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"Lastly, it is to you, young men and women of the world, that the Council
wishes to address its final message. For it is you who are to receive the
torch from the hands of your elders and to live in the world at the period
of the most gigantic transformations ever realized in its history. It is you
who receiving the best of the example of the teaching of your parents and
your teachers, are to form the society of tomorrow. You will either save
yourselves or you will perish with it.
For four years the Church has been working to rejuvenate her image in order
to respond the better to the design of her Founder, the great Living One,
the Christ who is eternally young. At the term of this imposing re-examination of life, she now turns to you. It is for you,
youth, especially for you that the Church now comes through her Council to enkindle
your light, the light which illuminates the future, your future.
The Church is anxious that this society that you are going to build up
should respect the dignity, the liberty, and the rights of
individuals. These individuals are you. The Church is particularly anxious that this
society should allow free expansion to her treasure ever ancient and ever
new, namely faith, and that your souls may be able to bask freely in its
helpful light. She has confidence that you will find such strength and suchjoy that you will not
be tempted, as were some of your elders, to yield to the seductions of egoistic or hedonistic philosophies or to those of despair
and annihilation, and that in the face of atheism, a phenomenon of lassitude
and old age, you will know how to affirm your faith in life and what gives
meaning to it, that is to say, the certitude of the existence of a just and
good God.
It is in the name of this God and of His Son, Jesus, that we exhort you to
open your hearts to the dimensions of the world, to heed the appeal of your
brothers, to place your youthful energies at their service. Fight against
all egoism. Refuse to give free course to the instincts of violence and
hatred which beget wars and all their train of miseries. Be
generous, pure, respectful, and sincere, and build in enthusiasm a better world than your
elders had.
The Church looks to you with confidence and with love. Rich with a long past
ever living in her, and marching on toward human perfection in time and the
ultimate destinies of history and of life, the Church is the real youth of
the world. She possesses what constitutes the strength and the charm of
youth, that is to say, the ability to rejoice with what is
beginning, to give oneself unreservedly, to renew oneself and to set out again for new
conquests. Look upon the Church and you will find in her the face of Christ,
the genuine, humble, and wise Hero, the Prophet of truth and love, the
Companion and Friend of youth. It is in the name of Christ that we salute
you, that we exhort and bless you"
(7 December 1965).
We Are Church - YOUTH
www.we-are-church.org/youth
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