After a one-year postponement due to the pandemic, this WYD will be held at two different times: first on the Solemnity of Christ the King, November 20 of this year, with celebrations in the particular Churches around the world, and then at the international level in Lisbon from August 1 to 6, 2023. Both celebrations have the same theme:
This is the biblical quote chosen by Pope Francis as the motto for World Youth Day 2023. To be held for the first time in Lisbon next year. The theme, concludes the cycle of three messages that accompany young people on the road between WYD Panama 2019 and Lisbon 2023, all of them centered on the verb levantarse.
The chosen quotation, from the Gospel of St. Luke, opens the account of Mary's Visitation to her cousin Elizabeth. In the This year's message, the Holy Father invites young people to meditate together on the biblical scene in which, after the Annunciation, the young Virgin Mary rises and goes out to meet her cousin Elizabeth, carrying Christ within her.
The Virgin Mary of Nazareth is the great figure of the Christian way. His example teaches us to say yes to God. It was the protagonist of the last edition of WYD in Panama and will also be the protagonist in Lisbon. To leave without delay sums up the attitude motivated by Pope Francis in his instructions for WYD Lisbon 2023: "May the evangelization of young people be active and missionary, and may they recognize and witness to the presence of the living Christ".
Addressing especially young people, challenging them to be courageous missionaries, the Pope writes in his Apostolic Exhortation Christus Vivit: "Where does Jesus send us? There are no frontiers, there are no limits: he sends us to everyone. The Gospel is not for some but for all" (CV 177).
"Mary, she got up and got going, because she was sure that God's plans were the best possible project for her life. Mary became the temple of God, the image of the Church on the way, the Church that goes out and puts herself at the service, the Church bearer of the Good News.
The stories of the resurrection often use two verbs: to awaken and to arise. With them, the Lord urges us to go out into the light, to let ourselves be led by Him to cross the threshold of all our closed doors. It is a significant image for the Church.
The Mother of the Lord is a model for young people on the moveShe was not motionless in front of the mirror contemplating her own image or 'caught' in the nets. She was totally oriented outward. She is the paschal woman, in a permanent state of exodus, of going out of herself towards the great Other who is God and towards the others, the brothers and sisters, especially the most needy, as was her cousin Elizabeth".
"I hope, and firmly believe, that the experience that many of you will live in Lisbon in August next year will represent a new beginning for you, young people, and - with you - for all of humanity." Pope Francis.
And the Pope tells us "Of course, you cannot solve all the problems of the world. But perhaps you can start with those closest to you, with the problems in your own area. Mother Teresa was once told, "What you are doing is just a drop in the ocean. And she replied, "But if I didn't do it, the ocean would have one drop less".
"Faced with a concrete and urgent need, we must act quickly. How many people in the world are waiting for a visit from someone to care for them! How many elderly people, how many sick people, prisoners, refugees need our compassionate gaze, our visit, a brother or sister to break down the barriers of indifference!"
Haste is 'good' says Pope Francis," good haste always pushes us upward and toward others." Starting from the reflection on haste that characterizes the Virgin of Nazareth, the Holy Father encourages young people to ask themselves what attitudes and motivations they experience in the face of the challenges of daily life. He invites them to make a discernment between a "good haste [that] always pushes us upwards and towards others" and a "not good one (...) that leads us to live superficially, to take everything lightly, without commitment or attention, without really participating in the things we do."
"It has happened to many of us that, unexpectedly, Jesus came out to meet us: for the first time, we experienced in Him a closeness, a respect, an absence of prejudice and condemnation, a look of mercy that we had never encountered in others. Not only that, we also felt that it was not enough for Jesus to look at us from afar, but that He wanted to be with us, He wanted to share His life with us."
"The joy of this experience awakened in us a rush to welcome Him, an urgency to be with Him and to know Him better. Elizabeth and Zechariah welcomed Mary and Jesus. Let us learn from these two elders the meaning of hospitality! Ask your parents and grandparents, and also the older members of your communities, what it means for them to be hospitable to God and to others. It will do them good to listen to the experience of those who have gone before them."
"Dear young people, I hope that at WYD you will once again experience the joy of encountering God and your brothers and sisters. After long periods of distance and isolation, in Lisbon - with God's help - you will experience the joy of meeting God and your brothers and sisters. we will rediscover together the joy of the fraternal embrace between peoples and between generations, the embrace of reconciliation. and the peaceThe embrace of a new missionary fraternity! May the Holy Spirit kindle in your hearts the desire to rise up and the joy of walking all together, in synodal style, abandoning false frontiers. The time to rise up is now! Let us rise up without delay!"
In the remaining stretch before reaching Lisbon, we will walk next to the Virgin of Nazareth. who, immediately after the annunciation, "arose and departed without delay" (Lk 1:39) to go and help her cousin Elizabeth."
3. Finally, the Bishop of Rome points out that the whole of these passages awakens (or should awaken) in us "the wonder of being Church; of belonging to this family, to this community of believers that forms one body with Christ, since our baptism. It is there that we have received the two roots of wonder as we have seen: first to be blessed in Christ and second to go with Christ into the world".
And Francis explains that "it is an astonishment that does not diminish with age or decline with responsibility. (we could say: with the tasks, gifts, ministries and charisms that each of us can receive in the Church, at the service of the Church and the world).
At this point, Francis evokes the figure of the saintly Pope Paul VI and his programmatic encyclical Ecclesiam suamwritten during the Second Vatican Council. Pope Montini says there: "This is the hour in which the Church must deepen her awareness of herself, [...] of her own origin, [...] of her own mission.". And referring precisely to the Letter to the Ephesians, he places this mission in the perspective of the plan of salvation; of "the dispensation of the mystery hidden for ages in God... that it might be made known... through the Church" (Eph 3:9-10).
Francisco He uses St. Paul VI as a model to present the profile of what a minister in the Church should be like.He who knows how to marvel at God's plan and passionately loves the Church in that spirit, ready to serve his mission wherever and however the Holy Spirit wills. Such was, before St. Paul VI, the Apostle to the Gentiles: with that spirit, with that ability to be astonished, to be passionate and to serve. And that should also be the measure or thermometer of our spiritual life.
For this reason, the Pope concludes by once again addressing to the Cardinals some questions that are useful to all of us; for we all - faithful and ministers in the Church - participate, in very different and complementary ways, in that great and unique 'ministry of salvation' which is the mission of the Church in the world: "How is your ability to be amazed? Or have you gotten used to it, so used to it, that you've lost it? Are you capable of being amazed again?" He warns that it is not a simple human capacity, but above all a grace of God that we must ask for and be grateful for, guard and make fruitful, like Mary and with her intercession.
