after 20th WYD " "
“Someone who does not deceive and is therefore able to offer a certainty so strong as to enable one to live for it and, if necessary, also die for it”: Benedict XVI, in his first message to the young at the 20th World Youth Day, indicated the way and the goal. Everything had significance at Cologne, including the colours, the sounds, the songs and the dances. But the essence, as the Pope reminded the young, is to seek and to meet, even stumbling, that “Someone” who does not disappoint. Without this key to existence it is difficult, if not impossible, today, to follow it up and enable the leaven of a great ecclesial experience to rise: an experience that, since it is also human, cannot but have some dark sides. Darkness, however, is proof of the existence of light: like the light of the star that guided the Magi in their journey and in their return. This is the icon of the effort and beauty of a search and a meeting to be shared with others. This leads in turn to the rediscovery of the Church as “place” in which personal and community faith can grow and remain as a sign of love in history. Enabling the new generations to rediscover the Church is a commitment that the Pope assumed ever since the beginning of his pontificate. That’s why he wished to meet the seminarians before meeting with the youth of the world at Marienfeld. He re-proposed, like John Paul II, “the vocational dimension of World Youth Days”. He asked them to prepare themselves, after adoration, for mission. The one cannot exist without the other. Benedict XVI had been given confirmation at Cologne that the young were on this path. He had seen their enthusiasm on the banks and in the water of the Rhine. He had heard the sound of the pilgrims who packed the cathedral for the midnight masses and of the tens of thousands of youngsters who flocked to the places of catechesis. He had heard reports of a youth filled with joy and often in prayer in Cologne as in other German cities. He also knew of some who had lost their way and had been distracted in the inevitable and peaceful confusion. Knowing all this, he dared to indicate an even higher goal. “The real revolution, the decisive change of the world” come “only from God and from the saints” who “are the real reformers”. So, “it is not the ideologies that save the world, but only the turning to the living God who is our creator, the guarantor of our liberty, the guarantor of what is truly good and true”. In the great expanse of the Marienfeld for the nocturnal vigil he had no hesitation to propose an anti-conformist path. The young, as they had several times announced in advance, were waiting for him at the entrance. It is not entirely inappropriate to assert that if it was the Pope in the first place who had invited the young to meet him, it was the young themselves in Cologne who invited the Pope to meet them. In any case they followed his discourses step by step to grasp the hoped-for message and had John Paul II close at heart. It did not take much to realise a communication that was never interrupted. They, the young, had already perceived something great in the days of the suffering and death of John Paul II: at Cologne they had the certainty that truly there had been a transfer of authority, an exchange of glances, from the window in heaven to the window on earth. They discovered that this communication, with different faces, voices and gestures, forms part of a plan that transcends space and time. Many realised, others had it confirmed to them, that this is the communication of the Church. Led by the hand by Benedict XVI, they understood that “the guarantor of our liberty, the guarantor of what is truly good and true”, wished the Church to continue his work. This is a consciousness that will grow, accompanied by the appeal to communicate the beauty of a quest and a meeting… because “it is impossible to keep a great joy to oneself”. A fascinating and daring adventure, made in the measure of youth. But an adventure that also appeals to adults.
