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Greeting from, to Serra International assembled in the Massimo Auditorium

His Eminence the Highly Reverend, Monsignor Cardinal PlO LAGHI

Rome, December 6, 4:00 pm

Dear Serrans:

Coming from five continents to celebrate in Rome the great Jubilee of the Year 2000, in close participation I join myself to the general giving of thanks to the Lord for the useful work done by the Serra Family in favor of the pastoral vocation.

To promote the vocation to grace, to the ministerial and consecrated life, is to give a meaning to the life of each man, of each woman who comes into this world.

Indeed, Christians, by the power of baptism, are continuously stimulated to find their place in the Church and in the world of today and, that is, to give a theological meaning and an existential depth to their historical situation. Therefore, no one can avoid such an obligation. To resign oneself to live without a precise sense of direction is really and truly a psychological suicide because it leads to a type of existence that is not human.

This can happen only with the most absolute respect for a few fundamental conditions: being faithful to the plan of God for man, and paying attention to the signs of the times that constitute an essential point of reference for whoever wishes to consider the vocation as a service and not only as a personal achievement. The search for the meaning of life cannot be carried out only by the self. It becomes reality for us to the extent in which we relate to others.

In such a perspective, being faithful to God’s plan requires listening to and internalizing His Word (each vocation is, by its very definition, a calling), and paying attention to the signs of the times, this requiring a continuous effort of creativity (each vocation is also a response to concrete needs that arise in the Church and in the world).

All Christians, therefore, for the very reason that they are born again in Christ through baptism, are also called to forge their temporal "being alive" in relation to God and to the signs of the times. The one who seeks self-realization, having in mind only his own self, places himself outside the path of the Church and of the world that call individuals to become servants to others.

One can speak of a Christian search for the meaning of life only when there is kept in mind a perspective such that it places man in front of God and of his brothers, in a definite context of giving and of service.

Such a duty, of course, is not exclusively reserved for the youths who must be incited to search for the meaning of their life by a true self realization, but it is also for those who already have given a human and ecclesiastical response to their historical existence. The search for the meaning of life is a problem that applies to all in a permanent manner. Each day, in fact, it is possible to stop saying yes, and to start saying no.

Each vocation, therefore, comprises a yes that needs to be said every day. Man is always seeking for the meaning of life because daily situations ask him to agree to acts of generosity. Otherwise, it is the end of a vocation understood as a gift and as a service.

This explains why it is necessary to speak of "vocation" also to those who already are solidly incorporated in a particular life structure, such as members of a religious order, men or women, and to all those who feel wasted by the routine of their own life condition, and who no longer give heed to the power of the ideals that have determined a certain type of life.

Promoting vocations is not done only by acquiring new members within a life structure, but is planned also as a form of essential revitalization of any type of vocation since everyday brings occurrences that may kill the spirit of an offering to God and of a service to one’s brothers.

Each vocation, in fact, is continuously regenerated through an effort of reflection that prevents the weakening of ideals and the decline of existential faithfulness, so frequent in the course of a person’s life.

We feel the need to stress these things in order to return to the conditions of our first "yes," to renew our offering, to thank the Lord for the gifts received, as a text of the second Epistle of Peter invites us to do (2 Peter 1:10).

From that point of view, the necessity of reflecting on the important point of the Christian vocation, understood as a search for the meaning of life, imposes itself.

To live is to walk

In our culture, the symbolism of life is fundamentally connected to the image of the road to travel in order to reach a goal. Each one of us, along the path of life, is called to travel a certain road.

It is instinctive to want to cover a long way or, more simply, to want to cover some way because the life of man is considered as a great voyage for which it is necessary to prepare oneself, on time with the most adequate equipment.

The stops along the road of life freeze our anxiety toward life. The one who stops does not live. The deep malaise that invades all those who must wait for their professional realization and thus are forced to make undesired stops can be explained in this way. To live is to walk and any stop is a hindrance to the thirst for life that exists in every one.

In this respect, it is necessary to ask very precise questions: "And you, at this moment of life, have you stopped or are you walking? Are you still attracted by the power of the ideals you have chosen or, have you become disillusioned on the road on which you have started?"

It is not easy to give a truly exhaustive answer to these questions, that deeply bring into question the sincerity of our vocational convictions. And yet, it is necessary to have the courage to ask them of oneself, to start searching for the true reasons that are at the basis of the sadness of a life without high invigorating ideals.

The one who does not walk is condemned to a dead life, deprived of joy and of true enthusiasm, because he has stopped, from a vocational point of view. No longer is he attracted by ideals and therefore he lets himself go. But, in this condition one does not live. One only vegetates.

The road of life presupposes a goal to be reached. Whoever walks has before him a destination to reach; no one starts on the road just to walk, because he does not know where to go.

Human life cannot be reduced to an aimless wandering. It assumes the knowledge of a plan to carry out, that indicates the precise direction to follow. For the Christian, each life plan must be profoundly human and evangelical. We cannot abandon ourselves to daily instincts and emotions.

There is no doubt that the bewilderment and the sense of uncertainty that characterizes today’s society is connected in part at least, to the loss of life’s meaning as a road toward a very precise goal. At the basis of the crisis of today’s man, there is a misunderstood sense of freedom. Whoever has before him/her a very precise goal is not deprived of freedom.

The culture of consumerism and of materialism culture, in today’s world, that finds so much spice or excitement in the mass-media, finishes by intoxicating people and thus prevents them from following a precise direction. As a result, contemporary man appears as a bewildered soul that has lost his direction. To find his road again, he needs to be led again to the ground of values and of ideals. Otherwise, he will never find his correct walking path.

The true crisis of today’s man is that he has lost the road. It is therefore a crisis of values, because values are the markers toward the goal one must seek to reach. What type of life can be led when one no longer knows the level toward which one must walk?

In such a situation, youths above all are the ones to pay the price because they are continuously tempted to build their own existence on the basis of a set of maps that outline no walking direction, since they use only their own values as compasses, the unreliability of which will be revealed more and more dramatically with the passing of time.

All of them, sooner or later, are capable of knowing whether they are walking toward a goal or whether they are ambling along without any precise compass.

To live is to say "yes."

Whoever lives closed up in himself pays attention only to his own requirements and, therefore, ends up thinking of himself only. He does not think of others and, above all, he does not become aware that others constitute an essential point of reference for his own life. Having relationship problems, he prefers to isolate himself.

It is no wonder, then, that our society is characterized by a frantic search for the "private," this being understood as a place of safety and as a form of protection from others; As a consequence, that society finds a certain satisfaction in such a situation.

To live, however, is to open oneself to others to enter into relationships with them, avoiding as much as possible the temptation of enclosing oneself inside one’s own world by living alone and for oneself. The great lesson of life, for vocations, is that of the mother who places herself at the service of her own child. A similar experience, however, is not found in other modes of expression of everyday life because man does not know how to say "yes" daily.

This explains why today’s world is full of conflicts. Indeed, a conflict situation arises and grows where no effort is made to understand others and to connect with them. Conflict always is the expression of a hardened position. Therefore it causes breaks and opposition of all types.

Everything would be different if man made a greater effort to say "yes" to all creatures he meets, to make himself available to meet their needs, to put himself in contact with the new reality, and to open himself to dialog and communion.

These points represent the human basis for the Christian vocation, because the meaning of life as a road toward a very precise destination stimulates us to compare ourselves to others in order to develop an "S’ that places each vocation in the perspective of gift and service. When this is not the case, a vocation is reduced to being nothing but a manner of asserting oneself.

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