My Faith as a young person

"What are you looking for?", Jesus asks the two young men. They have followed him, but do not know yet if they have reached the goal they were looking for. Being full of life and a faith which leaves them uneasy, they became disciples of the Baptist. And he had just pointed Jesus out to them, saying: "Behold, the Lamb of God!" The two young men after hearing these words followed Jesus. He turned around, saw them and said: "What are you looking for?" They answered him: "Master, where do you live?" And Jesus said to them: "Come and see" (Jn 1:36-39).

The two were Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter and John. The Gospels do not give us a detailed description of their life, of their formation and their past experiences. That which is narrated, though, is sufficient to give us an idea of their spiritual path, interwoven with an attraction towards Jesus, but also with certain fears.

"What are you looking for?"

Using this question, Jesus directs himself towards the two young men and awakens in them the sense of searching. They are looking for the Messiah, the only one in whom they can place their hope. They want to live life to the fullest, beyond all limits. In fact, they are not looking for any old truth, but someone who is capable of helping them find meaning in life.

Even today, despite a certain illusion of knowing on one's own how to answer life's questions, the search for meaning has not ended. It is a search done completely in the first person. Each one of us desires and ought to recognize where the meaning of his own existence lies. We do not allow ourselves any more to be fascinated by ready-made solutions or those imposed on us by others, by ideologies and by myths. It is not enough to do as everyone else does, borrowing answers which are not tailored to our personal needs.

Sense and meaning questions

Our entire life is filled with a constellation of questions about the meaning of things.

With the experience of falling in love, overpowering questions abound. If only such experiences would lead us to dedicate our lives towards the person we have loved. Then, we are asked to direct our energies towards tasks which are sometimes gratifying, other times overly repetitive, despite being indispensable.

Questions become acute when we are faced with defeat or suffer from some inevitable delusion, when we are confronted with sickness or with death itself.

Taking all into account, so many questions can be reduced to one: how to live life to the fullest?

In the moment in which one searches for happiness, love, hope, peace, justice, there exists a quest for the full meaning of one's own life. When deprived of this horizon, we feel –as happens today to so many people– uncertainty, emptiness, anguish.

Sense, Meaning and the Faith

Any question dealing with the meaning of something cannot be hushed easily. Perhaps it can be set aside for a period of time. Technology's sophisticated answers or those stemming from refined production of goods are not able to replace profound questioning.

Meaning questions look for a religious response, beyond the limited duration of things, beyond the explosion and cooling off of our own emotions. It is projected towards a transcendent response and does not leave us in peace, until we have oriented ourselves towards this direction.

Unfortunately, the search difuses itself often in so many branching streams; above all, it does not always find people who are able to give authentic answers. It is not rare that charlatans of every type crop up. They are merchants of cheap hopes, gurus and magicians who take advantage of the untiring thirst for the absolute. Yet magic, fascination for the extraordinary, nature-worship and the horoscope promises are not capable of responding adequately to life's demands.

The sincere religious search of young people is already complex from the beginning, if not blocked, in addition, by the present tendencies of our Western culture: downgrading all truths as a matter of opinion, dismissing the call for the absolute and hovering over the field of relativism. In this way is becomes very easy to select everything that one considers useful and positive in religions and philosophies by constructing in a self-sufficient manner one's own religion, one's own outlook upon life. We are not always dealing with a conscious mental process which prods one on towards the satisfaction of religion. This is done through the election of ideals, values, doctrines, behaviors and rites within our own means and capacities. It is like entering into an hypothetical supermarket that even offers discount prices, the best religious "products". Since it gives the impression of constructing something in a very personal way, along with being free from all constraint, it is a stimulating "do-it-yourself".

The boldness of the truth: the truth will make you free!

We need to be bold in order to walk down the path towards truth. Truth frees it our life from the chains of all slavery and directs us towards solid ground upon which we can base our criteria in resisting all fleeting and easy solutions.

Asking Christ and listening to what his Gospel proposes are inseparable from searching for truth to fulfill it.

The nostalgia of God

It is impossible for a man not to desire God. No creature can do without God. Yet man is the only being in the world who feels this desire and knows that he feels it. Even when he denies God, he cannot deny the thirst for the infinite inside of him. Whenever we experience just a spark of love, we desire a love which is greater. We are spellbound by the beauty of a sunset, of a flower, of another's face and we want that encounter to have no end.

The heart of every man and woman is small, but it bears within itself a desire for what is absolute, eternal and infinite. This desire has a name: God. Since man has been created by God, only in God can we find truth and satisfy the thirst for that happiness which we unceasingly look for.

In this search we encounter Christ. He attracts us because we find him to be sincere up to the point of paying the highest price for the truth that he proclaims. We see him as one who is humble, totally disinterested, always approachable and ready to serve, up to giving his own life.

Who are you looking for? Searching for the Messiah-Savior

Doctrines and currents of thought are not enough to answer our questioning. Just like the two young men in the Gospel, we also are searching for the Messiah, that is to say, a Savior: one who by revealing his own identity, at the same time reveals who we are. When speaking about his life, he gives meaning to ours. Explaining his choices, he orients ours. We are searching for someone who might be the Messiah-Savior, a person in whose life God himself draws near to us, answers us, places us along the path.

We go to Jesus with our questions and he responds by reinforcing our search. He turns to us also saying: "What are you looking for?" Thus, he spurs us on to a complex answer that obliges us to make our question more profound, until we discover a deeper meaning: "Who are you looking for?"

Towards a fullness of life

By the light of his words we interpret our lives.

The encounter with Christ does not censure the projects and the fruits of our search as human beings. Yet, it evaluates them. It takes them up into a larger picture. It leads them to that fullness which each human person desires. He who once said: "I am the Truth", does not offer us abstract truths, but leads us into what it is to live. He is also Life and the Way to obtain it (Jn 14:6).