Elementary Education: January 2011

Youthful charge

In an address to thousands of youth, Pope Benedict XVI explains what it means to grow up, truly love

By Teresa Tomeo

As often as I can, I remind as many people as possible to do themselves a favor and take time to read the words of Pope Benedict XVI. Even when he is addressing a much younger crowd, there is so much we older folks can apply to our daily lives. The pope’s gathering with the youth of Catholic Action that took place in Rome on Oct. 31 is a good example.

The pontiff participated in a lively question-and-answer session. The event involved a meeting with some 50,000 children, 30,000 youths, and 10,000 educators of Catholic Action, with the pope building on the group’s theme for the event: “There is more. We become great together.” A young boy asked the pope, “What does it mean to grow up?”

“Dear children, dear young people; being ‘big’ means loving Jesus very much, listening to him in prayer, meeting him in the sacraments, in Holy Mass, in confession. It means getting to know him more and more and also letting others know about him. It means standing with our friends, the poorest ones too, the sick ones to grow together.”

How many of us can use a reminder regarding the beauty and the importance of taking advantage of all that is available to us in the Church? Maybe if we concentrated more on the love of God, as the pope stressed, we would be more apt to love our neighbor.

A young woman then asked Pope Benedict about learning to love: “What does it mean to love totally? How can we learn to truly love?” Isn’t that the $50,000 dollar question deep within all of us? And what a gem of response the pope gave for the youth and for a world so much in need of the simple but life changing truth concerning real happiness that can only come from a relationship with God; a God who teaches we must start by putting others first. This is not exactly what we’re hearing from the mass media with its “anything goes” or “all about me” mentality.

“It is quite true: You cannot and must not adapt yourselves to a love reduced to a commodity to be consumed without respect for oneself or for others, incapable of chastity and purity,” explained Pope Benedict. “This is not freedom. Much of the ‘love’ that is promoted by the media, on the Internet, is not love but egoism, closure, it gives you the illusion of a moment but it does not make you happy, it does not make you grow up, it binds you like a chain that suffocates more beautiful thoughts and sentiments, the true desires of the heart, that irrepressible power that is love and that has its maximum expression in Jesus and strength and fire in the Holy Spirit, who inflames your lives, your thoughts, your affections.”

Perhaps the words resonate with me so strongly because I’ve been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt as the saying goes. I had a successful secular career but a struggling marriage and an even weaker faith life. It took my almost hitting rock bottom personally and professionally for me to even get a clue that the Catholic faith in which I was raised just might have the answer. So, even when the message is addressed to those much younger, I always find affirmation and comfort in the words of the Holy Father. Maybe that’s why I can’t help but share them. As the Catholic Action theme expressed, and as Pope Benedict also emphasized, there really is more. We do become great, not alone, but together in Christ. 

“There is a test that tells you whether love is growing in a healthy way, if you do not exclude others from your life, above all your friends who are suffering and alone, people in difficulty, and if you open your heart to the great friend of Jesus,” he said.

Teresa Tomeo is the host of Catholic Connection, produced by Ave Maria Radio and heard daily on EWTN Global Catholic Radio and Sirius Channel 160.

Taken from OSV Newsweekly, 11/28/2010