Throughout this past Lent, comments about the Netflix series ADOLESCENCE have proliferated. It’s just four episodes that show, in all their rawness, the risks adolescents navigate in our Western culture.

The two issues that trigger the crisis of the thirteen-year-old protagonist of the series are, on the one hand, the pressure of social media, which has become an underworld; and, secondly, the distortion of sexuality, caused largely by the spread of pornography and other unnatural models on the internet. Beyond the script of this film, it’s obvious that the tension between social media and pansexualism is devastating for adolescents.

However, my intention on this occasion is not to talk about that period in the maturation of human life that we call adolescence, but rather about the risk of “chronic adolescence,” that is, immaturity as a permanent stage.

Pope Francis said that a person’s maturity is expressed in three languages: 1. The language of the “head”: I think what I feel and do. 2. The language of the “heart”: I feel what I think and do. 3. And the language of the “hands”: I do what I feel and think.

Ultimately, maturity requires the integration of what we think, what we feel, and what we do. Something increasingly difficult to achieve in our hyper-emotive culture, which has given up on answering the question of the meaning of life. Maturity is only achieved when we achieve a balance between the pursuit of pleasure, a sense of duty, and the principle of accepting reality. Ultimately, maturity requires overcoming the prevailing narcissistic tendency, learning to live in family and society. It requires the ability to realize that we can hurt others, and to discover that one’s vocation lies in forgetting oneself, discovering that we are for others.

I find it significant that the series ADOLESCENCE has neglected to integrate the theme of the meaning of life and the necessary moral responses into its script, limiting itself to describing the situation. This is exactly what happens in our society, where we clutch our heads at the exponential increase in the adolescent crisis, but without being able to recognize that the problem does not lie at the age of 18, but rather involves us all. In other words, the big problem lies in the immaturity of adults. We are incapable of giving the appropriate response, because no one can give what they do not have. There is no doubt that many adults suffer from the “Peter Pan syndrome”: evasion of responsibilities, emotional dependence, risky behaviors, low tolerance for frustration, lack of self-criticism, etc. In short, a chronic immaturity.

At this point, we need to ask ourselves the following questions: Is maturity within our reach? Are we condemned to immaturity? Christians firmly believe that this question has an answer in the risen Christ, the true image of human maturity. Jesus Christ is not only a promise of eternal life, but is also the giver of life in fullness. This is important to emphasize, since the contemporary loss of hope has led many to stop wondering about the afterlife, and a film like ADOLESCENCE leads us to wonder if there is life before death.

Certainly, the answer is in Jesus Christ, the new man. Not only do we need to contemplate and learn from his maturity in the Gospel, but we also require his grace to achieve it. This is what an emblematic text of the Second Vatican Council says: “In reality, the mystery of man is only clarified in the mystery of the Incarnate Word. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come, that is, Christ our Lord… He is the perfect man, who has restored to the descendants of Adam the divine likeness, which was distorted by the first sin” (Gaudium et Spes 22).

I wish you all a happy Easter, which implies the grace of reaching maturity in Christ.

+ José Ignacio Munilla, Bishop of Orihuela-Alicante