Friendship, courage, attraction of faith and silence. The young people, a Mexican, an Italian and an American, question the Pope. To ask him how to find a genuine faith, how faith can help build the future, how to find courage for radical and significant choices, how to really meet the Lord and be sure of his presence even in the midst of difficulties “.
Silence falls when the Pope begins to speak. They are all attentive to his words. “Relationships with other people are indispensable for each of us,” says Leone. AND encourages them to seek true ties. He cites the Christus Vivit, of Pope Francis to say that “among the many cultural connections that characterize our life, Internet and the media have become” an extraordinary opportunity for dialogue, encounter and exchange between people, as well as access to information and knowledge “”. These tools, he adds, “however they are ambiguous when they are dominated by commercial logic and interests that break our relationships in a thousand intermittent”. Still Pope Francis “recalled that sometimes the” mechanisms of communication, advertising and social networks can be used to make us become asleep, dependent on consumption “. There are algorithms that tell us what we need to think. «Then our relationships become confused, suspended or unstable. When the instrument dominates man, man becomes an instrument: yes, market tool, goods in turn. Only sincere relationships and stable ties make good life stories grow “. Even if centuries ago, at the time of Sant’Agostino, there was no technological development, he grasped “the deep desire of our heart” towards this friendship. “He too has passed through a stormy youth: however, he did not be satisfied, he did not silence the cry of his heart. He was looking for the truth that does not delude, the beauty that does not pass. How did you find it? How did you find a sincere friendship, a love capable of giving hope? Meeting who was already looking for him: Jesus Christ. How did you build your future? Following him, his friend always ». The friendship with Jesus is our popular star, “says the Pope. And recalls Pier Giorgio Frassati, who will be canonized on September 7, who wrote” living without faith, without a heritage to defend, without supporting a struggle for truth is not to live, but live “. And he concludes the first answer remembering that “friendship can really change the world, friendship is a way to peace”.
And on how to choose, Leone says that “it’s not just about choosing something, but someone”. By responding to Gaia he underlines that “when we choose, in a strong sense, we decide who we want to become”. And the courage to choose also comes from the awareness that it is not we who have chosen to come into the world. «We received life for free, without choosing it! At the origin of ourselves there was no decision, but a love that wanted us “. To be free, he explains, “it is necessary to start from the stable foundation, from the rock that supports our steps. This rock is a love that precedes us, surprises us and exceeds us infinitely: the love of God. Therefore before him the choice becomes a judgment that does not take away any good, but always brings better. The courage to choose comes from love, that God manifests us in Christ. It is he who loved us with all of himself, saving the world and thus showing us that the gift of life is the way to achieve our person. For this reason, the encounter with Jesus corresponds to the deepest expectations of our heart, because he is the love of God made man ». He repeats the words of John Paul II, who “twenty -five years ago, right here where we find ourselves” he said: “It is Jesus you are looking for when you dream of happiness; It is he who awaits you when nothing satisfies you with what you find; He is the beauty that attracts you so much; It is he who provokes you with that thirst for radicality that does not allow you to adapt to compromise; It is he who pushes you to lay the masks that make life false; It is he who reads the most true decisions in your heart that others would like to suffocate ». Fear then “then leaves room for hope”. It speaks of radical choices, full of meaning such as marriage, the sacred order, the religious consecration that express “the gift of self, free and freely, which makes us truly happy. We find happiness when we learn to give ourselves, donate life for others ». These choices make sense of our life, transforming it into the image of perfect love, which created and redeemed it from all evil, even from death. I say this tonight thinking about Mary, twenty -year -old, Spanish and Pascale, “both chose to come to Rome” on pilgrimage and died. Leone, particularly affected, asks to also pray for their families and their communities and also for the greeting of “a Spanish boy, Ignazio Gonzales who was hospitalized in the Child Jesus”.
