The integral health of the young generations – XX message of the Marist International Mission Commission

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The XX message of the Marist International Mission Commission, entitled “The integral health of the young generations: a Marist educational commitment”, addresses the challenge of the Marist educational mission for the integral care of the young generations; and exhorts the “Heirs of Champagnat’s legacy” to be “promoters of life, and life in abundance, in the face of the multiplicity of conflicts, situations of abandonment, vulnerability and suffering that generated all kinds of illnesses and even the death of children and young people.”

The message, written by Br. Marcelo Bonhemberger, Patrícia Espíndola de Lima Teixeira and Luiz Gustavo Santos Tessaro, on behalf of the International Marist Mission Commission, highlights the importance of knowing the dramas that today’s children and young people imprisoned in their interiority, “to provide opportunities for healthier daily environments.” The message urges “to abandon the individualistic understanding of health, which leads to the conclusion that the only way out is to wait and refer when situations become serious (reinforcing a conception of illness as a private subjective experience, isolated from the context).”

In the same way, the document mentions that “if the commitment is to improve the health of young people youth health through education, there is also a need for clarity in our thinking and joint practices.” And it emphasizes that “the educational and training spaces – with all the actors involved, the relationships established, the norms and policies, the physical structures – in themselves already configure a favourable or unfavourable environment for health to flourish.

The Marist text stresses the need to build links that promote and prevent health; identifies the main initiatives present in the Marist spaces, and in parallel, it proposes 12 actions to (co-)create emotionally healthy educational and working environments.

Through this XX message, the International Commission points out that the “agenda of socio-emotional health should not be closed in on itself but should be discussed and cared for by us Marists. Together with our Superior General of the Marist Institute, we are encouraged to look beyond through the systemic of care, since “Our educational mission, with young people and those most in need, assumes a fundamental value in these times.”

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