Homily pronounced in the Eucharistic Celebration in the Diocese of Camagüey
January 23, 1998

1. Don't allow yourself to be conquered for wrong; conquer you to the wrong, by force of the well (Rm 12, 21). The Cuban youth meet today with the Pope to celebrate their faith, and to listen to the Word of God that is the road to leave the works of the wrong and of the darkness, and to have this way with them the weapons of the light to do the well. With this reason, it pleases me to have this encounter with all you in this great Square, where in the altar it will be renewed Jesus Christ sacrifice. This place that takes Ignacio Agramonte's name, El Bayardo, reminds us to a hero loved by all, the one ,which, moved by his Christian faith, embodied the values that adorn the men and women of well: the honesty, the truthfulness, the fidelity, the love to the justice. He was good husband and family father and good friend, defender of the human dignity in front of the slavery.

2. Above all I want to greet with affection to Mons. Adolfo Rodríguez Herrera, Shepherd of this diocesan Church, to his auxiliary Bishop, Mons. Juan García Rodríguez, as well as to the other Bishops and present Priests that encourage with their pastoral work, and drive the Cuban youth towards Christ, the Redeemer, the friend that never fails. The encounter with Him moves to the conversion and the singular happiness that makes us exclaim, like to the pupils after the resurrection: We have seen the Lord. (Jn 20, 24). I Greet also to the civil authorities that have wanted to attend this Holy Mass, and I thank them the cooperation for this act whose main guests are the youngsters.

From the deepest of my heart I address you, dear Cuban youth, hope of the Church and of the Homeland, introducing to Christ, so that you recognize him and follow him with total decision. He gives you the life, he teaches you the road; he introduces you in the truth, encouraging you to go together and solidarity, in happiness and peace, as living members of his mystic Body that is the Church.

3.) How could the youth will be able to take a clean life? (Living in agreement with your word)! (Salt 119, 9). The Psalm gives us the answer to the query that all youth must be outlined if she/he wants to take a worthy and decorous existence, characteristic of her/his condition. For it, the only road is Jesus. The talents that you have received from the Lord. And that take you to the delivery, to the authentic love and the generosity, they fructify when one not only lives from the material things and the old, but from all word that leaves the mouth of God (Mt 4, 4). for that reason, dear youths, I encourage you to feel Christ's love; being aware of what He has made for you, for the whole humanity, for the men and women of all the times. Being loved by Him you will be able to really love. Experiencing an intimate communion of life with Him that goes accompanied by the reception of his Body, the listening to his Word, the happiness of his pardon and of his mercy, they will be able to imitate him, taking this way, like the psalmist teaches us, a clean life.

What is it to take a clean life? It is to live the own existence according to the moral standards of the Gospel proposed by the Church. At the moment, unfortunately, for many it is easy to fall in a moral relativism and in a lack of identity that so many youngsters suffer victims of empty cultural schemes of sense of some ideology type that doesn't offer high moral and specific standards. That moral relativism generates selfishness, division, alienation, discrimination, fear and distrust towards the other ones. Plus still, when a youngster lives to his/her way, he/she idealizes the foreign thing, he/she allows to be seduced for the wild materialism, he/she loses the own roots and he/she yearns the escape.

For that reason, the hole that these behaviors produce explains many wrongs that are about the youth: the alcohol, the not well lived sexuality, the use of drugs, the prostitution that hides under diverse reasons -whose causes are not always only personal -, the motivations been founded in the pleasure or in the selfish attitudes, the opportunism, the lack of a serious project of life in which there is not place for the stable marriage, besides the rejection to all legitimate authority, the yearning of the escape and of the emigration, escaping from the commitment and of the responsibility to take refuge in a false world whose base is the alienation and the eradication.

Before that situation, the Christian youth that seeks to take a clean life, firm in its faith, knows that it is called and chosen by Christ to live in the authentic freedom of the children of God that not includes few challenges. For that reason, welcoming the grace that receives from the Sacraments, knows that he/she must give testimony of Christ with his/her constant effort to take a direct and faithful life to Him.

The faith and moral working is united. Indeed, the received gift leads us to a permanent conversion to imitate Christ and to receive the divine promises. Christians, to respect the fundamental values that configure a clean life, sometimes end up suffering, even in a heroic way, alienation or persecution, because that moral option is opposed to the behaviors of the world. This testimony of Christ's cross in the daily life is also a sure and fertile seed of new Christians. A life fully human and committed with Christ has that price of generosity and surrendering.

Dear youths, the Christian testimony, the worthy life to the eyes of God has that price. If you are not willing to pay it, the existential hole will come, and the lack of a worthy project of life and responsibly assumed with all its consequences. The Church has the duty of giving a moral, civic and religious formation that helps the Cuban youths to grow in the human and Christian values, without fear and with the perseverance of an educational work that needs the time, the means and the institutions that are characteristic of that harvest of virtue and spirituality for well of the Church and of the Nation.

4. Good teacher, what will I make to inherit the eternal life? (Mc 10, 18). In the gospel that we have listened to, a youth asks Jesus what he/she should do, and the Teacher, full with love, responds him how he has to be. This youth show off of having completed the standards and Jesus responds him that the necessary thing is to leave everything and to follow him. This gives radicalism and authenticity to the values, and it allows the youth to be carried out as person and like I Christian. The key to this realization is in the fidelity, exposed by San Pablo, in the first reading, as a characteristic of our Christian identity.

There it is the way to the fidelity traced by San Pablo: In the activity, don't be neglected... be affectionate ones with the other... That the hope has you cheerful... Practice the hospitality... Bless... Have treatment equality some with other... Put yourself on at humble people's level... don't show sufficiency... don't return to anybody wrong for wrong... do not allowed to be conquered for the wrong, conquer to the wrong by force of well (Rm 12, 9-21). Dear youths, believers or not, welcome the call to be virtuous. This wants to tell you to be strong inside, big of soul, rich in the best feelings, brave in the truth, audacious in the freedom, constant in the responsibility, generous in the love, invincible in the hope. The happiness is reached from the sacrifice. Don't look for what you can find inside, outside. Don't expect from the other ones what you are capable of and are called to be and to make. Don't leave for tomorrow building a new society, where the noblest dreams are not frustrated and where you can be the main characters of your history.

Remember that the human person and the respect for the same one are the way to a new world. The world and the man suffocate if they don't open up to Jesus Christ. Open him the heart and undertake this way a new life that is according to God and respond to the legitimate aspirations that you really have, of kindness and of beauty. (That Cuba educates its youths in the virtue and the freedom so that it can have a future of authentic integral human development in an atmosphere of durable peace!

Dear Catholic youths: this is an entire program of personal and social life been founded in the charity, the humility and the sacrifice, having as last reason to serve to the Lord... I wish you the happiness of being able to carry it out. The efforts that are already made in the Juvenile Pastoral should head toward the realization of this program of life. To help you I also leave you a written Message, with the hope that it arrives to all the Cuban youths that are the future of the Church and of the Homeland. A future that already begins presently and that it will be joyful if it is based on the integral development of each one, that which cannot be reached without Christ, to Christ's margin or, much less against Christ. For that reason, and like I said to the beginning of my Pontificate and I have wanted to repeat to my arrival to Cuba: Be not afraid of opening your hearts to Christ. I leave you with great affection this motto and exhortation, requesting you that, with courage and apostolic anger, transmit it to the other Cuban youths. That Almighty God and the Sagrada Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre help you to respond generously to this call.