Now we intend to go into the details of each of these dimensions, the
challenges they are designed to meet, and the options necessary for their realization.
Although we must deal with them one by one, it should be kept in mind
that all four dimensions form a unity; each one makes its own specific contribution, but
also receives from the others an orientation and some original emphasis. This organic
synthesis is a characteristic of Salesian Youth Ministry.
The educative element is a trait which characterizes our youth
ministry; as regards those to whom it is addressed, we work for those who need
support in their human growth; as regards its content, we include instruction,
culture, preparation for starting employment, and the use of free time as part of the
journey of faith; as regards method, we evangelize by educating.
The educative and cultural dimension, in close relationship and
integration with the dimension of evangelization and catechesis, is at the center of the
SEPP
3.1.1 Its specific nature
This dimension manifests the centrality of the person of the youngster,
inserted in a human community which is active in a particular area and is the object of a
social and cultural process.
Our educative intervention is aimed at helping a person to enable him/her
to take up life as a whole, and to live it with quality; a person who can stand before
himself /herself, before others and before society with a patrimony of significant ideals
and values, with dynamic and critical attitudes in face of reality and events, and with
the capacity of choice and service (cf. C 32).
This growth process of the person takes place in a specific cultural
context. Living in a certain kind of cultural background, not only are physical,
intellectual and moral faculties cultivated and technical skills acquired, but a vision of
the world is obtained and a style of being a person is developed. Our aim, therefore, is
to be mediators of culture by fostering a critical insertion in the particular culture
concerned, and at the same time prompting a positive development in the cultural reality
of the human group towards a synthesis of faith and life.
3.1.2 The challenges we want to meet
The youth situation in which our educational activity is carried out
presents some traits which challenge our educative abilities.
Society is ever more complex, and at the same time is becoming
universal; a planetary culture of a massive nature and multiple in character is emerging;
the mass media rapidly spread values, languages and criteria, but at the same time
encourage conflicting models, values and life-styles.
The absolute priority accorded to the economic factor provokes various
forms of poverty which often assume alarming dimensions and are a threat and obstacle to
the development of the person, causing forms of anthropological impoverishment of entire
human groups.
We are witnessing the growing phenomena like:
the resigned acceptance of situations which it seems useless to
dispute, or
the consequent reaction on individuals or
groups which show up as a manifestation of consumerism,
a tendency to indifference or superficiality, or
taking refuge in drugs or
in manifestations (sometimes violent) of rebellion which have no
constructive purpose.
But everywhere there are also arising new and sincere desires
for a more explicit commitment in the social field;
one notes a seeking for meaning and the building of personal
identity,
the desire for a better quality of life,
the emerging of new values (the rediscovery of the values of equal
dignity and reciprocal relationship between man and woman, solidarity, peace and
development, etc.),
and the demand for stable and fruitful interpersonal relationships in
respect and reciprocity.
The family and the traditional educational agencies seem to be losing
the privileged role they once enjoyed with reference to personal maturing. The problem
tends to become worse because of the educative failure of institutions (especially the
family, school, Church, etc.) which do not always ensure the integral maturing of the
person, and because of the negative effect caused by their inability to communicate in the
language of the young, and to fill the void left by the superficial nature of their
values.
3.1.3 The specific options to be developed
In this situation, development of the educative and cultural dimension
of pastoral activity supposes the giving of priority to certain precise options:
- Encourage in every young person a process of personal and social growth which will lead
him/her to full human maturity, make him/her a protagonist of his/her own life, able to
grasp the mystery which envelops him/ her, and to seek its significance.
The following are some aspects of this process to be developed in
educative and pastoral interventions of various kinds:
- the acceptance and recognition of the positive value of one’s own person and life,
through the free and unconditional acceptance on the part of the educators and a
positive knowledge of one’s own resources;
- the development of personal qualities and resources in the various domains of the person
(physical and psychomotor, intellectual and cognitive, emotional and sexual, social,
etc.);
- progressive openness to relationships and to true interpersonal communication
through emotional and sexual maturing, the acceptance of the diversity of others, group
experience and friendly rapport in an atmosphere of joy and collaboration;
- formation of conscience and of the capacity of judgement and ethical discernment,
through a serious critical formation with regard to cultural models and norms of social
living, the development of an evangelical reading of reality, of the experience of
responsible freedom, of commitment and of solidarity;
- the search for the sense of life, to the extent of opening oneself to the
transcendent and craving for it, seeing one’s own life in the light of God’s
plan, through enriching experiences of fullness and interior limitation, and through a
professional and vocational orientation which helps every young person to plan his /her
own life responsibly as a gift and service.
- Foster the critical and creative assimilation of culture, through:
- assessment of the quality of culture offered in the programs and educative
institutions: a culture centered in being and not in having; in the person and not
in things; in ethics and not in technical, economic or political power; in the
value of a community and not in individualism, in the defense of life, and
in openness to transcendence;
- the ability to make a critical reading of the social and cultural reality, in line with
the centrality of the person inserted in the locality;
- the development of communication in all its forms and expressions: interpersonal and
group communications, study of languages, production of messages, critical and educative
use of the means of social communication;
- initiation to ethical discernment in line with the Christian vision of the dignity of
the human person, his/her rights and duties, and the common good;
- development of the capacity to create culture and to play a responsible part in the
collective processes of transformation of the reality according to gospel criteria.
- Develop a pedagogy of values which will lead to its personalization, through a
process which can be set out in four stages:
- the experience of the value which makes it perceived as good and important for the
person;
- its understanding and awareness which incorporates it into the person’s existence;
- its frequent exercise which helps to get it fixed interiorly;
- the deep motivation which disposes the person to uphold its value even against other
advantages.
- Ensure an educative dynamism for the prevention of uneasiness of youth, which is
widely spread to some extent, through systematic interventions on individuals, on society,
on institutions, on processes, on human interactions within which these phenomena arise,
by fostering:
- a welcoming and educative family atmosphere in which self-esteem can be developed and
attitudes of dependence overcome;
- criteria, often implicit, of evaluation and selection, brought about in the educative
institutions and environments;
- a cultural and technical advancement adapted to the capacities of the youngsters most in
need, which will enable them to be inserted normally into social life and the world of
work;
- attention to individuals and to their diversity through a professional and educative
follow-up and orientation;
- systematic interaction with families, the local area and its institutions, and with
those who work with the disadvantaged;
- commitment for the transformation of society and specifically for
justice and peace, struggling against everything that
favors or permits want, injustice and violence.
- Develop a methodology which tends to:
- personalize suggestions in line with the personal and historical
originality of each young person, relying on his/her interior strengths rather than on
external conditions;
- proceed through educative experiences which favor direct and active contact with
reality, attitudes and the process of research, the ability to face the reality of
different points of view and with different forms of approach;
- educate by strengthening the social ties, setting up education as a process of
relationships and communication, a work of collaboration and a social experience which
creates attitudes and the ability to live and work together;
- develop the convergence of all the educative interventions towards the formation of a
unified personality in which the various aspects strengthen each other in a harmonious
manner, which allows dimensions and desires ordered according to their value.
Evangelizing the young is the first and fundamental objective of our
mission. Our project is radically open and positively oriented to the full maturity of
young people in Christ (cf. C 31) and to their growth in the Church.
Spiritual formation is placed at the center of the whole of the
development of the person (GC 23, 160). We accompany and leaven human growth by offering a
process of evangelization, an education to the faith (GC 23, 102-111).
3.2.1 Its specific nature
In the perspective of an education which evangelizes and an
evangelization which educates, the final objective of the process is the synthesis
between faith and life in a particular culture:
to bring to maturity a faith capable of confronting a concrete vision
of the world,
a faith which is integrated and central to the personality of the
subject and his/her system of values,
a critical faith able to deal with new educative demands or cultural
challenges,
a faith committed to giving effect to its chosen system of values.
This requires an evangelization which:
makes a strong appeal for openness to the Transcendent;
takes the initiative in making a proclamation, with a variety of
proposals arranged in conformity with those we are interacting;
helps to make an experience of faith through contact with
the Word of God and the celebration of the sacraments;
educates attitudes, habits or gestures of faith, which are
simple but well rooted in life;
is the good news of salvation in respect of the hopes and
problems associated with the growth of the young person and the events of social and
communal life;
which makes the various interventions in pedagogical fashion, without
ever losing sight of the final goal, giving attention to the whole ensemble including the
environment through care of the groups and leaders.
3.2.2 The challenges we want to meet
The environments and people among whom we work are often little or not
at all evangelized, even though they are sometimes already initiated to the sacramental
life.
A widespread process of secularization exists which affects fundamental
aspects of life with a progressive shelving of religion as an item of the private life of
the individual. This gives rise to a certain sensitivity as regards spiritual values and a
search for new forms of relationship with the Transcendent, but characterized by
syncretism and superstition (sects, ‘New Age’ movement).
Alongside all this one notes a demand for interior experience and a
thirst for true spirituality, the presence of ever more numerous groups of followers of
other religions in our environments, a desire for dialogue and collaboration through
prayer meetings, and a commitment for justice and peace in the world.
The expectations of the young vary considerably. Many find themselves
separated from the faith without having consciously abandoned it; their criteria do not
include religious values. Others live a tentative kind of piety with an occasional
religious practice in line with social custom and the search for satisfaction of desires,
security and interior peace, but without a coherent life of faith and a personalized and
mature choice. And there are also groups of committed young people who live their faith in
depth.
In each and all of these youngsters it is possible to detect a need for
truth, for liberation, for human growth, and the desire (even though it be only implicit)
for a deeper knowledge of the mystery of God.
How are we to proclaim the Gospel of Christ with meaning and value to
these young people so as to awaken in them the desire to know and find themselves with
Jesus Christ? How can we educate them to the building of a new Christian identity within
the process of the development of human values?
3.2.3 The specific options to be developed
Make sure that all the educative elements of the environment, of
processes and of structures are coherent and open to the Gospel; this coherence is
often deadened, if not ignored, especially in those environments in which truth coincides
with what can be demonstrated by reasoning, the existent with what can be monitored, the
ethical with what is useful, and the problem of meaning yields priority to the efficiency
or functionality of actions and convictions.
Promote the development of the religious dimension of the person in
both Christians and those of other religions, deepening it, purifying it and opening it to
the desire of the faith, by means of:
an education of attitudes which are at the basis of openness to God
(ability to enter into oneself, to remain silent, to hear interior voices;
to have a greater and better knowledge of oneself and of one’s
limitations and possibilities;
to be able to wonder at and appreciate what is good and great and
beautiful in oneself and one’s surroundings;
to esteem one’s neighbor in the originality of his endowments,
etc.);
a critical and systematic religious formation which enlightens the
mind and strengthens the heart;
an attitude of openness, respect and dialogue between the different
religions (ecumenism and interreligious dialogue );
the practice of educative presence with the youngster, educating to
sharing and participation, to free service and solidarity, an indispensable condition for
guaranteeing a religious experience which is authentic and liberating.
Offer a first evangelization, which helps the living of a true
experience of personal faith, through:
the significant presentation of the person of Jesus;
direct contact with the Word of God;
effective moments of celebration and of personal and community
prayer;
meaningful encounters and communications with believers and Christian
communities of yesterday and today.
Develop a systematic journey of education to the faith towards
a choice of life in the Church in line with the following great aspects of Christian
maturing:
human growth towards a life to be taken up as a religious experience;
encounter with Jesus Christ, especially through the Word and the
sacraments, discovering in him the sense of human existence, both individual and social;
progressive insertion in the community of believers, perceived as a
sign and instrument of the salvation of mankind
commitment and vocation with a view to the transformation of the
world.
Assimilate and live the values of Salesian Youth Spirituality (GC
23, 161-180; GC 24, 89- 100):
a spirituality of daily life inspired by Jesus Christ, as the place
of God’s presence;
a spirituality of personal relationship and friendship open to an
encounter with the Lord Jesus;
a spirituality centered on the positive, on joy and optimism, with
which are lived commitment and daily responsibility;
a spirituality of apostolic engagement in the Church for the world,
in line with the particular vocation.
Encourage a missionary mentality, which makes the young
people:
credible witnesses and proclaimers of the faith in their own
environment;
leaders of the mission especially among indifferent or lapsed
companions, by means of the volunteer movement, missionary groups and movements, the
animation of evangelization initiatives, etc.;
efficacious collaborators in the mission ad gentes through
communication with missionaries, collaboration in concrete missionary projects and
possible experience of volunteer missionary work;
capable of developing a Christian missionary vocation in the Church.
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