The Pope to young people: Cry out with your life that Christ lives and reigns!

Patricia Ynestroza-Vatican City

The Pope in his homily, addressing the young people of the world, asked them not to give up “the big dreams. Do not settle for what is due. The Lord does not want us to cut our horizons, he does not want us to park on the margins of life, but to progress towards high goals, with joy and boldness. We are not made to dream of vacations or the weekend, but to fulfill the dreams of God in this world. He made us able to dream of embracing the beauty of life. And works of mercy are the finest works in life. If you dream of true glory, not of the glory of the coming and going world, but of the glory of God, this is the way. Because works of mercy glorify God more than anything else. “

Big dreams make big decisions

And to make these big dreams come true, the Holy Father has advised young people to make big decisions. And that’s what today’s Gospel is about. At the time of “final judgment, the Lord is based on the decisions we make. It almost seems that he doesn’t judge: he separates the sheep from the goats, but whether it’s good or bad is up to us. He only deduces the consequences of our decisions, reveals them and respects them ”.

So that the life of each one, “life,” he said, “is the time for firm, fundamental and eternal decisions. Mundane choices lead to mundane life, big choices make life beautiful ”.

Each of us becomes what we choose

Indeed, each of us becomes what we choose, for better or for worse. “If we choose to steal we become thieves, if we choose to think about ourselves we become selfish, if we choose to hate we become furious, if we choose to spend hours in front of the mobile we become addicted.” But if we choose God, if we choose God, “each day we become more loved and if we choose to love we become happy”. Because, as the Pope said, “the beauty of decisions depends on love. Jesus knows that if we live closed and indifferent, we remain paralyzed, but if we spend ourselves for others, we become free. The Lord of life wants us to be full of life and gives us the secret of life: we only possess it by renouncing it ”.

Every decision has its obstacles

But any decision we take has its obstacles, which make the choices difficult, and these are: fear, insecurity, the unanswered whys. However, to overcome these obstacles, Francis said that “love asks us to go further, not to remain subject to the whys and whys of life, while waiting for a response from Heaven to arrive. No, love pushes us to go from the why to the for whom, from the why I live to the one for whom I live, from the why it happens to me to whom I can do good. For which? Not just for me: life is already full of decisions that we make as we seek to our advantage, to have a degree, friends, a home, to satisfy our own hobbies and interests. But we run the risk that the years will go by thinking about ourselves without starting to love. Manzoni gives us some nice advice: “You should think more about doing good than being good; and thus he would end up being better ”(The Bride and Groom, ch. XXXVIII)”.

And in this 21st century, the previous obstacles to realizing those big dreams are added to the consumer fever, which “stuns the heart with superfluous things.” There is the obsession with pleasure, which seems the only way to avoid problems, and instead only postpones problems. In these times, the Pope said that there is a fixation on claiming his rights, forgetting the duty to help. Another obstacle is the great illusion of love, which seems to be something that “must be experienced by dint of emotion and“ I love ”, when love is above all else: gift, choice and sacrifice. Choosing, especially today, is not letting yourself be tamed by homogenization, it is not letting yourself be anesthetized by consumer mechanisms that deactivate originality, it is knowing how to give up by pretending and showing yourself . To choose life is to fight against the mentality of disposable and everything and fast, to lead existence towards the goal of Heaven, towards the dreams of God ”.

Instead of telling us what I wanna do, say what’s good for me

Many choices arise in the heart every day. The Pope gives his young people yet another piece of advice, one last piece of advice so that they “train themselves to choose well. If we look within ourselves, we see that two different questions often arise within us. The first is: what do I want to do? This is a question that is often misleading, because it implies that the important thing is to think about yourself and to follow all the desires and impulses that one has. However, the question that the Holy Spirit suggests to the heart is another: not what I want to do, but what is good for you? Here is the choice for each day: what do I want to do or what is good for me? From this inner search, mundane choices or life choices can arise. Let us look at Jesus, let us ask him for the courage to choose what is good for us, to follow in his footsteps on the path of love and to find joy ”.

Works of mercy that transform our lives

In his homily, the Pope, referring to the Gospel of the time of St. Matthew, spoke of the list of “gifts that the Lord gives us, the gifts that he desires for eternal marriage with us in heaven. “. Jesus, “before giving us his love on the cross, leaves us his last will. He tells us that whatever good we do for one of his little brothers – hungry, thirsty, stranger, poor, sick, incarcerated – we will do it for him. “

These are the works of mercy, which transform our life into eternity. The Pope said that each of us can ask ourselves: am I putting them into practice? Do I have to do something for those who need it? Or am I only doing good for my relatives and friends? Do I help the one who cannot surrender? Am I the friend of a poor man? Because in each of our brothers, those who need us the most, He, Jesus is there. “I am here”, Jesus tells you, “I am waiting for you there, where you cannot imagine and where you may not even want to look, there in the poor”.

“I am here, where the dominant thought – that life is okay if it is okay for me – shows no interest. I am hereJesus tells you too, a young man who seeks to fulfill the dreams of life. “

A young saint, whose charism is still relevant today

And remembering the conversion of Saint Martin of Tours, the Pontiff continued his homily: “I am hereJesus told a young soldier centuries ago. He was eighteen and had not yet been baptized. One day he saw a poor man who asked for help from the people, but who did not receive it because “everyone was passing”. And this young man, “understood that if the others had no compassion, it was because the poor man was reserved for him”. But he had nothing with him, just his military cape. Then he tore it in half and gave one half to the poor man, being teased by some around him. The next night he had a dream: he saw Jesus, wearing the piece of the cloak with which he had covered the poor man. And he heard him say: “Martín me you covered with this robe “Saint Martin was a young man who had this dream because he had lived it, even without knowing it, like the righteous in the Gospel today.”

Diocesan WYD on the Solemnity of Christ the King

At the end of Mass, at the time of the passing of the WYD cross, it was announced that henceforth, diocesan WYD, instead of being celebrated on Palm Sunday, will be celebrated on the solemnity of Christ the King.

Words of the Pope addressing the youth of the world:

At the end of this Eucharistic celebration, I cordially greet all those present and all those who follow us through the media. I address a special greeting to the young people of Panama and Portugal, represented by the two delegations who will soon make the significant gesture of passing the Cross and the icon of the Virgin Mary, Hail of the Roman people, symbols of World Youth Day. It is an important stage of the pilgrimage that will take us to Lisbon in 2023.

And as we prepare for the next intercontinental WYD day, I would also like to relaunch its celebration in local churches. Thirty-five years after the creation of WYD, after having listened to different opinions and the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, competent in youth ministry, I decided to transfer the diocesan celebration of WYD to Sunday from Ramos to Domingo from Cristo Rey, starting next year. At the center remains the Mystery of Jesus Christ Redeemer of man, as Saint John Paul II has always demonstrated, the initiator and patron of WYD.

Dear young people, cry out with your life that Christ lives and reigns! If you keep quiet, the stones will howl! (cf. Lc 19.40).