Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Love is possible and young people must believe in it. True love is one that is “faithful and strong”, one that “generates peace and joy” expressed within the Church and in which we bring life through our growth or that of our engagement as a couple and not through personal satisfaction, one in which we are “witnesses of charity” like Mother Teresa rather than one based on our “competitive” and “productive” capacities.

These are but a few elements in Pope Benedict XVI’s message for the 22nd World Youth Day that will be celebrated in the dioceses on Palm Sunday; its inspiration: “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (Jn: 13, 34).

“Everybody feels the longing to love and to be loved,” the Pope writes. “Yet, how difficult it is to love, and how many mistakes and failures have to be reckoned with in love! There are those who even come to doubt that love is possible. But if emotional delusions or lack of affection can cause us to think that love is utopian, an impossible dream, should we then become resigned? No! Love is possible”.

In order to “reawaken” trust in “true” love, Benedict XVI points to a three-stage journey to discover love and three contexts in which it manifests itself.

“The first stage concerns the source of true love. There is only one source, and that is God. Saint John makes this clear when he declares that “God is love” (1 Jn 4: 8, 16). He was not simply saying that God loves us, but that the very being of God is love.”

In the second stage of this journey, God-love’s highest incarnation is the Cross. In it, “[r]edeemed by his blood, no human life is useless or of little value, because each of us is loved personally by Him with a passionate and faithful love, a love without limits.”

“Moreover, the Crucifix, which after the Resurrection would carry forever the marks of his passion, exposes the ‘distortions’ and lies about God that underlie violence, vengeance and exclusion. Christ is the Lamb of God who takes upon himself the sins of the world and eradicates hatred from the heart of humankind. This is the true ‘revolution’ that He brings about: love.”

In the third stage we realise “the need and urgency to love him as He has loved us” and from this realisation stems the call to express God-Love in three areas of daily life.

The first one is the Church. “[Y]ou should stimulate, with your enthusiasm and charity, the activities of the parishes, the communities, the ecclesial movements and the youth groups to which you belong. Be attentive in your concern for the welfare of others, faithful to the commitments you have made. Do not hesitate to joyfully abstain from some of your entertainments; cheerfully accept the necessary sacrifices; testify to your faithful love for Jesus by proclaiming his Gospel, especially among young people of your age.”

The second area, “where you are called to express your love and grow in it, is your preparation for the future that awaits you. If you are engaged to be married, God has a project of love for your future as a couple and as a family. Therefore, it is essential that you discover it with the help of the Church, free from the common prejudice that says that Christianity with its commandments and prohibitions places obstacles to the joy of love and impedes you from fully enjoying the happiness that a man and woman seek in their reciprocal love. [. . .] Learning to love each other as a couple is a wonderful journey, yet it requires a demanding “apprenticeship”. The period of engagement, very necessary in order to form a couple, is a time of expectation and preparation that needs to be lived in purity of gesture and words. It allows you to mature in love, in concern and in attention for each other; it helps you to practise self-control and to develop your respect for each other. These are the characteristics of true love that does not place emphasis on seeking its own satisfaction or its own welfare. [. . .] Likewise [. . .], be ready to say ‘yes’ if God should call you to follow the path of ministerial priesthood or the consecrated life.”

“The third area of commitment that comes with love is that of daily life with its multiple relationships. I am particularly referring to family, studies, work and free time. Dear young friends, cultivate your talents, not only to obtain a social position, but also to help others to ‘grow’. Develop your capacities, not only in order to become more ‘competitive’ and ‘productive’, but to be ‘witnesses of charity’”.

Hence the invitation to “dare to love” and “not desire anything less for your life than a love that is strong and beautiful and that is capable of making the whole of your existence a joyful undertaking of giving yourselves as a gift to God and your brothers and sisters, in imitation of the One who vanquished hatred and death forever through love”.

As an example of this the Holy Father presents Mother Teresa whose “only desire” in life “was to quench the thirst of love felt by Jesus, not with words, but with concrete action by recognising his disfigured countenance thirsting for love in the faces of the poorest of the poor. [. . .] The message of this humble witness of divine love has spread around the whole world.”