"Only in God and his Church can we find the unity we seek", the Pope told the thousands of young people gathered for the prayer vigil at Randwick". Unity needs to be cultivated, but "unity and reconciliation cannot be achieved through our efforts alone". So the Holy Father urged the young people to overcome "the temptation to ‘go it alone’", considering "their local community as somehow separate from the so-called institutional Church, by speaking of the former as flexible and open to the Spirit and the latter as rigid and devoid of Spirit". "Be watchful! Listen!", the Pope urged the young people. "Enriched with the Spirit’s gifts, you will have the power to move beyond the piecemeal, the hollow utopia, the fleeting, to offer the consistency and certainty of Christian witness!". "In our hearts continued Benedict XVI we know that only the Lord has ‘words of eternal life’. To turn away from him is only a futile attempt to escape from ourselves. God is with us in the reality of life, not the fantasy!" and "the Holy Spirit gently but surely steers us back to what is real, what is lasting, what is true".
