Speech by Bishop Mykola Cardinal Bychok at the UNITE 2025 — Syro-Malabar Youth Conference in Melbourne

Speech by Bishop Mykola Cardinal Bychok at the UNITE 2025 — Syro-Malabar Youth Conference in Melbourne

9 February 2025

”Young People, You are the Hope of the Church”

I am sure that if you were to spend some time online, as I am sure many of you do as young people, or if you were to turn on the TV and watch the nightly news, you would be convinced that we are living in very dark times. Think for example of those natural evils, such as famine, drought, floods, earthquakes, and the recent wildfires in the US state of California, which wreak havoc and cause almost untold levels of destruction. As well as this there are moral evils, most notably the barbarism of warfare and human conflict. In places like the Holy Land and Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, and many other places throughout the globe, bloodshed and violence are the reality of day-to-day life. Whilst full scale war and killing are among the most extreme examples of moral evil, such tragedies begin elsewhere, namely in the human heart, the place that one chooses darkness as opposed to light, hatred as opposed to love.

In Australia we are blessed to not have to confront the gruesome realities of warfare, yet we still encounter division and polarisation in our society, including a rise in racial and religious hatred in recent times. There are also the hardships that come from economic factors, with many suffering from financial distress, the cost-of-living crisis, which for some means the inability to access shelter or earn an income to support a family. Moreover, there are more and more people in our communities who battle with addiction, alienation, relationship breakdown, and a lack of purpose or meaning in their lives.

For young people especially, there are unique challenges, including issues related to mental health, body image, and the negative effects of social media. There are also those pressures that come with trying to conform to the dominant culture and to the expectations of others. You might think here of those who try to influence others to live in a very superficial way, ordered towards pleasure or accumulation, and of having a certain ‘lifestyle.’ In light of all of this, believing in God and living the life of the Church in can be lonely for some young people, as it is not seen as glamorous or fashionable. All of you, I am sure, have encountered some of what I have just described.

The question that might naturally arise from all of this is: how can we persevere when there is suffering and human misery all around us? How can we be optimistic or express something of a positive mindset about the future when the situation seems to be so bleak? But as Christians, it’s not optimism or a positive mindset that we seek but something profoundly different. Our response to the darkness and destruction caused by sin — by those evils both natural and moral — is the theological virtue of hope.

But what does it mean, in the Christian sense or in a theological sense, to have hope or to be hopeful of something? We might be tempted to think that hope is just having an optimistic attitude, a “glass half full” approach to whatever might be going on in our lives or in our communities — the belief that despite the struggles, everything will be ok. But is this all that hope is? Or is true Christian hope something more?

I want to suggest that hope, as described both in Scripture and Tradition, is something much richer and that hope is not simply a ‘mindset’ but rather a way of being, a way of life. Understood as such, hope is a theological virtue, a gift that we receive upon entry into Christ’s Paschal Mystery through Baptism, and our participation in the life of the Church. In other words, hope is not an abstraction, or an idea, but it is something that is living and breathing and grounded in the reality of the Incarnation and Passion of Our Lord. As something truly alive, hope is nourished and strengthened by Christ and his Church. By participating in the sacramental life of the Church, we receive God’s grace so that we might live as disciples of hope. And so, you as young people, as young Christians, have an especially important role in being the hope of the Church. Why?

Our scriptures are full of examples of young people demonstrating what it means to have hope in God and to live according to such a belief. From the Old Testament we might think of the story of Samuel, who as a young person (1 Sam 3), perhaps even only 12 years old, was called by God to be the hope of a generation that was facing serious troubles. God’s people had settled in the Promised Land after their desert wanderings but now faced the many threats from their surrounding and hostile neighbours as well as their own loss of trust in God. They instead turned to military rulers known at the time as ‘judges’ to lead them. Yet the people had lost their sense of faithfulness to God and so in those times “everyone did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25). Samuel’s responsibility was to allow God to speak through him, to deliver hard news at times, and to instruct the Israelites to turn away from idols and false Gods and return to the ways of the Lord who had delivered them out of bondage in Egypt (1 Samuel 7:3–15). Eventually, after many hardships, Samuel would anoint David, another person who placed his hope in God whilst still a young boy (1 Samuel 17), to lead the people of Israel as king. Samuel, then reminded God’s people to be hopeful during turbulent times, and that if they remained close to God, they would overcome even the most difficult of situations.

Another example of a young person embodying hope and leading people back to God is the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was called by God before the age of 20 and so he was still in his teens (Jeremiah 1:5–7). He even used his youth to try and convince God he wasn’t ready for such a big task. But with God’s blessings, he had the courage to call the people back to God even when it seemed like all was lost. Despite exile and persecution, as well as the destruction of the Temple and serious doubts about God’s promises, Jeremiah was able to live in way that proved that the love of the Lord never ceases, and to proclaim, “the Lord is my portion, …therefore I will hope in him” (Lamentations 3:24).

But perhaps there is no better biblical example of the youthful hope in God than our Blessed Mother Mary. As a young woman, the Angel Gabriel asked Mary to participate in God’s plan of salvation. She was frightened and unsure as to what this would all mean. There were societal and cultural pressures facing her that would have caused most people to run or to reject God’s plan. Yet Mary was hopeful that God would provide her with all that she needed to carry out his will. And so, she placed her faith in God and dedicated herself to being the handmaid of the Lord (Luke 1:38), the one through whom the Messiah would be born: Emmanuel, God-with-us.

I use these examples to show that God has a way of using people, especially the youth, to do his work. Maybe this is because of your energy, your desire for adventure and your dreams for the future. But hope is not something like magic. Although it comes from God, we have to action it in our lives. God called Samuel, Jeremiah, and Our Lady whilst they were young, but they still needed to respond. They had to take a leap, so to speak, they had to live the life of hope. And so too must all of you.

St Paul famously wrote that hope itself is inseparable from the two other theological virtues of faith and love (1 Corinthians 13:3; 1 Thess 1:3 cf Catechism of the Catholic Church 1840). To call these three ‘theological virtues’ is to say that they are gifts from God and not simply traits that we can develop and strengthen on our own. So, we must turn to God, and prayerfully seek his help through His Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit to grow in faith, to love as he loved us, unconditionally, and to become people of hope. St Paul didn’t speak of these things from a place of comfort and ease. He knew well what it meant to place our hope in Christ whilst enduring serious hardship, suffering and eventually martyrdom. Whilst he was persecuted and imprisoned in Rome, he wrote a letter to the Church in Ephesus reminding them that as Christians we have all been called be people of hope and that we must cling to the “one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father, who is above all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4–7). And so, St Paul reminds us that it is precisely during those times when we are tempted to feel ‘hopeless’ that we must call to mind the fact that our hope comes from God and from being united to Christ, who defeated all of the evil of this world, including death, on the cross of Calvary (1 Cor 15: 26, 55; 2 Timothy 1:10; Hebrews 2:14; 1 Peter 2 4:6)

As you know this year is a Holy Year, or what is referred to as a ‘Jubilee.’ This is a tradition that goes all the way back to the Old Testament and is tied to the notion of renewal and forgiveness, the freeing of debts and reconciliation. In the Church, we have a Jubilee Year every 25 years or on special occasions. The Holy Father Pope Francis has made the theme of this year’s Jubilee ‘Hope’ and has referenced a passage from St Paul’s letter to the Romans as the guiding focus: “Hope does not disappoint” (Rom 5:5). Pope Francis wants all of us, and especially you as young people called to hope, to bear the signs of hope, including the yearning for peace among all people, the care for all people especially those most in need, the suffering whether physically, mentally or spiritually, those fleeing persecution and seeking refuge, the elderly and infirm, the poor and forgotten.

And so, my dear young people, in this year let us cling to the hope that we have as Christians by being tied to Christ our Saviour. Seek always and pray for his comfort and the graces he generously offers to each of you so that you might be able to turn darkness into light, to proclaim the Gospel to all people with courage. Participate in the life of the Church and bring the Good News outside its walls. Announce with joy to all people and to the culture at large that through Jesus Christ they might have life in the full (John 10:10). Never stop in your pursuit of peace and in embodying the boundless love of God. For this is the source of our true and unshakable hope “that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

May Almighty God bless you all!