An Encounter in my Journey

This summer I had the opportunity to participate in the great Eucharistic pilgrimage for the celebration of Corpus Christi in my diocese. As a member of the diocesan team, my job was to be a driver. I had to take priests or people to their cars on the way to and from the church during the five stops along the journey, or go to the store to buy things they needed. From 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., it was a day of back and forth on the road.

At the end of the day, I had to drive a young man to his car. This young man was a journalist who had come to interview and take photos of the pilgrimage for the local newspaper. Since his car was 40 minutes away from the Eucharistic parade, we struck up a conversation. He told me that he was a student at Yale and that he was from a Hispanic family in Texas. He told me a little about his university achievements, well deserved, by the way. Then I asked him: “In your opinion, what most affects young people your age?” The answer took me by surprise, first of all because I work professionally in ministry with young adults and I'm always trying to stay up-to-date with the challenges facing young people. For better or worse, I have already formed ideas in my mind. But he told me that “what most affects young people is a lack of empathy”. The dictionary defines empathy as: "The ability to identify with someone and share their feelings." I told him, "But it's not loneliness, or vices, or mental health." And he shared with me that it wasn't. That those things are important, but that there's an apathy among young people today toward the world's problems, toward helping others. He said that at the university, he saw how young people live without having a connection to the problems around them.

what most affects young people is a lack of empathy

According to studies, individualism, selfishness, and self-centeredness are factors that demonstrate a lack of empathy in young people. Always seeking convenience or the best, regardless of who it affects, all of these could be construed as narcissistic behaviors.

Pope Francis noted in an interview on Vatican Radio: “[that] Empathy involves the ability and art of welcoming and authentically listening to others with the mind (cognitive empathy), with the heart (affective empathy), considering them as brothers, “children of the same Father” (spiritual empathy)”.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church in numbers 1944 and 1946 says: “Respect for the human person considers one's neighbor as "another self." It presupposes respect for the fundamental rights that derive from the intrinsic dignity of the person. The differences between people are due to God's plan, which desires that we need one another. These differences should encourage charity.

As believers, we are called to erase this apathy and proclaim the Gospel of a living Christ, who cares for each of us, out of love. Out of love, we listen to one another, out of love, we help one another, out of love, you and I are one. I invite you, as we begin the school year, to ask yourself how you can teach this virtue of empathy by listening more deeply and helping the young people around you live in solidarity with those most in need.

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Let us pray together this prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus:

Oh Most Holy Heart of Jesus, source of all blessings, I adore you, I love you, and with sincere repentance for all my sins, I offer you my heart.

Make me humble, patient, pure, and totally submissive to your will. Grant me, merciful Jesus, the ability to live for you and through you. Protect me in all dangers, comfort me in my tribulations, give me health and help in my temporal needs. Grant me your blessing in all I do, and the favor of dying in your grace. Amen.

May the Lord, through the intercession of Our Lady of Charity and our Patron Saints, fill your heart with hope and courage so that you may change the world around you into a world more filled with love.