"There Is More"
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Thursday, November 04, 2010 4:00 PM
Last Saturday the Pope met with 30,000 kids, 30,000 teens & young adults and additional 10,000 teachers for a rally of Italian Catholic Action Youth.
Benedict XVI held a Q & A session during the rally.
Here are some highlights.
First, a child asks him what it means to grow up.
As is his wont, the Pope begins by sharing a memory that shows his understanding of the kid’s desire to be grown:
The best answer to the question about what it means to grow up is on your jerseys, your caps, your signs: “There is more.” This motto of yours, which I did not know, makes me think. What does a child do to see if he has gotten bigger? He compares his height with his friends’ and imagines becoming taller to feel more grown up. I, when I was a boy of your age, was one of the smallest in my class, and much more did I have the wish to one day to be very big; and not only big in terms of the measuring stick, but I wanted to do something big, something more in my life, even if I did not know this saying “There is more.”
The Holy Father then relates this childish desire to be physically grown with the growing desires in a cjhild’s heart:
Growing taller implies this “There is more.” You are told this by your heart, which wants to have a lot of friends, which is happy when you behave well, when you know how to bring joy to dad and mom, but above all when it meets a friend who is incomparable, very good and unique, Jesus.
Is that not marvelous? He goes on to tell all the kids gathered there how much Jesus loves them, and reminds the adults present that their job is to guard the greatness of their children’s hearts.
Next an adolescent girl talks to him about relationships and the pain of first loves when they go sour. “How can we learn to love truly?” she asks.
Benedict tells her she’s asked the most fundamental question and then says something profound:
In adolescence we stop before the mirror and we notice that we are changing. But if you continue to look at yourself, you will never grow up!
Just as he spoke to the child of what “more” means when you’re little, he now describes the adolescent search for “more.”
You will grow up if you are able to make your life a gift to others, not to seek yourselves, but to give yourselves to others: this is the school of love. This love, however, must bring you into that “more” that today shouts to everyone. “There is more!” As I have already said, I too, in my youth wanted something more than what the society and the mentality of the time presented to me. I wanted to breathe pure air, above all I desired a beautiful and good world, like our God, the Father of Jesus, wanted for everyone. And I understood more and more that the world becomes beautiful and good if one knows this will of God and if the world corresponds to this will of God, which is the true light, beauty, love that gives the world meaning.
He goes on to warn against the false loves—the imitations—that can lead us off the path to the “more” we are seeking.
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. This is not freedom. Much of the “love” that is proposed 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 enflames your lives, your thoughts, your affections. Of course it demands sacrifice to live love in the true way—without renunciation one does not find this road—but I am certain that you are not afraid of the toil of a challenging and authentic love. It is the only kind that, in the final analysis, gives true joy!
There’s a nice response, too, to a question from a teacher about what it means to educate in our time. Read the whole thing, but here’s the money quote:
you are not the children’s owners but servants of their joy in the name of Jesus, guides to him.
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