(SE): “My young brothers and sisters, you are the sign that a different world is possible: a world of fraternity and friendship, where conflicts are not resolved with weapons but with dialogue,” Pope Leo XIV told around a million young people attending the concluding Mass of the Jubilee of Youth, held in the Tor Vergata field in Rome, on August 3, CNS reported. The pope said the Church was “closer than ever to young people who suffer the most serious evils, which are caused by other human beings.”
To applause and cheers he said, “We are with the young people of Gaza. We are with the young people of Ukraine, with those of every land bloodied by war.”
Pope Leo told the throng of young people that God is knocking on the “window of our souls.”
Vatican News reported the pope as saying, “We are not made for a life where everything is taken for granted and static, but for an existence that is constantly renewed through gift of self in love,” stressing, “This is why we continually aspire to something ‘more’ that no created reality can give us; we feel a deep and burning thirst that no drink in this world can satisfy.”
He urged, “let us not deceive our hearts by trying to satisfy them with cheap imitations!”
Fullness, the pope said, has to do with what we joyfully welcome and share. “Buying, hoarding and consuming are not enough. We need to lift our eyes, to look upwards, to the ‘things that are above…’”
Pope Leo exhorted, “…remain united to him, let us remain in his friendship, always, cultivating it through prayer, adoration, Eucharistic Communion, frequent Confession, and generous charity, following the examples of Blessed Piergiorgio Frassati and Blessed Carlo Acutis who will soon be declared saints.”
The pope invited, “Aspire to great things, to holiness, wherever you are. Do not settle for less. You will then see the light of the gospel growing every day, in you and around you.”
