“The youth of today have a need for a true ideal, a true model and a true friend. If they don’t find them, they end up following what the world proposes to them: consumerism, hedonism, escape into the virtual, individualism and standardization”. The reflection is that of a young Pole, Tomasz Mikusinski, who addressed the round table on 25 April on the theme of the day “Memory and future” as part of the programme of the 10th Symposium of European bishops, promoted by the Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe (CCEE), held in Rome from 24 to 28 April. “The ideal of ideals”, according to Tomasz, is contained in the Gospel, and is “the life of God realized on earth”. To achieve it, he pointed out, the young have a need for credible models, and he cited some names: John Paul II, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Chiara Lubich, Roger Schutz. Yet, he pointed out, “it’s not always like this”. In Poland too, where many young people are closely linked with the Church, “needs are growing among them that the Church does not yet seem able to satisfy”. The young challenge, for example, a faith that is exclusively lived in its “vertical dimension”, in other words in the “relation with God in prayer, in liturgical celebrations, and in participation in the sacraments”. But the young, he suggested, “have a need to find responses also for the horizontal dimension of their life, for their relations with the fellowmen they meet in the various circumstances of daily life”. And he mentioned, in this regard, the portal of an Indian church, which has the inscription over its entrance: “Here one enters to love God”, and over its exit: “Here one leaves to love man”. “The Gospel, whose essence is to love, illuminates human relationships, placing man in the right relation with his neighbour. Whoever tries to live the Gospel knows that this life-style is a source of happiness. When the young experience this happiness said Tomasz they are better defended against the countless proposals of superficial and transient pleasures that the consumer world may offer them”. The round table was also addressed by a priest and a sister, who recalled the importance of evangelizing the young by meeting them in their own environment, the need to dedicate more time to them, and the value of the community and of volunteer service.
