As the world is setting a terrible gap between the digital Y generation and those of us ageing BBC’s (Born before the Computer) overtaken by dazzling innovations of time, someone dared beat up the generation gap and establish a deeper contact with the digital Youth generation! This “old young man” was none other but Pope John Paul II, the initiator of the famous World Youth Day in 1985. I don’t remember any other gathering that put together such a huge number of Youth coming from all over the world to listen to a shepherd of a far distant generation still making sense to them; a shepherd who made them cross the boundaries of cultural and religious diversity to make them feel one in God. Isn’t this what the new global generation has to admit? Unity in diversity is the only way sure to yield peace, love and mutual appreciation of each other with respect to each one’s specificity. Global culture should not become another form of communism after the first attempt of communism has fallen with the Berlin war! Exposure to common sources of information is not a process of human uniformity but rather a possibility of creating a wider commonness among human beings while everyone remains clearly identified in his/her culture and religion.

One thing remained ever young as Pope John Paul faced the challenge of age and sickness: HIS EYES! He never wore glasses till he closed his eyes! That’s as a great sign God wanted us to pick from the Pope of the youth. And the meaning we are supposed to pick from that sign is called VISION! True leaders are visionary people far much ahead of the flock of their own time. The Pope saw far beyond and captured the need to interact with the youth not virtually through the use of modern technologies of communication and information, but face to face, in the direct “I-THOU” pattern as the philosophers of intersubjectivity would put it (Bubber, Lévinas, Gabriel Marcel, etc.). Mind you, the Pope was a philosopher too!

Inspired by this Pope whose VISION was never altered by time, we ask this question to the youth: Youth! Who are you and what is your vision for the future? It’s perhaps easy to respond you’re so and so… your names and titles. It’s perhaps easy to say you’ve found the world already spoilt by older generations, so what! That’s true! It’s perhaps easy for you to think ‘who am I to change the world’? It’s okay that you feel so tiny is such a huge universe! It’s perhaps easy to sink into despair and oblivion… some have resolved to drugs and alcohol! That’s so sad for such an energetic young person like you! So, listen to the Pope of the youth’s voice asking you: “Who is Jesus for you? If you know him, then you’ll know yourself better! Stand up! You can make the world a better place if you choose God in your life! Don’t let yourself be crushed by the world! No matter how tiny you may feel, you can change it if you dare try it! Every long journey begins with the first step!” Let’s start our journey!

God’s software became human hardware…

in Jesus-Christ, the only son of God who came to save you personally from the claws of the anti-values destroying your life to restore you to values giving you life to the full. On Saturday, August 19^th 2000, during the prayer vigil of the 15^th World Youth Day at Tor Vergata in Rome, Pope John Paul II exhorted the youth on the theme drawn from Matthew 16: 15: “But who do you say that I am?” He addressed the youth in the following words: “Dear young people, it is with great joy that I meet you again at this Prayer Vigil, during which we wish to listen together to Christ whom we feel present among us. It is he who is speaking to us… Jesus wants his disciples to become aware of what is hidden in their own minds and hearts and to give voice to their conviction. At the same time, however, he knows that the judgment they will express will not be theirs alone, because it will reveal what God has poured into their hearts by the grace of faith.”

Jesus-Christ wants you to be his follower; to stand against the tide and take a side for him in you daily life, in the choices you’re making as you sail or row though frightening tides of modern life. As you seat in front of your computer to get into the global internet world, your swift digits resting on the “hard keyboard” ready to manipulate the “software” within, remember some deep truth: God’s spiritual Word (software) was incarnated in man’s body (hardware) to save you personally. Your body is some lifeless hardware like your computer; you can get life and sense only if God’s programmed software is inserted in you, that is, his Word of life, his living Spirit that we get through our faith in Christ. Modern secular culture wants to shape you without God, the Creator of life! Does that make sense to you?

Biblegoogling daily…

will keep you aware of God’s presence in your history and boost up your faith and hope for the possibility of a better world recreated with your personal contribution. You’re lost in such a huge and deep ocean of the cyber world. You’re picking in horrible stuff that do not help you grow sound… a real mishmash that’s confusing your choices. You’ve still got one choice: the Word of God! The Book of wisdom where you find not only your code of conduct but also the love beyond measure that God bestowed upon you as his chosen one, his forgiveness of all your sins and his desire to save you through the death and resurrection of his Son, our Lord Jesus-Christ, the Redeemer of the world. This is what the Pope of the youth wants you to know: “One cannot think adequately about man without reference, which for man is constitutive, to God. Saint Thomas defined this as actus essendi (essential act), in the language of the philosophy of existence. The philosophy of religion expresses this with the categories of anthropological experience.” So, if you know and love God, you can safely “google” through life avoiding all unnecessary sites leading astray your mind and heart; you’ll learn to love, respect and forgive your neighbour created in the image of God like yourself. Then, you’ll be empowered to build a better world for the whole human race!

Browsing though prayer…

strengthens you to face daily challenges with hope and courage. The Pope of the youth was such a prayerful shepherd; he was truly “a man of God”! In the grace of prayer, he survived the gunshots when Mehmet Ali Ağca, a young trained sniper from Turkey attempted to kill him on Wednesday, May 13^th 1981 at Saint Peter’ Square in the Vatican City, 4 years before the Pope launched the first World Youth Day. Ağca was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 1981. Always through the power of prayer, the Pope who loved the youth so much forgave Ağca wholeheartedly: “Pray for my brother… whom I have sincerely forgiven.” He visited him in prison and spoke to him privately in 1983; he kept in touch with his family and met his mother in 1987. In 2000, the year of Jubilee, at the Pope’s request, Ağca was pardoned by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in the month of June. Youth! Can you take the challenge of praying for those who persecute you? Can you love and wish them well? How do you react when you hear about religious, political, social… persecutions? Are you stirred by the pangs of hate and vengeance or by the power of prayer and forgiveness?

Downloading…

Christian values that will make you get rid of your worldly illusions and see things in God’s VISION as Pope John Paul II did. The world tells you that you have plenty of rights. It doesn’t remind you some of the duties that will make of you a responsible person and a great builder of life. The logic of Right makes of you that mean and greedy person who expects others to do things for you and report them to the law when they have failed to serve you. The logic of Love makes of you that kind of person who shares whatever riches he/she has in store for others and feels fulfilled even when nobody says thanks in return.

In the name or Rights, we have destroyed marriage and family! We striped it from its foundational pillar of love and transformed it into a means securing our rights. We are afraid to put our money and goods in common because we want to prepare divorce the very same day we’re marrying! Women are turned against their husbands and children against their parents, everyone fighting for his rights on his corner. Spouses drag each other to court without weighing its stressful outcome. Children take their parents to courts and see them humiliated by tough judges who may never like to use the same law for their own family squabbles; just as I saw some hard line doctors promoting the use of preservatives for the youth with ugly side effects but they wouldn’t allow their own children to use them. Where is love and forgiveness in families? Where is the honour due to our parents as stipulated in God’s law? “A concern of seemingly equal importance for John Paul II has been the promotion of the Christian understanding of the family. He has expressed repeatedly that "at [this] moment in history… the family is the object of numerous forces that seek to destroy it or in some way to deform it" (Familiaris Consortio, 3). Thus, he seeks to fortify the family to withstand these attacks so that it can perform its vital role for the good of the individual, society, and the Church.” (Smith J., John Paul II and the family).

In the name of Rights, parents and other adults have given up their responsibility to raise and educate youngsters, assimilating them to little adults who are capable of finding life directions by their own effort. Too many rights stripped our children of their very basic right, that of being children in need of parental guidance and support. We have exposed them to adult sceneries and wounded their vulnerable and innocent life so early; we have polluted and destroyed the environment to the point of endangering their lives; we have corrupted and wrecked the society they are supposed to live in. We have compromised their future on earth; the earth will never be a safer and better place for our children… unless we recover the sense of stewardship that God gave us in the creation of the world (Gen. 1: 26-28; 2: 15).

In the name of Rights, the woman who is the safest haven of life for humanity is turned out to be the sole arbitrator with the power to stop the growth of life in her womb. Can you imagine that all the 9 or 10 billion of human beings on earth have all spent more or less 9 months in a woman’s haven, except the few babies born in vitro! You won’t be part of this billion if someone you call “mom” did use the right to stop the growth of your life… and you won’t be standing out there to ask for the right to abort while you were given the chance to live! The Pope of the youth is very clear about his VISION of life: “To claim the right to abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom.” (John Paul II, The Gospel of Life). The Pope stands against the culture of death enshrouding modern world and invites you, dear youth, to choose God’s culture of life. Let’s all join John Paul II in the process of his beatification to e-mail this culture of life to the whole world!