Volume 19, Issue 10-11

As we approach this great international event, World Youth Day, there can be something in it for all of us. And, if each of us plays his or her part, the benefits will be not only with the participants, but with the rest of us, and hopefully through them any benefits will be with us all for a long time to come.

If you will be participating yourself, it should provide you with a first-hand experience of the Catholic Faith that you share in common with young people from distant parts of the globe. They will come from a wide spectrum of believers, living in a whole variety of cultures and languages, and yet all of them young people worshiping together as one worldwide family united in Jesus.

Remember that it was He who commissioned His followers “to make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), and so, after two thousand years, as you gather together, first in Melbourne, and then in Sydney, you will enjoy a marvellous opportunity of displaying to one another the vibrancy and the hope that as members of the Church, who have grown up and been educated as part of Generation Y, you can together offer to our world.

I have observed yours as an era of young people who are aware in your lives of what might be described as your need of the Spirit. Over all, you have developed an awareness that our well-endowed material world does not have all the answers, and that merely indulging in selfish pursuits does not offer happiness. I’m sure you have discovered and will go on discovering, too, the importance of spiritual values.

As I observe things, so many of you display a sense of adventure, and are striving to better the lot of others, especially those who are in need of support and justice, particularly our Indigenous brothers and sisters. You of your generation have in your hands the marvellous opportunity of harnessing so much of the developments in technology to make ours a better, more caring world.

However, the response of this harvest of young people like yourself, from right across Australia, supplemented by a likeminded crop from countries across the seas, ought not exclude those of earlier generations like myself. Therefore, there is a pressing need for the rest of us to respond to the spirit of WYD, and, I suggest, that we do so in two ways.

The first is to provide practical encouragement to all the endeavours arising from Days in the Dioceses and World Youth Day to which any young people of our acquaintance are devoting themselves. And the second is to lend our continuing prayerful support to these exciting enterprises, so that they will produce a rich harvest not only for those who take part, but also for the rest of us.

Indeed, we stand in need, at this time, of the invaluable input that yet another generation of youth, imbued with living Catholic faith, can provide, one that is relevant to the yearnings of our society today. May all this be accomplished. •

Fr Gerard Dowling OAM is the spiritual director of Centacare, Catholic Family Services, Melbourne and Dean Emeritus.