|
YOUTH
FULLY ALIVE
The glory of God is young people
fully alive.
Properly understood and put into
practice, this statement alone, adapted from St. Iraneus, would go a
long way to ending the recent epidemic of suicide among our youth.
Our task as adults is to help our young people live full human lives
that will reflect the glory of God and lessen the incidents of suicide.
A first step in addressing this
issue is to define suicide.
Noted spiritual writer and
theologian Ron Rolheiser writes that suicide is a disease and
generally the most misunderstood of all sicknesses. It takes a person
out of life against his or her will, the emotional equivalent of
cancer, a stroke or a heart attack.
Suicide is never a good thing to be
desired. It leaves behind an immeasurable pain on the part of the
family, relatives and friends of those who do it or even attempt to
do it. We don’t have the right to take our own lives. Life is a
gift from God, meant to be lived as God wants it to be lived.
Suicide is a desperate response to
intense painful emotions such as hopelessness and despair that
threaten to overwhelm some wounded youth. They can see no other way
out of their painful situation. There are some people who
through life’s hurts have ended up locked in spiritual prisons
that all the love in the world cannot seem to break through.
A second step is exploring what
brings on suicide.
The experience of a lack of love in
all its forms (addicted parents, neglect by parents, absent parents,
negative peer pressure, trauma, abuse, put-downs and violence, etc.)
leads to a feeling of insecurity, low self esteem, loneliness,
disorder and chaos, and finally addiction and even death.
The sexual permissiveness in our
society, lack of discipline and desire for instant gratification
coupled with an inability to wait for anything is another factor. By
the time youth are in their teens, they have already experienced far
too much far too soon, and they are burnt out, depleted, with nothing
left to look forward to.
Young people are also playing with
fire when they indulge in genital sex that belongs in a mature,
committed relationship. Their ability to handle their emotions is not
developed enough to cope with the devastation that they feel when a
partner with whom they have bonded deeply through genital sex
casually changes relationships. That devastation can and is a cause
of many suicides.
The culture of death that permeates
our society also is a factor. When we condone terminating the life of
the unborn through abortion and ending the life of the weak and old
through euthanasia, we cheapen all life and sow the seeds of suicide
as a way to deal with personal pain and inconvenience. Our total
disrespect for nature and mother earth, leading to a throw-away
society, is another influence.
How do we respond to suicide?
There is a saying that everyone
carries within them their own mystery, and we must respect that
mystery. God alone knows each person’s heart and story. The one
thing that we can safely do when someone does take their own life is
not judge that person. We must leave that up to God. We can rest
assured that there are no walls or locked doors that the love of God
in Jesus Christ cannot penetrate. We can pray for, and hold up to
that mercy of God, all those we know who have ended their lives.
We can also extend compassion,
understanding and support for the family members who often carry
feelings of guilt, shame and profound sadness. We can resolve to make
whatever changes we need to make in our own lives to be a more
positive influence in our own communities. We can also grow in our
understanding of suicide as an illness in the face of which some
people are powerless.
How can we prevent suicide?
There are many paths that we can
take to prevent suicide. People who are feeling suicidal most often
display signs of that intent, such as isolating themselves, less
communication, less laughter, lack of friends, poor performance in
school, absenteeism, mood swings and unusual behavior. We must be
open to those signs and respond to those signs.
We must also teach respect for all
of creation and all forms of life, eliminating gossip and treating
each person with dignity. And we need to work hard to prevent any
future such incidents through education, love and caring community action.
The best antidote to suicide is
love and lots of love as trust, caring, affection, listening,
affirmation and sharing. Love leads to a feeling of security, a sense
of belonging, an experience of peace and order, and ultimately a life
of happy free sobriety.
One positive thing we can do is
teach young people that spirituality is all about what we do with our
pain. A weak spirituality runs away from pain. A strong spirituality
deals with pain. Addiction is actually an attempt to avoid legitimate
suffering. We need to teach our youth not to be afraid of emotional
pain. Suffering and pain is not all bad. In fact, there are some
things in life that we can learn only through a certain amount of suffering.
Another path is to work hard at
promoting stronger marriages and closer family life where love is
present and shown as affirmation, attention, understanding and
presence to one another.
We can encourage young people to
keep genital sex for marriage. We can bring back religious and
spiritual values in the school systems, teaching young people to keep
the Great Commandment of loving God, loving others and loving them selves.
Parents especially can put more
energy, time and money into meeting the needs of their children to be
loved, to belong and to be valued. There is probably nothing more
important that parents can do than that. If they have met the
emotional needs of their children, then those youth will be secure
and strong enough to resist negative peer pressure and they will be
able to make positive life choices. Parents who have answered the
emotional needs of their youth are truly successful parents.
As your archbishop, along with our
archdiocesan leadership team, we are very concerned with the high
rate of suicides in our archdiocese, and call on all parents,
community leaders, church workers and professional people, to come
together in an interdisciplinary way to improve the quality of life
of our communities.
As an archdiocese, we are putting
much of our energy, time and resources into providing opportunities
for individuals and communities to heal through initiatives such as
the Emmanuel Process and programs such as Returning To Spirit,
Healing Soul Pain and the Christopher Leadership Course.
Working together and praying for
God’s help, we can make a difference and help our young people
be fully alive rather than try to end their lives prematurely.
Sincerely,
+ Sylvain Lavoie OMI
Archbishop of Keewatin-The Pas
PASTORAL
LETTER ON THE YEAR OF ST PAUL
Archdiocese
of Keewatin-The Pas
+ Sylvain
Lavoie OMI September 2008
 On
Saturday, June 28, 2008, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI officially
inaugurated a Year of St. Paul. During the ceremony at the Basilica
of Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls in Rome, the pope lit a special
Pauline Flame and also inaugurated a Pauline Door through which he
entered the Basilica for the ceremony.
This special Pauline Year coincides
with the Synod on the Word that will be held in Rome this October, at
which the pope and selected bishops from around the world will gather
to ponder the depth and richness of the gift of God's Word to the
church and to all of humanity.
This special year also presents us
with an opportunity to learn more about the man, Paul of Tarsus, and
his message. Paul is not only a figure of the past who we remember
with veneration. He is also our teacher, an Apostle and herald of
Jesus Christ.
Paul was a Jew, born in Cilicia in
present day Turkey but "brought up in Jerusalem at the feet of
Gamaliel, educated according to the strict manner of the law of our
fathers, being zealous for God..." (Acts 22: 3). That made him a
zealous Pharisee who was persecuting the followers of Jesus when he
encountered the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus. That event turned
his worldview upside down and changed his life forever.
Sr. Teresita Kambeitz osu, who
followed the footsteps of St. Paul on her recent sabbatical, summed
up her impression of St. Paul's life in one sentence: "St. Paul
fell in love with Jesus." It is as simple as that and very
comparable to the human experience of "falling in love." We
begin to see reality with a different set of eyes and the whole world
takes on added color and meaning. That is what it was like for St. Paul.
Pope Benedict, during the opening
ceremony and in his subsequent audiences since then, picks up a
central theme from St. Paul in that Christianity is not just a new
moral code or a philosophy, but an encounter with a person. "We
are Christians only if we encounter Christ" the pope states.
Pope Benedict adds a very
interesting corrective insight to this encounter of St. Paul with the
Risen Lord. He claims that Paul never interpreted this experience for
himself as a conversion. Instead, it was a transformation. "The
risen Christ appeared as a splendid light and addressed Saul,
transforming his thinking and his very life. This transformation of
his whole being was not the result of his thinking but of the
encounter with Jesus Christ. In this sense it was not simply a
conversion, but rather a death and resurrection for him." In
short, Paul's old way of thinking and being had died, and a new way
of life was born, and so it should be for us.
Freedom was important for St. Paul.
The experience of being loved to the very end by Christ had opened
his eyes to the truth that Love, not Law, is the way to the fullness
of life. As a zealous Pharisee, Saul was a slave to the Law. He made
it his life to obey and enforce that Law. The problem with the Law is
that it leaves us centered on our selves and our efforts to keep the
Law. It also leads to a dangerous tendency to judge and punish those
who are not measuring up to our standard of the Law. Such was the
case of Judaism at that time.
Paul experienced the totally free
gift of God's forgiveness, acceptance and love through his encounter
with the Risen Lord. That encounter transformed his whole legalistic
world view into one of gratuitous, amazing grace. Pope Benedict
asserts that "Paul became free as a man loved by God, who, by
virtue of God, was able to love together with him. This love then
became the 'law' of his life and in this very way, the freedom of his life."
I am convinced that Paul's
experience of Jesus set him free from any addictions. He lived an
addictions-free lifestyle. His profound experience of being loved
left him free to give his life away. His deepest needs to be loved,
to belong and to be valued were met. What an example he is for us and
our so easily addicted society.
Paul was also a man of the church.
His was not a "Jesus and me" spirituality. Though he was
interiorly focused, he was also very much outer directed. As Pope
Benedict put it, "despite the immediateness of his relationship
with the Risen One, Paul realized that he must enter the communion of
the Church, be baptized, and live in harmony with the other apostles.
Only in this communion with all would he be able to be a true
apostle, as he wrote explicitly in the First Letter to the Corinthians."
What is especially relevant for us
in our missionary archdiocese is the way that Paul was able to
announce the Good News and in the process create local faith
communities. He taught the people the difference that the Good News
could make for them in their lives and empowered members of that
community to become leaders. Then he moved on, leaving behind viable,
self-sufficient communities of faith that he would stay in touch with
by letter and through possible return visits.
Another strong characteristic of
St. Paul was his incessant energetic dedication to announcing the
Good News at any cost. Having had that life-changing encounter with
the Risen Lord, he was like a beach ball in the water. The more
others put him down, the more he would simply bounce up elsewhere,
ready to proclaim the Good News. For Pope Benedict, two sources, the
Acts of the Apostles and the Letters of St. Paul, converge in a
fundamental point. "The Risen One spoke with Paul, called him to
the apostolate and made him a true apostle, a witness of the
resurrection, with the specific charge to proclaim the Gospel to the
pagans, to the Greco-Roman world." So he did, and so must we, to
our own world.
To close this pastoral letter on
the occasion of the Year of St. Paul, I would like to invite us to
action. I cannot stress enough the importance of gathering around the
Word of God, especially on Sunday, the Day of the Lord, even when
there is no priest. Jesus is truly present in his Word that is living
and active and touches our innermost being with healing.
We can read and reread the writings
of St. Paul to soak up his love for Christ and the church and to
interiorize his teachings. We can pray with his thoughts and prayers
especially using the Lectio Divina method of reading, meditating,
praying with the passage and finally just being there in God's
presence in quiet contemplation.
We can form bible study groups and
prayer groups and participate in renewal programs such as Returning
To Spirit, addictions awareness workshops, Healing Soul Pain, healing
conferences and the Immanuel Process of parish renewal that we are
hoping to initiate throughout the archdiocese. Let us be creative and
daring in taking initiatives in this regard.
Above all, I would invite us to be
single-minded in our efforts to connect our faith with our lives, as
did St. Paul, in a way that will make a difference in our
relationships, our families and also our communities.
I would like to close with the
words of Pope Benedict XVI, who invites us to thank the Lord for
having called Paul, making him the light to the Gentiles and the
teacher of us all, and who invites us to pray to him: "Make us
even today witnesses of the Resurrection, struck by the impact of
your love and able to bring the light of the Gospel in our time. St
Paul, pray for us!"
|
