"WYD is an encounter with the living Christ through the Church," Pope says"What changed my life at WYD was having an encounter with Christ.""One of the most beautiful inspirations of the Church are the WYD".The date and theme of the next JWorld Youth Day which, this year, will be celebrated on November 24, the Solemnity of Jesus Christ King of the Universe.
The Pope focused his message on the phrase contained in the book of Isaiah: "Those who hope in the Lord renew their strength, they spread wings like eagles, they run and are not weary, they walk and do not grow weary" (Is 40:31). A consoling phrase for times that, in the Pope's words, "are marked by dramatic situations that generate despair and prevent us from looking to the future with serenity.
In this regard, the Pontiff began his message by recalling that "those who pay the highest price are you young people, who perceive the uncertainty of the future and do not see clear possibilities for your dreams, thus running the risk of living without hope, prisoners of boredom and sadness, sometimes dragged by the illusion of delinquency and destructive behavior". In view of this, he wanted to convey to them a "message of hope".
Fatigue and weariness
The pontiff once again brought to the forefront the search for happiness proper to young people, which, when reduced to the material aspect, "does not fully satisfy our soul because we were created by the One who is infinite". Thus, the Pope did not want to hide the weariness that can come after having started a journey with enthusiasm. In this line, he focused on the feeling shared by many young people today of an "eagerness for an empty activism that leads us to fill the day with thousands of things and, in spite of this, to have the feeling of never doing enough and never being up to the task". In this line, he warned of the danger of paralyzing boredom that leads to not wanting to do anything and to live life "seeing and judging the world behind a screen".
The Pope wanted to encourage young people to walk with hope, which is a gift from God himself and which "overcomes every fatigue, every crisis and every anxiety, giving us a strong motivation to move forward". He also urged us to have "a grandiose goal" because "if life is not directed towards nothing, if nothing of what I dream, plan and achieve will be lost, then it is worthwhile to keep walking and sweating, enduring obstacles and facing fatigue, because the final reward is marvelous".
Taking the image of the wilderness journey of the people of Israel, the Pope did not want to hide the crises that occur along the path of life for all people: "Even for those who have received the gift of faith, there have been happy moments in which God has been present and felt close to them, and other moments in which they have experienced loneliness. It can happen that the initial enthusiasm for study or work, or the impulse to follow Christ - whether in marriage, the priesthood or the consecrated life - is followed by moments of crisis, which make life seem like a difficult journey through the desert".
In these difficult times, God remains close and does so especially in the nourishment of the Eucharist, a gift that the Pope invited young people to rediscover, following the example of Blessed Carlo Acutis.
Being pilgrims, not tourists of life
Finally, Francis focused on the upcoming Jubilee 2025, in which the figure of pilgrims will materialize in the streets of Rome. Taking this example, the Pope differentiated the attitude of the pilgrim from that of the tourist: the latter passes through life without grasping the essence while "the pilgrim, instead, immerses himself fully in the places he encounters, makes them speak, makes them part of his search for happiness. The Jubilee pilgrimage, therefore, must be a sign of the inner journey that we are all called to make, to reach the final destination".
The Pope proposed three attitudes to live this Jubilee Year: "thanksgiving, so that your hearts may be open to praise for the gifts received, above all for the gift of life; seeking, so that the journey may express the constant desire to seek the Lord and not to quench the thirst of the heart; and, finally, repentance, which helps us to look within ourselves, to recognize the wrong steps and decisions we sometimes make and, thus, be able to convert to the Lord and to the light of his Gospel".
Along with this, he emphasized the path of reconciliation with God and forgiveness, proper to the Jubilee years, inviting us to "experience the embrace of the merciful God, to experience his forgiveness, the remission of all our 'interior offenses,' as was the tradition of the biblical Jubilees. And so, welcomed by God and reborn in him, become open arms for so many of your friends and contemporaries who need to feel, through your welcome, the love of God the Father".
