He calls upon the youth to foster their relationship with God through prayer in the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who “must have been about 14 years old when the angel visited her”.
“God gave her the most important assignment of her generation, to be the mother of the Saviour,” Bishop Badejo says, and poses, “Can this God who believes so much in young people not use you in an extraordinary way also? Of course, he can.”
He also calls on the youth to seek counsel from those with experience, emulating Mary’s visit to Elizabeth.
“Rather than just seek the counsel of her colleagues or people of her own level,” Bishop Badejo notes, Mary sought the counsel of “her cousin, Elizabeth, an older woman with abundant practical and spiritual experience.”
Elizabeth’s experience of “tough challenges like barrenness, rejection, old age etc.” accorded her the opportunity to help the Blessed Virgin realize “who she had become”.
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“I hope you can see here, God’s way of teaching you the importance of consulting those with greater experience than you at key life moments and in taking important decisions,” Bishop Badejo tell Nigerian youth, and adds, “As the adage goes: ‘To know the way ahead, ask from those who are coming back.’”
The 62-year-old Nigerian Bishop who started his Episcopal Ministry in October 2007 as Coadjutor Bishop of Oyo Diocese underscores the need for the Nigerian youth to foster discipline and cautions against the spirit of “entitlement”.
“Disengage from the class of young people who today wallow in a ‘sense of entitlement’, quick to take all available privileges but slow to engage in sacrifice, hard work and discipline,” he says in his Christmas letter to Nigerian youth shared with ACI Africa on December 26.
Bishop Badejo asks Nigerian youth to put into practice the Synod on Synodality’s call in the Synthesis Report released on October 28 to “to become digital missionaries to others”.
To be digital missionaries “requires that you young people use your powerful social skills and digital platform to promote good things, good relations and the good news. For this to happen, you young people must gather information and knowledge about your faith from authentic sources,” he says.
“No generation ever had as much access to information as the current generation has through your cell phones and the internet. You must justify having these incredible tools,” Bishop Badejo says, and goes on to caution against questionable digital sources.
He says, “The quality of the sources of information available to your generation covers the good, the bad and the ugly. It will take a deliberate decision to access only authentic and wholesome sites and platforms, to get edifying information and knowledge and then disseminate the same to others.”
The Nigerian Catholic Bishop encourages young people to study the 28 May 2023 publication of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication, “Towards Full Presence: A Pastoral Reflection on Engagement with Social Media”, describing it as a short but “rich resource which proposes to young people the ideal mode and strategy for presence in the digital media.”
Believe that you have a right to be here and have a responsibility to mould a positive world for yourselves. Build that faith in a personal relationship with God and you will succeed. And yes, I believe you can in the New Year!” Bishop Badejo concludes his Christmas 2023 letter to Nigerian young people.
Fr. Don Bosco Onyalla is ACI Africa’s founding Editor-in-Chief. He was formed in the Congregation of the Holy Ghost Fathers (Spiritans), and later incardinated in Rumbek Diocese, South Sudan. He has a PhD in Media Studies from Daystar University in Kenya, and a Master’s degree in Organizational Communication from Marist College, New York, USA.
