Young people, an appointment with God

We were born to defeat world hunger, and in the name we gave ourselves in 1964 (Youth Missionary Service), young people were already a presence. Not only because the first to join that small missionary group were young people, but because even then we recognized the importance of sharing ideals, values, and faith with as many young people as possible. When the transformation of the Arsenale began in the 1980s, young people immediately took center stage.

From 2000 onwards, we began to sense a growing unease among them: detachment from institutions, fear of the future, a poverty of values ​​that began to worry us. Beginning in the Covid years, we sensed a real, often unrecognized hunger growing within them: a hunger for affection, for meaning, for life, for God. In recent years, theirs has been a stifled cry for help, asking us to stop, welcome them, listen to them, and accompany them. It's about seeking the essential with them, starting not so much from what we do but from the testimony of the One who moves us. In this way, young people serve as a mirror for us and become our great encounter with God. There are no ready-made methods or recipes, but rather journeys that young people undertake among us, individual journeys, in interest groups, or in activity groups where everyone can grow and develop. Every service offered to young people, from music to the selection of donated materials, thus becomes not only a training in free giving, but also a proposal for a formative journey. The weeks organized in the summer, during school holidays—including weekends—are offered to hundreds of young people each year and express the desire to let everyone reach out to us, allowing us to be judged and questioned. They are a sign of hope, almost as if to say: "We were no better than you, we had neither money nor ability... but we believed that God could blend with our lives and create something beautiful with us, something we didn't even know we could do." These are privileged moments to encourage them to believe, to get involved, to work together for the good of all. We don't pretend to change anyone's life; often we barely touch upon the daily lives of these young people who pass by, whom we may never meet again, but we do so in the confidence that God, with His Word, is always at work, and in ways we don't know.

From my experience of welcoming young people, I draw three elements, but they aren't the only ones. First, credibility. Young people need to understand who we are; they need to experience firsthand not our perfection, but the credibility of our lives. A second element is our life of faith, made up of times of prayer, but also of prayer that enters into daily life. Today, most young people are indifferent to God and faith, yet they observe us living something they lack, and they long for it. They know nothing about the spiritual dimension; they are prejudiced against the Church, but they are looking for something that will rekindle them. A third element is the dimension of fraternity, the only face our Church can have today, the testimony of the commandment of love addressed by Jesus to his disciples, so that they may first live it among themselves: by how you love one another, they will understand that you are my disciples. Fraternity is not the answer to loneliness, nor is it a more effective organizational form than others, but it is the necessary condition for bearing witness—not with words—to Jesus and the Gospel. Only in the effort of being together do we become credible. Fraternity represents the path to balance: when successes risk making you conceited and failures risk discouraging you, fraternity helps you refocus your life on the Risen Lord. Fraternity thus becomes a sacrament of the Lord's Presence, the most eloquent sign that speaks of Him.

Rosanna Tabasso
NP December 2025