Dialogue of the Holy Father with Young People
Holy Father, we grow up hearing that the only goal in life is to
be productive, succeed and maintain our image. I tried to do just that,
but I only found an immense emptiness. So I started to search for
answers, my life took a turn, and I was baptized this past Easter. Since
this path is new to me, I would like to ask: How can we keep our gaze
lifted up toward what truly matters, when society pressures us
constantly to look at the ground or only at ourselves? How can we
discover our true vocation in the midst of this strong current?
1. Thank you for sharing your testimony. First of all, I would like
to share in your joy, as well as that of all those who have received the
sacrament of Baptism this Easter. Many young people and adults are
rediscovering the Christian faith, sometimes after having drifted away
from God over a period of time. This is a significant step. Indeed,
everything we gradually discover, embrace and experience along the way
certainly contributes to our growth and maturity and creates space for
interior life. However, at the same time, amid life’s joys, successes
and defeats, we realize that we need a different kind of water to quench
our deepest thirst. Our desire for truth and happiness requires wider
horizons. This restlessness is a gift that God himself gives: We are
made for the infinite, and that is why every finite horizon, every step,
every achievement — while satisfying us — also propels us forward and
invites us to keep searching, to search as we move forward, but above
all, to search by “going inward,” that is, by delving deeper.
Here, I would like to come back to the question with two brief
thoughts. First, we must cultivate that healthy sense of restlessness.
In our societies, the idolatry of profit and performance, the drive to
always produce and win, as well as the cult of self-image, are nothing
more than anesthetics designed to numb our conscience and mold it to a
certain vision of society. When people learn to pause and value what is
important, appreciate time in a new way and reflect on their own lives
while allowing themselves to be enlightened by the Gospel, they also
develop a critical perspective on a social system that does not put
people first and creates situations of injustice and existential poverty
at various levels. That is why restlessness is frightening, as is the
discovery of one's inner self, of spirituality and, even more so, of the
Gospel. Second, it is in this world that we must cultivate
restlessness, not in another. It is within this society that you and so
many others have discovered the value of a more human and fulfilling
life, open to encountering God and to the joy of faith. This means that,
despite the difficulties, the place where God makes himself present and
where we must find his footprints is always in our current reality. We
believe that the Holy Spirit acts and works silently in all situations
of life and history, even the most difficult ones. However, we must
nurture this restlessness and make room for it. As I said, “look within”
and try not to be overwhelmed by the pace of life and external
temptations. Cultivate moments of silence, perhaps pausing for a few
minutes each day to read the Gospel and speak with God. Try to walk this
inner path together with others, allowing yourselves to be accompanied
on the journey and engaging with priests, religious and people who, like
us, have set out on this path.
Holy Father, in a world where so many things are shouted from the
rooftops, there are aspects of life that remain hidden in silence and
shame, such as depression, a silent illness that affects many people —
both young and old — and brings with it darkness, isolation and
immeasurable pain. Sometimes, the pain is so overwhelming that the idea
of disappearing seems like the only way out. I myself struggled to
overcome this illness in silence for years, and one Friday night I lost
the battle and tried to take my own life. I am here because God gave me a
second chance, and I will be eternally grateful to him, but there are
many others who continue to face this darkness. That is why I ask you
with all my heart: Where can we see God when the darkness is absolute
and we cannot take it anymore? How can we trust in God when it seems
that nothing — not even our own life — is worth it?
2. First of all, thank you for sharing your experience of suffering
with us today. I am moved that you are able to speak about it, that you
are here among us and that you have found the strength to embrace this
second chance that the Lord has given you. You have risen and continued
your journey, and this is a remarkable miracle that we see in many
Gospel passages. Through contact with Jesus, even those who feel lost
regain confidence in life; healed of their illness, they can rise to
live again.
In your question, you first referred to depression as a “silent
illness.” It is important to recognize how mental health is increasingly
threatened in the context of societies that consider themselves
advanced. This is a sign that there is something deeply wrong with a
certain notion of progress that subjects people to pressures,
expectations and tensions that compromise healthy balances. For this
reason, we need a healthcare system that prioritizes this invisible and
widespread malaise, which also affects young people.
Your words, however, have also shown us that suffering tests our
faith and the meaning we give to life. This is true for everyone, not
just for those who at some point face the trial of illness.
As I listened to you, I thought of the hours of darkness, anguish and
pain that Jesus experienced as the hour of his death drew near. The
Gospels, in the accounts of the Last Supper and the prayer in
Gethsemane, emphasize that evening was falling and that night was
coming. Shortly before his death on the cross, we read that “darkness
came over the whole land.” But, in reality, this was not merely a matter
of personal suffering. The Son of God took all the anguish, loneliness
and suffering of humanity upon himself, in his own flesh. In those dark
hours, as he was dying on the cross, Jesus shared our pain and revealed
to us the face of a compassionate God, who bears our sorrows, who
suffers with us, weeps our tears and remains at our side with his
presence full of love and mercy.
Going through this experience is difficult, as Sacred Scripture
attests time and again. There are moments of darkness and suffering that
our society silences because certain cultural norms demand that we
always be victorious and perfect, and so our limitations, fragility and
pain must be eliminated or confined to the deafening silence of
loneliness or even shame. And in these moments, we may instinctively
think that God has abandoned us as well. However, the cross of Jesus
tells us that God does not abandon us, that he is at our side, crucified
with us in moments of pain and extreme loneliness, that he gathers not
only our tears but also the cry of our suffering that others do not hear
— a cry that Jesus made his own on the cross, saying, “My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?” In a catechesis on the final hours of Jesus, Benedict XVI
says that his suffering becomes a cry of prayer, and this is true for
us as well: in the face of the most difficult and painful situations,
when God seems absent, we must entrust to him once again the burdens we
carry in our hearts, even crying out to him, even protesting like Job,
confident that in some way he is present and near even when he appears
to be silent. But I believe we cannot do this alone. In times of pain,
at least as much as possible, we must open ourselves to someone who can
help us utter a simple prayer, who can accompany us with discretion
without rushing to explain that pain, who can take us by the hand and
lead us out of this cry. These experiences also offer a message to us
believers, to the whole Church: we must not spiritualize pain,
superficially attributing it to “God’s will” or to some mysterious plan
of his, because this risks minimizing that suffering, silencing it and
hurting people. God does not want suffering. He carries it with us and
invites us to trust in him with perseverance. Let us remember what Pope Francis said: with God, life is always reborn.
Good evening, Holy Father. I come from a family in a very poor
neighborhood of Barcelona. When I was little, my father tried to kill my
mother, and she was saved because a young man stepped in and died
instead. My father went to prison, and my mother turned to drugs. When I
was ten, social services took me in and sent me to the “San José de la
Montaña” juvenile detention center. At first it was difficult because I
had built a wall around myself to protect myself by not letting anyone
in. Little by little, I experienced family love for the first time, and
my heart began to open up. There they told me about Jesus; I started to
pray and was baptized. But during my teenage years, I rebelled against
God many times. I was invited to a retreat, and there, for the first
time, I experienced God’s love. But a few months have passed, and I
still find it hard to forgive my father. And sometimes I look up to
heaven and ask God, “Where were you when I was a little girl?” Holy
Father, how can I forgive my father for almost leaving me without a
mother? How can I truly be reconciled with God?
3. Thank you for sharing your testimony and thank you also for your
question about forgiveness. It is truly a sign of God’s grace that you
have the courage to ask how to forgive those who have wronged us despite
your past suffering. I would like to mention two things.
First, I would like to expand on what I said earlier about God’s
presence in our times of suffering. Deep down, you are also asking this
question in relation to your childhood. However, the context in which
the events of your life have unfolded requires us to broaden the scope
of our question. Should we ask “where was God”? Or should we ask
ourselves about humanity, about how we are sometimes prisoners of evil,
resorting to violence against others? How is it that we fail to
cultivate love and respect for others’ dignity and freedom? So many
crime reports, even today, reflect a toxic climate in family
relationships marked by abuse and oppression and, in particular, by
violence against women, which unfortunately often leads to femicide. We
are all called to address this dramatic reality, which has
anthropological and cultural roots, both personally and as a society,
because we are responsible for confronting it in all its dimensions. We
cannot attribute to God what has been entrusted to our responsibility;
we cannot imagine that God, from on high, will automatically respond to
our needs or miraculously prevent evil from happening. He has endowed us
with intelligence and will, given us a conscience, clothing us in
dignity and freedom, and above all has come among us in his Son, Jesus
Christ, showing us the path to follow so that our lives may be fully
human and so that justice, peace and fraternity may reign in our
society. He has given us his own Spirit, precisely so that love may be
the key to all our human relationships. If violence exists, if
selfishness prevails, if even love among family members turns into
hatred, we must question the dynamics of our society, the culture of
individualism and the temptation of violence — but not God.
The second point concerns forgiveness. We must learn to view
forgiveness — that powerful remedy for evil that heals our inner wounds —
as part of a process and a journey. If we read the Gospel as a book of
instructions, commandments and duties, we risk becoming greatly
discouraged and frustrated because Jesus invites us to forgive, yet we
find ourselves unable to do so. But that is not the case. Above all, we
must seek forgiveness from the Lord. We must continually ask the Lord —
perhaps for our entire lives — to expand the space of love within us,
precisely where we have been wounded, that he can help us reconcile with
ourselves and with that part of our past that has been marked by
suffering, so that he may slowly transform resentment into mercy and
compassion. This is a long journey and a process that requires great
patience. It is an effort we must make, both on a personal level and
through other means of support, as well as inner reconciliation. We must
not lose heart: we move forward in small steps toward forgiveness.
Reconciliation with the past is gradual. Above all, we must not think
that forgiveness always and in every case means returning to the
previous situation or having a close relationship with those who have
hurt us, especially when there was violence. We can maintain a good
disposition of heart toward the person, reject all forms of hatred or
revenge, strive to repair the relationship as much as possible and
perhaps pray for him or her. All of this helps us to enter more and more
into the dynamic of forgiveness and to be reconciled with God and with
others. We are forgiven sinners; we are at peace, are able to forgive
and are able to be peacemakers.
_________________________________
Homily of the Holy Father
Like Nicodemus, we too are pilgrims in the night. This Gospel figure
offers us a message primarily about the journey of life. Our journey,
our desires and everything we embrace and experience daily — in joys and
defeats, in aspirations and plans — are the expression of our ongoing
search. We are beggars for love; we are truly hungry and thirsty. We
seek a deeper meaning that will sustain us, inspire us, and help us
understand the mystery of our lives. As we slowly move forward, one
small step at a time, we are called to engage with the shadows of our
own human condition: we lack the full truth; we do not fully fathom the
mystery of ourselves or the true identity of others; we do not always
succeed in understanding the hidden truth of the reality that surrounds
us and the events unfolding before our eyes. We seek a light to
illuminate the path.
But Nicodemus also speaks to us about the path of faith. It is not a
path that runs parallel to that of our human existence. Rather, these
two paths are always intertwined. As we heard in the Gospel, God so
loved the world that he gave us his only begotten Son, and in him,
united himself forever with our flesh. He is always with the Father and
with us. Thus, every time the mystery of our life unfolds in the light
of a new day, in all that we are and do, we are in God’s presence and
held in his eternal embrace: our life “is hidden with Christ in God” (Col
3:3). Yet, at times we experience the night of faith, the weariness of
believing, the fatigue of the spirit, a sense of inadequacy in the face
of the Gospel’s call, the bitterness of our failures and the fear of not
measuring up.
Brothers and sisters, Nicodemus teaches us that these nights — which
accompany our lives, our journey of faith, and the history in which we
live — are a time of blessing, a place for rebirth, a womb that always
gives birth to new life. These nights strip us bare and return us to
what is essential. They remove the human and religious masks we wear by
day to keep ourselves from being recognized or to present ourselves
differently than we are. They expose us, revealing our lights and our
shadows. These nights restore us to the humility of knowing how to look
at ourselves in truth, beyond the presumption of thinking that our
journey is already complete and that we move forward as if we had a
clear understanding of everything, everyone and even God.
The “empty space” that night creates, even when it takes the form of
suffering or dissatisfaction, of disillusionment or unbelief, can be an
opportunity to receive new life, to change and be renewed, to be “born
again from above,” as Jesus tells Nicodemus. In fact, God did not come
to judge the world in its sin and the night of its unfaithfulness, but
sent his Son to save it, to give the world eternal life.
For this reason, we too are called not to judge the “nights” —
neither the nights of our own lives, those of the Church, nor those of
the society around us. In the night, we must instead set out on a
journey as Nicodemus did, continuing to ask questions of the Lord and
open ourselves to the wind of the Spirit. We must welcome the night no
longer as a sign of failure, but as the beginning of a new life.
And as we reflect on our personal journey, as well as on the “nights”
of our journey as a Church and those of Spain — in its cities, its old
and new forms of poverty, its society and culture — we may well ask
ourselves: What are the “nights” we are passing through? What do they
say to us? As we enter into them and humbly look, without prejudice, at
the reality of who we are, what are we called to change? Where must we
seek renewal? What direction do we want to take? What kind of society do
we want to build?
Even in the heart of night, we must not give up searching,
questioning and dialoguing with God and with each other. Let us walk
together in the faith that harmonizes the diversity of our ideas and
sensibilities in order to seek the truth that will guide us toward the
common good. This country may then be a welcoming space for all, where
each person’s dignity is respected and everyone loved for who they are.
Let us open ourselves to the gift of the Spirit, seeking the Lord like
Nicodemus, and welcoming the light of his Gospel with the certainty that
we will experience a new life within us, a presence that blesses, a
gratuitous love that will help us pass from night into light. For God
does not want anything to be lost, and even now he desires to give us
eternal life and lead us to a happiness that has no end.
Through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, may the Lord grant us
the grace to open ourselves to him and to be shaken by the wind of his
Spirit.
