Paven møtte en halv million italienske ungdommer
De italienske biskopene prøver å arrangere et stort møte hver sommer for å samle og oppmuntre unge katolikker i landet. I år ble møtet avholdt i Loreto – i Le Marche, ved kysten nord-øst for Roma – nå sist helg, og som jeg forstår var det ganske vellykka. Bildet viser litt av forhåndsreklamen, og sier at paven regner med å se deg/ venter deg.
Gårsdagens tekster handla mye om ydmykhet, og paven knyttet dette til jomfru Maria, siden Loreto er en kjent Maria-pilgrimssted. Han sa bl.a.:
From this meeting of humility, Jesus was born, Son of God and Son of Man. “The greater thou art, the more humble thyself in all things, and thou shalt find grace before God”, a passage from Ecclesiastes tells us (3,20); and Jesus, in today’s Gospel, after the parable of teh wedding guests, concludes: “For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk 14,11).
This prospect indicated in Scriptures appears even more provocative today because of the culture and sensibility of contemporary man. The humble is considered one who has given up, a failure, someone who has nothing to say to the world.
On the contrary, this is the master way, and not only because humility is a great human virtue, but because, in the first place, it represents God’s own way. It is the way chosen by Christ, the mediator of our New Covenant, who, appearing in human form, “humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross(Phil 2,8).
Dear young people, I see in this Word of God on humility a message that is as important as it is relevant to you who wish to follow Christ and be part of his Church. The message is: do not follow the way of pride, but that of humility. …