Lucas 4: 20,21
20 then he rolled up the book, gave it back to the assistant, and sat down. All who were in the synagogue looked at him closely, 21 and he began to speak to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in the presence of you.
The theme of youth has attracted the attention of the church in recent months: suffice it to remember the synod on young people, faith and vocational discernment, as well as the World Youth Day, held in Panama during the past month of January. But why the need to establish dialogue with young people? Here are two ideas that help us understand this need and can also help us in our spiritual growth:
The Lord speaks to you now, not tomorrow
Speaking of the biblical passage taken from the Gospel of St. Luke (4, 20-21) Recalling Isaiah's prophecy of the anointed man who arrives to announce the good news to the poor, to release the captives and the sight of the blind, to give freedom to the oppressed and proclaim the year Of the Lord's Grace, Pope Francis has stopped in the phrase with which Jesus interprets what he has read: Today this passage of Scripture has been fulfilled that has just been heard. The Bishop of Rome recalled, during the Eucharist with the youth in Panama, that the story leads to discovering Jesus as "the now of God who comes to our meeting to summon us also to take part in his now." Indeed, in Jesus the promised future of God is made present.
This "Now of God", in which we all do part, must lead us to move from this promised future to a present that is concrete in the reality that we live: sometimes we find it better to be conformed with a "God in the distance" that, although cute, good, generous , it turns out to be a god who does not bother, a "domesticated" God, because the God near and everyday, friend and brother, asks us to learn from the surroundings, from the daily life and especially from the fraternity.
To finish this idea, it is necessary to feel that God speaks to us with a young face, with a cheerful face, but especially with a concrete and committed face. In itself, young people are not the future of the Church: they are the church now, they are the church.
Go and tell what the Lord has told you
When we discover that God speaks to us now, then we understand that we are not expecting a different public revelation from what happened to Jesus: if we are God's today, he is speaking to us in concrete situations. Pope Francis thought, in his speech to the volunteering of Wyd 2019, that those who collaborated should go to tell what they had seen: "Do not do it with many words but, as they did here, with simple and everyday gestures, those that transform and make new all Things, those gestures capable of putting up a mess, a constructive mess, a mess of love. "
This is the great dialogue of the Church in conjunction with the young people: they are the now of the church and they want to see in it true testimonies of the love of God that they are able to infect them in order to put together "a mess of love" that makes the church a living community where Jesus and s the pole of attraction by the way its members reflect it.
And what do you read, have you experienced in your daily life God who acts at all times?
Do not be defeated by evil, but overcome with good evil. Romans 12:21
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, faith, meekness, temperance; Against such things there is no law. But those who are of Christ have crucified the flesh with their passions and desires. If we live by the spirit, we also walk through the spirit. Galatians 5:22-25
Well it is to the man to carry the yoke from his youth. Lamentations 3:27
Flee also from the youthful passions, and follow the righteousness, the faith, the love and the peace, with those who of clean heart invoke the Lord. 2 Timothy 2:22