meet Him. We must listen to Him. We must see Him as alive. We must see how He loves us. We must try and meet Him and speak with Him. This is why Jesus has not burdened us with complicated truths. He simply says: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life".

 

So we identify several challenges as we face the future in this new millennium, in which we can work together building this civilization on love about which we all dream. But it is a necessary precondition to accept the challenge of our own personal conversion. Love cannot conquer if we do not renounce evil and the sin in all of us. God is not the rival against which we struggle. He is our Father who desires our well-being and trusts in us. It is up to us to accept His offer and His presence. This is why if we wish to change the world and leave it a little better than we found it, we must make room for God. The transformation of the world begins inside us all and it is this that can guide us towards a wonderful experience. Let us recall the words of Don Mazzolari when he wrote: "Night begins with the first star, the storm begins with the first raindrop, a fire begins with the first spark, love begins with the first dream".

Why can we not be the first spark, the first star, the first raindrop, the first dream and begin something?

 

Renato Boccardo

Director Youth Section

Pontificium Consilio pro Laicis