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Buenos Aires, Sunday, August 13, 2006

Father Oscar Pezzarini

What we convey to children and young people

Each year the celebration of Children's Day makes us try to reflect on what we are doing for them as a society, as the Church, as adults. Are we actually convinced that for us adults children must be our main concern, that they really must be “privileged” and that therefore everything we do must have a distant look at the world we are going to pass on to them? Children, teens and young people show the typical vitality of their age full of dreams and ideals and there's no doubt they need to be stimulated by reality without being misled, but they also need encouragement for “great undertakings”. Let us not underestimate our children and young people, let us not “placate” their ideals by filling them with our own pessimism and discouragement but let us instill in them the firm wish of a comprehensive search for true happiness and let us be ready to walk with them along this way.

Each year the celebration of Children's Day makes us try to reflect on what we are doing for them as a society, as the Church, as adults. Are we actually convinced that for us adults children must be our main concern, that they really must be “privileged” and that therefore everything we do must have a distant look at the world we are going to pass on to them?

Not long ago Pope Benedict XVI referred to both children and young people and to the concern for them we adults should show in the following terms: “Often children and young people, instead of feeling loved and cherished, appear to be merely tolerated. In an age of turbulence they frequently lack adequate moral guidance from the adult world, and many of them now grow up in a society which is forgetful of God. (...) Parents, educators and community leaders (...) can never renounce their duty to set before children and young people the task of choosing a life project directed towards authentic happiness, one capable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood, good and evil, justice and injustice, the real world and the world of virtual reality”.

This must make us reflect on the kind of “world” we are showing our children and young people, on what we are going to pass on to then. Many times we convey our own insatisfaction, our scepticism, our adult disenchantment, in the believe they have no capability and no strength to try “great things”.

Children, teens and young people show the typical vitality of their age full of dreams and ideals and there's no doubt they need to be stimulated by reality without being misled, but they also need encouragement for “great undertakings”.

When talking about child education most people only think of suggesting the best ways of how to “prevent” certain harms, without showing them the highstanding and profound ideals which result in their full personal development.

When we advise them on how to discover their Vocation, the true meaning of their lives, we often show them “the easiest and most profitable” ways instead of showing them those which lead to their full personal fulfillment. Many times this may be the result of our own “failures” which make us think they will not be able to try reaching their highest ideals.

Let us not underestimate our children and young people, let us not “placate” their ideals by filling them with our own pessimism and discouragement but let us instill in them the firm wish of a comprehensive search for true happiness and let us be ready to walk with them along this way.

Father Oscar Pezzarini
Provincial Superior of the Work of Don Orione in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Mexico

Father Oscar Pezzarini together with Fr. Leonardo Abregú makes us reflect on Saturdays from 8 to 12 AM (GMT-03:00)with "VENTANA A LA VIDA", the Don Orione radio program he conducts on FM PROVIDENCIA, 90.3 MHz together with some residents of the Claypole Cottolengo (Raúl Romero, María Laura Andrada, Alberto Zoroch, Américo Torres), with the production of Roberto Beluzzo and Ignacio Cavalli as technical operator. You can also listen to FM PROVIDENCIA by clicking here.

Pequeño Cottolengo Don Orione 0800-333-6746 in Argentina, or +54 (11) 4268-7722 from abroad.

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