27 April" "
“Keeping churches open even at night, in the heart of the city”, just there where the young congregate every evening, and in the hours in which “they’re more amenable to be intercepted and freer to establish a profound dialogue with God”: that’s the proposal made by the “laboratory of the faith” that has been active every Thursday evening, in Rome, for over a year now, and that represents one of the fruits of the “Jubilee that continues”, after the extraordinary experience of the World Youth Day at Tor Vergata. The initiative, promoted by the diocesan service for youth apostolate of the diocese of Rome, was described in the course of the recently concluded 10th Symposium of European bishops by the young “animators” who staff the Roman church of Sant’Agnese in Agone, in Piazza Navona, on Thursday evenings and who once a week become evangelizers of their contemporaries. From 9.00 pm to midnight anyone who happens to be passing Borromini’s masterpiece, the magnificent church in the historic heart of Rome, may enter to attend a Mass followed by the eucharistic adoration: acting as hosts are a group of young people “extremely diversified in origin, formation and charism and united only by the desire to meet as disciples of the living Christ and to enable many brothers to enter into the dynamic of the laboratory of the faith”. “Almost all of them reports Msgr. Mauro Parmeggiani, head of the diocesan service for the youth apostolate, drawing a kind of “‘identikit” of those who participate in the evenings at Sant’Agnese are not involved in the life of their respective parish communities or in the movements, others have long lost contact with the faith and are brought back to it almost by chance”. A strong diocesan character, testified by the refusal to create a “separate community”: that’s the main characteristic of the Roman experience, whose “model” is spreading not only in some other areas of the diocese of Rome, but also in other cities in Italy, and is even being “exported” abroad: in fact the presence of foreigners is numerous. Invitation, welcome, prayer, catechesis: these are the different moments that punctuate the Thursday evenings, animated in turn by groups, movements and communities of the diocese of Rome. Placed at the disposal of the participants are a liturgy (“carefully prepared, but not elaborate”), homilies (“brief, direct and to the point”), multilingual priests for confession and spiritual counselling, and especially young volunteers (“evangelized and evangelizers”), able to involve their contemporaries also in other “extraordinary” initiatives connected with highpoints in the liturgical year, in meetings to explore topical questions, or in particular moments in the life of the diocese.
