Accompaniment suggests a journey. Every journey presupposes a destination, an end, a goal, a telos. What is the end of the accompaniment of youth? The theme of the Synod for Youth 2018 aims at accompanying
the young on their existential journey to maturity so that, through a process of discernment, they discover their plan for life and realize it with joy, opening up to the encounter with God and with human beings, and actively participating in the edification of the Church and of society (Vatican, 6/10/2016).
The theme suggests maturity of youth as the end of the process of accompaniment and discernment. What is maturity? The proposed chapter will offer the benchmarks of maturity from a psycho-spiritual perspective, in an attempt at defining the goal of the accompaniment process.
Psychologists and social scientists have proposed various stage-models of life-long development. Erik Erikson considers the journey towards psychosocial maturation in eight stages. Lawrence Kohlberg examines moral development in six stages, which are grouped into three pairs of stages. In a similar vein, James Fowler proposes that faith development could take place in six stages.
These models presuppose that maturity could be spoken of as the immediate target to be reached at a particular age, and as the ultimate goal to be arrived at as the end of life-long development. Hence, the accompaniment of youth also revolves around these two targets: the immediate and the ultimate goal.
Taking the gospel model of maturity (Lk 2:52) as the template, the proposed conceptual paper will present and discuss the psychological models of life-long development with an aim of clarifying the markers of maturity. Thus, the paper will provide a guideline for educators to understand the youth in the present and assist the youth to plan the future in their existential journey towards an authentic encounter with God and human beings.