Young People: Vocation and Priestly Formation
8. The many contradictions and potentialities marking our
societies and cultures - as well as ecclesial communities - are perceived,
lived and experienced by our young people with a particular intensity and have
immediate and very acute repercussions on their personal growth. Thus, the
emergence and development of priestly vocations among boys, adolescents and
young men are continually under pressure and facing obstacles.
The lure of the so - called "consumer society" is
so strong among young people that they become totally dominated and imprisoned
by an individualistic, materialistic and hedonistic interpretation of human
existence. Material "well - being," which is so intensely sought
after, becomes the one ideal to be striven for in life, a well - being which is
to be attained in any way and at any price. There is a refusal of anything that
speaks of sacrifice and a rejection of any effort to look for and to practice
spiritual and religious values. The all - determining "concern" for
having supplants the primacy of being, and consequently personal and
interpersonal values are interpreted and lived not according to the logic of
giving and generosity but according to the logic of selfish possession and the
exploitation of others.
This is particularly reflected in that outlook on human
sexuality according to which sexuality's dignity in service to communion and to
the reciprocal donation between persons becomes degraded and thereby reduced to
nothing more than a consumer good. In this case, many young people undergo an
affective experience which, instead of contributing to a harmonious and joyous
growth in personality which opens them outward in an act of self - giving,
becomes a serious psychological and ethical process of turning inward toward
self, a situation which cannot fail to have grave consequences on them in the
future.
In the case of some young people a distorted sense of
freedom lies at the root of these tendencies. Instead of being understood as
obedience to objective and universal truth, freedom is lived out as a blind
acquiescence to instinctive forces and to an individual's will to power.
Therefore, on the level of thought and behavior, it is almost natural to find
an erosion of internal consent to ethical principles. On the religious level,
such a situation, if it does not always lead to an explicit refusal of God,
causes widespread indifference and results in a life which, even in its more
significant moments and more decisive choices, is lived as if God did not
exist. In this context it is difficult not only to respond fully to a vocation
to the priesthood but even to understand its very meaning as a special witness
to the primacy of "being" over "having," and as a
recognition that the significance of life consists in a free and responsible
giving of oneself to others, a willingness to place oneself entirely at the
Service of the Gospel and the kingdom of God as a priest.
Often the world of young people is a "problem' in the
Church community itself. In fact, if in them - more so than in adults - there
is present a strong tendency to subjectivize the Christian faith and to belong
only partially and conditionally to the life and mission of the Church, and if
the Church community is slow for a variety of reasons to initiate and sustain
an up - to - date and courageous pastoral care for young people, they risk being
left to themselves, at the mercy of their psychological frailty? dissatisfied
and critical of a world of adults who, in failing to live the faith in a
consistent and mature fashion, do not appear to them as credible models.
Thus we see how difficult it is to present young people with
a full and penetrating experience of Christian and ecclesial life and to
educate them in it. So, the prospect of having a vocation to the priesthood is
far from the actual everyday interests which young men have in life.
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