date: 01.08.2022.
Dear young people and dear families, dear brothers and sisters,
I am profoundly happy and most grateful to God that I can be with all of you and celebrate this Eucharist in this land of Mary, in the parish of Medjugorje, at this opening of the 33rd Youth Festival.
I thank Mons. Aldo Cavalli for the invitation and the Franciscan priests for their warm welcome.
With great love I greet each and every one of you individually. May God bless you, accompany you and give you peace.
Blessed and praised be God who loves us so much!
I come from a Marian land
I come from Spain, a very Marian country. In 1982, as he was leaving Spain at the end of his pastoral journey, Saint John Paul II said: "Farewell, Spain, land of the Blessed Virgin Mary."
I was born in a small town in Aragon, in the diocese of Zaragoza, in a region where the Blessed Virgin Mary was present in a very special way. In the city of Zaragoza, there is an enormous and beautiful basilica dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Pillar - La Virgen del Pilar - because it was there around the year 40 AD the first apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary recognized by the Church that took place. I always say that there is no comparable apparition because, according to tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to the apostle James in her mortal body. Thanks to this unexpected visit, the apostle James, according to the same tradition, regained his strength to continue his evangelization journey.
The small town of Calanda in the diocese of Zaragoza, where I was a parish priest, is known for a very impressive miracle. It happened in March of 1640 and was recorded by the civil and church notarized of the time. A young man lived there who had one of his legs amputated almost three years previously. His name was Miguel Pellicer. One night, as he was dreaming that Our Lady of the Pillar visited him and restored his leg, his parents surprised woke him up amazed that their son really had the amputated leg again. I would like to tell you much more about this extraordinary miracle, but it would be no long. I suggest you look for more information on the Internet.
Dear young people, everything that the Blessed Virgin Mary is willing to do to bring us a meeting with her Son and our brother Jesus Christ is truly impressive!
A unique week is beginning, abandon yourselves...
Each of us can ask ourselves: why did I come to this corner of Europe? What am I doing here? Many of you, like me, are here for the first time. You may be asking yourself these or similar questions. perhaps relatives and friends encouraged you to come here. But if you are here, it is because Jesus and Mary wanted you to be here. A unique week is beginning, let abandon yourselves and be carried and guided by our Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Life is precious and worth living with full intensity. During life we fight battle after battle and evil sometimes wins and takes over parts of our lives. Yes, evil can take over and subdue different aspects of our life. Our life is a path of constant conversion so that, with the help of Jesus and Mary, we could recognize and defeat those parasites that steal our lives.
What are our yokes and chains that rob us of peace and joy?
• Image, prestige, desire for honor?
• Desire for power, money, property and possession?
• Social networks, TikTok, YouTube? Maybe pornography?
• Understanding happiness to be an unlimited accumulation of pleasures?
We are beginning the week in which prayer, confession, listening to the Word of God, fasting and, above all, the Eucharist, if we place ourselves in God's and Our Lady's hands, will free us from the yokes that oppress us and separate us from the path of credibility and freedom that Jesus Christ proposes to us. Jesus wants to receive you in the Sacrament of Confession and show you His deep love and mercy for you.
As we heard in the first reading of the Mass, God is the only one who can free us from the burdens and problems that oppress us. Let us not fall into the clutches of those who offer us easy and quick solutions to complex situations. God is the only one who can save us, but He will do it in His own time, regardless of our haste or urgency. God's time is not our time. He thinks on our eternal salvation. Use this week to reconcile with God in this confessional of the world, in Medjugorje.
Do you know that there is no yoke or bond of slavery that can scan God? You must recognize this and say: Jesus, I have this yoke, this burden, set me free... There is no yoke that could resist the power of God. Remember that, no matter how much evil roars, the Blessed Virgin Mary keeps him away, treading on him with her foot.
Our flag is not fear, but love and joy. When we are close to God, our heart is delighted, fear disappears and there is a bright joy and a desire to work on proclaiming the Gospel and building a more humane world in which we are all brothers and sisters.
This is the truth contained in the theme chosen for the Youth Festival that we are starting today: "Learn from me and you will find peace" (Mt 11, 28-30). Yes, Jesus says it to each of us, he says it out loud. Listen carefully to Jesus' message from the Gospel according to Matthew:
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,* and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is sweet, and my burden light.” (Mt 11,28-30)
Do not be afraid. Rest your burden and your worries, from your sins and doubts... in the Lord. Learn from Him to live meekness and humility.
We need to withdraw and distance ourselves from the noise of this world
This will be a unique week. Do not let it pass you by. You have decided to get away from the noise, distractions and ordinary affairs to come here to meet the Lord. You will experience a special week of spiritual exercises in Mary's company.
This is exactly what we have just heard in the Gospel: Jesus also needed moments of withdrawal from the hustle and bustle, from missionary activity. Like Jesus, we need to stop and recollect ourselves in God's presence full of love.
These days there will be time for everything, but please make intensive use of the moments provided for personal and communal prayer. If this is difficult for you, ask your guides and organizers of the pilgrimage, the priests and religious who accompany you to teach you to pray, and share with other pilgrims the experiences of what helps you.
Everything that we will see, hear, share and experience here are the means that God will use to try to reach to the bottom of our hearts. Jesus wants us to let Him into our lives. He wants to tell us a thousand times: I love you and I need you. You are my beloved son. Because of you and for you I created the world; because of you and for you I died on the Cross.
• I love you with an immeasurable love that is capable of giving life for you, that is capable of transforming hatred and violence into love, which can destroy death with resurrection and eternal life. I want to give that love to you, do you accept that gift, do you really want it?
• I need you to take this love to the end of the world. I need you to be my voice, my hands, my face in the world.
Do you dare to embark on that great adventure that God is proposing to you?
The Eucharist is the source of that love and strength for the mission
By God's providence, the Gospel we just heard speaks of the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fishes. Jesus anticipates the mystery of the Eucharist. The Eucharist that we celebrate is the greatest manifestation of God's immeasurable love for each of us, a love that we have come to know thanks to Jesus Christ. This is a great and impressive news that Jesus reveals to us: God loves and accepts us as His children. We should not fear God, but simply love Him and allow Him to love us.
Here and now, the resurrected Christ is present among us and gives us food for his word, his life and his love, which we receive in the communion of the Eucharist. Pope Francis reminds us by quoting the Church Fathers: "The Eucharist [...] is not a reward for the perfect, but a generous medicine and food for the weak" (Evangelii Gaudium, 47). As written in the Gospel that was proclaimed, today we are that great multitude of men and women - simple, sick, sinful and deeply hungry for Jesus - the Bread of Life.
We need to receive the Eucharist with deep respect and humility. We need to permitt to transform us, allow little by little to make us more like Christ. Pope Benedict XVI said that "the Eucharist is a process of transformation in which we are incorporated, it is God's power for the transformation of hatred and violence, God's power for the transformation of the world. That is why we must ask the Lord to help us celebrate and live the Eucharist in this way. That's why we want to pray that he transforms us and that with us He may transform the world into a new Jerusalem." Thanks to the Eucharist, "all creation must become a new city, a new paradise, a place where the living God will dwell."
Pope Saint Paul VI reminded us that the great family of the Church exists so as to evangelize. And Pope Saint John Paul II called us to a new evangelization. Pope Francis persistently calls us to “mission”, to going out into the world in order to proclaim the Gospel with joy. We can not forget the wise advice given to us by Pope Benedict XVI so that we may not fall into discouragement and evangelistic fatigue "which occurs when we think only about external works and nearly forget that all our actions must be nourished at the most profound center, which is the Eucharist".
These days in Medjugorje, the Eucharist will be the central point of meeting with God the Father, with Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit; the meeting place with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, with angels and all the saints; a meeting place with our deceased brothers and sisters. Everything we will experience this week will help us to redirect our entire existence towards the encounter with the Holy Trinity in the Eucharistic celebration. In Him we must find the source and light for all our actions and all our actions. We, as the Abyssinian martyrs said, cannot live without the Eucharist, without Sunday, without the Lord's Day.
According to these rites, signs, gestures and words, the resurrected Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit become present. They want to enter our lives, they want to fill us with Their love, to turn our stony hearts into hearts of flesh that promote unity and peace, that take care of those who are most in need and that proclaim that Christ is risen, that God loves us and that we are His children, that He needs us in order to proclaim eternal life and transform the world in the light of the Gospel...
Today, when the Church celebrates the memory of St. Alphonsus Liguori, the great apostle of the confessional and spiritual guidance, I would like to recall some of the words he addressed to Jesus Christ in his personal prayer:
"Many on their deathbed give their friends clothes or a ring as an inheritance and as a sign of affection. And you, Jesus, at the moment of your departure from this world, what detail of love did you leave us? Not a garment or a ring, but your Body, Your Blood, Your Soul, Your Divinity, your whole being" (How We Shall Love Jesus Christ, Chapter 2, Excerpt 1).
Dear young people, Jesus is now and here among us. That is magnificent. We do not see Him and the vast majority do not feel Him, but He is there, He listens to us and says: "Here, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone listens to my voice and opens the door to me, I will come to him and dine with him, and he with me" (Revelation 3, 20).
Now close your eyes and permit God to look at you tenderly, to come closer to your soul...
Ask the Holy Spirit to open the door of your heart and for Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to come and transform you.
Here I am, Lord, come into my heart and remain in it. Let my life be a path of holiness Count on me to do good and to help You transform the world.
Holy Mary, Queen of Peace, pray for us and for the whole world.
Amen.
