A SIGN FROM CORCOVADO
Fr. IRENEUSZ SKUBIŚ
Rio together with Christ the Redeemer from the summit of Corcovado has become a city symbol of the youth and universality of the Church in the recent days. Preparations for the World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro had been lasting long. As the Holy Father Francis said after his election for pope – indeed it is the end of the world. So, the youth from the whole globe went to the end of the world, to Southern America, for a meeting with pope Francis – the First Pastor of Christ’s Church, which, as the statue of Christ from Corcovado shows it symbolically,, invites with open arms not only the youth, but also all of us and each of us individually.
Young people participating in the World Youth Day in Brazil received a great grace of experiencing the community with God, pope Francis and one another on the Southern-American continent. Similarly, in 1991 we were experiencing the VI World Youth Day with John Paul II in Częstochowa, hosting young people from all continents, and observing especially young people from Eastern Europe, for whom it was a kind of illumination, the first meeting with a different world.
Young people arrived in Rio, being full of joy and hope. They arrived from different parts of the world, from various political situations. Unfortunately, they face serious problems: unemployment, lack of better life perspectives, contamination of life environment. We should remember that these phenomena cause particular moral attitudes: cunning, wangling, manipulation and perversion, and they are even favorable to crimes, because life is based on material values. In this atmosphere, the Church is working and the Holy Father Francis enters these difficult matters concerning young people.
Therefore, today here the quickest global systemic solutions are needed, in order to solve difficult problems, which appear at the threshold of adulthood of young people. But, first of all, it is necessary to pay attention to moral and ethical rules , which oblige in every sphere of the human life and functioning of the country.
Today, there is one more danger which is lurking for the youth: it is the gender ideology, which is aimed against the human nature, wants to negate biological rules, destroying the institution of father and mother, man and woman, causing a situation in which people would experience fear concerning their deepest nature, not being sure who they are. This matter has also been present in the Polish parliament – the atheistic MPs also undertook an attempt to create the law based on the fact that the man would be supposed to forget about his sex, and only a teenage citizen could come to the court with documents and declare that he/she feels a man or a woman.
And regardless of everything, such a protocol would be enough to state that somebody is, for example, a man, although, he looks as a woman in outer appearance and the other way round. Certainly, it leads in a straight line into couples of people of the same sex, destruction of the natural family and the whole social moral life.
At the time when in our parliament there is a kind of fight with God and the natural law, in Brazil a wonderful meeting of the youth from all over the world is taking place, who think in a proper way, who not only hope but also want to do everything so that the world being built by them would be God’s world…
We pray for the youth of Rio and young people joining them in every part of the globe. We admire their number, enjoyment with life, and their enjoyment with one another, the Holy Father Francis and the beauty of the world. They are beautiful, wise and full of engagement for Christ. Therefore, Blessed John Paul II believed in them so much, as well as his successor Benedict XVI, and also pope Francis believes in them so sincerely. We are glad that thanks to the World Youth Days, the youth was somehow appreciated, that these meetings are so strongly inscribed in pastoral ministry – they emphasize our value, integrate us, make us eager for action and help us concentrate on Christ.
Let love of John Paul II to the youth, doubled by love to them by his successors, brings fruits to the whole world, the universal Church and to every nation. After all, it is all about the fact that we would not give in temptation of the goodness imitation, but we would have opened spaces through which we could see God.
(AA)
"Niedziela" 31/2013