What the Pope wants from you(th)

Not many people in the world, including notorious rock bands and popular actors, can persuade one million young people to show up in the same place at the same time. Last weekend, Pope John Paul II did just that, stunning even those who planned the concluding Mass for World Youth Day, held in Paris, France.

What drew those hundreds of thousands of young Catholics to the open-air liturgy on a steamy hot day? There are probably one million answers, including a desire to see the Pope, a need to be part of what used to be called "a happening," the longing to celebrate a joyous Eucharist with friends and the wish for something more out of life than can be found in pop music or the latest TV show.

Having drawn those young people together, the Pope had a message and a mission for them: Spread the Word of God, the joy of Christianity and the light of their own lives.

Interviewed by a French Catholic newspaper before World Youth Day, the Pope said of young Catholics: "I know that they are often preoccupied by their professional future, that many of them have a hard time finding unity and sense in their lives. But I expect them to mobilize their generosity, their intelligence and their energy to make the world more hospitable for all; that they put themselves at the service of the happiness and dignity of their brothers and sisters,...that they fully play an active and responsible role in the Church and in society, and that they are convincing witnesses of the love of God."

Those are tremendous responsibilities, but ones the Pope is convinced young people can carry out because they "carry within them an ideal of life. They thirst for happiness. By their enthusiasm, the young remind us that life cannot be simply a search for riches, for well-being or for honors."

Whatever your age, if you had stood among the one million worshippers in Paris last weekend, could you have pledged to carry out the Pope's call to be generous, to be of service and to be evangelizers? The number of affirmatives will go a long way toward determining the quality of the future in which those young people will live.

(08-28-97)

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