Dear young people, beloved friends.
1. The 8th of June last year, I had the great joy of announcing that the next World Youth Day will be held at Buenos Aires on Palm Sunday 1987. With the help of God, I will be then completing my apostolic visit to the nations of the southern cone of Latin America: Uruguay, Chile and Argentina.
At Buenos Aires I will have the great joy of not only meeting with the Argentine youth, but also with many young people coming from the entire Latin American area and other Countries of the world. In that much awaited encounter we will all feel in communion of prayer, of friendship and fraternity, of responsibility and commitment, with all the other youths that, united around their pastors, will celebrate this Day in the local Churches of all the world; we will also feel ourselves joined to all those who search for God with a sincere heart and desire to employ their youthful energies and to construct a new, more just and fraternal society.
It is certainly not without significance the fact that, this time, the Day has as an epicenter the Latin American land, populated in majority by young people, animators and future protagonists of the so-called "continent of hope". The Latin American Church has expressed at Puebla de los Angeles (Mexico) its "preferential option for the young people" and prepares a "new evangelization" in order to again find its roots and to rejuvenate the tradition and the Christian culture of its populations to the threshold of the "half millennium" of the first evangelization. But our attention is placed on the four cardinal points and our word desires to convene all the young men and women of the North and the South, the East and the West, the men and women of 2000 who the Church recognizes and receives with hope.
2. The theme and the content of this World Youth Day places before our eyes the testimony of the apostle Saint John when he exclaims: "We have known and believed the love which God has for us."
Appropriately I desire to remember a thought expressed in my first encyclical: "Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it." (Redemptor Hominis, 10). And how much more valid is this truth for the young people, in a time of special responsibility and hope, of growth of the person, of determination of great values, ideals and plans of life, of yearning for truth as the search for authentic happiness! It is the moment in which one perceives more the need to feel recognized, supported, listened to and loved. You know well, from the depth of your hearts, how brief (ephemeral) are the satisfactions offered by a superficial hedonism and how they leave an emptiness in the soul; how it is illusory to close oneself in the armor of one's own the egoism; as indifference and skepticism contradict the sublime yearning for love without boundaries; as the temptations of violence and of the ideologies denying God only lead to blind alleys.
Given that the man without love cannot live nor be understood, I invite you all to grow in humanity, to place the values of the spirit as an absolute priority, to transform yourselves as "new men", recognizing and accepting more and more the presence of God in your life, the presence of a God that is Love; a Father who loves everyone of us from all eternity, who has created us for love and has loved us so much as to give his Only Son to us for the forgiveness of our sins, in order to reconcile us with him, to live with him a communion of love that will never end. The World Youth Day must therefore dispose us all to receive the gift of the love of God that transforms and saves us. The world awaits with anxiety our testimony of love, a testimony originating from a deep personal conviction and from a sincere act of love and faith in the risen Christ. This means knowing the love and growing in it.
3. Our celebrations will have also an explicit communitarian dimension, an inescapable requirement of the love of God and of the communion of those who are children of the same Father, siblings in Jesus Christ and united by the strength of the Spirit. Since you are incorporated in the great family of the redeemed and are living members of the Church, you will experience in this World Youth Day the enthusiasm and the joy of the love of God that calls you into unity and solidarity. This appeal does not exclude anyone; but on the contrary it knows no limits, embraces all the young people without distinctions, reinforcing and renewing the bonds that unite them among themselves. On this occasion the bonds will have to be particularly living and working with the young people who suffer the consequences of unemployment, who live in poverty or solitude, who feel neglect or who carry the heavy cross of sickness. May the message of friendship arrive also to those who do not accept religious faith. Charity does not compromise with error, but always brings all together in order to indicate the way of conversion. What beautiful and luminous words St. Paul addresses in this regard in the hymn to the charity! (cf. 1 Cor. 13). May they be for you an ideal of life and precise commitment in the present as in the future!
The love of God which the Holy Spirit has placed in our hearts (cf. Rom. 5:5) must make us more than ever aware of the urgent threats of hunger and war, to the scandalous disparities between the few rich and the too many poor, to the attacks on the rights of man as well as his legitimate freedoms, including religious freedom, to the manipulations, present and potential, of his dignity. I have felt living and strong the closeness and the prayer of the youth on the occasion of the World Day of Prayer for Peace, carried out the 27th of October in Assisi, in which representatives of the Christian confessions and the religions of the world participated.
It is more than ever necessary that the enormous scientific and technological progresses of our age are oriented, with wise ethics, for the good of the whole man and of all men. The gravity, the urgency and the complexity of the problems and current challenges demand from the new generations ability and competence in more diverse fields; however, beyond interests or partial visions, it is necessary to give primacy to the integral good of man, created in the image of God and called to an eternal destiny. In Christ the love of God and the sublime dignity of man have been totally revealed. May Jesus be the "cornerstone" of your life and of the new civilization that you must construct in generous and open solidarity. It cannot be an authentic human growth in peace and justice, in truth and freedom, if Christ is not made present with his saving strength.
The construction of a civilization of love demands vigorous and constant strengthening, disposed to sacrifice and desiring to open new roads to the social life together, surpassing divisions and conflicting materialism. This is a specific responsibility of the young people of today who will be the men and the women of tomorrow, towards the beginnings of the third Christian millennium.
4. In the joyful expectation of our encounter, I invite all to a profound and meditated spiritual preparation that will increase the ecclesial dynamism of the World Youth Day. Put yourselves in journey! May your itinerary be articulated by prayer, study, dialogue, desire for conversion and improvement. You walk united, leaving your parishes and Christian communities, your apostolic associations and movements. May yours be an attitude of acceptance, of expectation, in harmony with the period of the Advent that we now begin. The liturgy of this first Sunday recalls for us, with the words of saint Paul "the moment in which we live" and exhorts to us "to cast off the works of darkness" in order to clothe ourselves "instead in the Lord Jesus Christ" (cf. Rm. 13:11-14).
To all the young men and women of the world I send my affectionate and cordial greeting, in particular to the Argentine youth. I have followed with great interest your annual pilgrimages to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Luján and the national youth encounter held last year at Córdoba, as also "the youth option" on which the general pastorate of the Argentine episcopacy has been concentrated for years. Since my first visit to your country, in 1982, as a place of pain and of hope, I know your commitment to the construction of peace in justice and in truth. Consequently I know that you will collaborate with enthusiasm for the preparation of the World Youth Day of Buenos Aires, that you will be present at that encounter with the Pope and that you will receive with generous hospitality, friendship and availability the young people of other countries who will want to participate in this festivity of deep commitment with Christ, with the Church, with the new civilization of truth and love.
I invite all the young men and women of the world to celebrate with particular intensity and hope the World Youth Day, the next Palm Sunday 1987. I commend the preparation and the fruits of the Day to Mary, the young Virgin of Nazareth, the humble handmaid of the Lord, she who has believed in the love of the Father and has given to us Christ "our peace" (Eph. 2:14).
Dear young people, dear friends, you are witnesses of the love of God, sowers of hope and constructors of peace. In the name of the Lord I bless you with all my affection.
November 30, 1986