P R A Y I N G W I T H T H E C H U R C H
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INTENTION : |
That World Youth Day in Madrid may encourage young people throughout the world to have their lives rooted and built up in Christ.
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When I was a young person and first heard of an upcoming World Youth Day, I did not want to go! I was a university student at the time and I was living my life in some ways that were not very rooted in Jesus Christ. But my grandmother, whom I loved very much, convinced me to go. Thank God for grandmothers!
The grace I found at that World Youth Day gathering was what Pope Benedict asks us to pray for this month: that young people be encouraged to have their lives rooted and built up in Jesus Christ. That World Youth Day was a turning point for me in living my faith as a young adult, and was also a time when the seeds of my vocation to religious life and priesthood were planted.
World Youth Day 2011 will take place from August 16-21 in Madrid, Spain. World Youth Day is a weeklong gathering of Catholic youth and young adults held every 2-3 years in different cities around the globe. Pope John Paul II began these events in the 1980s, and the tradition has continued with Pope Benedict XVI. The last three World Youth Days were held in Sydney, Australia (2008); Cologne, Germany (2005); and Toronto, Canada (2002). Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims come from all over the world to join in these celebrations of the universal Church.
The Scriptural theme for this World Youth Day is: "Planted and Built Up in Jesus Christ, Firm in the Faith" (Colossians 2:7). Clearly Pope Benedict's general intention for the month during which World Youth Day is being held refers to this verse from Saint Paul. Paul was writing to the Christians in the Church at Colossae at a time when they had received Christ, but were being tempted to turn to other ways of life that ran counter to an authentic life rooted in Jesus. Isn't this a challenge for so many young Christians in our own time? It was certainly a challenge for me when my grandmother first introduced me to World Youth Day.
And so we pray with the pope and with our sister and brother apostles of prayer around the world that the hundreds of thousands of young people who gather in Madrid this month may indeed be encouraged - by the pope himself, by their peers gathered in faith and joy, and especially by the love of the Heart of Jesus - to continue to live lives planted and built up in Christ. What a difference this will make in our world!
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