MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER BENEDICT XVI
ON THE OCCASION OF THE TWENTY-FIFTH WORLD YOUTH DAY
(MARCH 28, 2010)
The grain in today’s world advocates a freedom detached from values, rules and objective norms, and encourages people to refuse to place limits on their immediate desires. But this is not the way to true freedom. It leds people to become enslaved to themselves, to their immediate desires, to idols like power, money, unbridled pleasure and the entrapments of the world. It stifles their inborn vocation to love.
God gives us the Commandments because he wants to teach us true freedom. He wants to build a Kingdom of love, justice and peace together with us. When we listen to the Commandments and put them into practice, it does not mean that we become estranged from ourselves, but that we find the way to freedom and authentic love. The commandments do not place limits on happiness, but rather show us how to find it. At the beginning of the conversation with the rich young man, Jesus reminds him that the law which God gives is itself good, because “God is good”.
