In Christ’s friendship our life is full (Special GMG 2011)

The youth of the Movement as an immediate preparation to the 26th World Youth Day in Madrid, will dedicate two special meetings to the deepening of the Message of the Holy Father Benedict XVI

The answers are edited by the theologian Monsignor Costantino Di Bruno, the central ecclesiastical assistant of the Apostolic Movement.

Q. Why John Paul delivered the cross in the hands of young people making it thus the symbol of the WYD.

A. What is the cross? The love of Christ, which is love of the Father, which is delivered to a world that needs to carry it out. You young people must be able to assume this commitment. We are the witnesses of Love. The cross is the highest expression of love; it reveals how far love can get: undress, annihilate, obliterate and get lost, but not as an end in itself, but to transform itself into a seed of eternal love that alone can feed humanity. After all the other image of the cross is the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the cross that becomes the bread of life, that hands itself over to us in the form of bread and wine. It is always the love of Christ that is given so that we turn it into our love and give it to the brothers. The cross is not a sacrifice or deprivation closed in on itself. It is a sacrifice, a privation, a love and therefore it is a gift. From the cross Jesus Christ had the source of life pour out: the water that is the spirit and the blood that is the sacraments. From the cross, from his gift and from his body. Imagine if a young man today were to take this delivery of Christ and make it his. Remember that when Christ died on the cross he was young he was hardly thirty-three, all the youth of Christ was on the cross. At thirty years He began the highest mission of the whole history and at thirty-three he completed it. Christ is young, he belongs to you and he is yours. Imitate him!

Q. How do you establish a relationship of friendship with the Lord?

A. With the Lord there is a need for human mediation. At the time of baptism you have become Christ, you are the body of Christ, you are the life of Christ. If one does not pass to Christ through you, Christ will never be known, never loved and never heard. Today, you must be in history his heart, his life, his words, his love and even his cross. We go to God through the human mediation. Christ needs to be made present today in history, and you give this presence, I give it, another one gives it, but we must be the visible presence of Christ. Why did many at the times of Jesus, return to God? Because Christ made the Father present in history. The sentence that Christ spoke in the Upper Room is also true for us today: “Whoever sees me sees the Father”, and who sees you, today, must see Christ. And it is in this vision that the other starts to become a friend of Christ, for you make him manifest and then you speak about him, you say the reasons of your faith, the reasons of your life and the other through you passes to Christ. This is the way of true friendship with Jesus Christ, so that if you fail, the other also fails in meeting Christ. You are necessary to God so that others encounter Christ.

Q. This year’s theme of the World Youth Day will be: “Rooted and founded in Christ. Firm in the faith. ” Can you explain it to us?

A. When thou root yourself in a thing it means that you and thing become one reality. The soil and plant are one. The earth without the plant does not bear fruit, the plant does not live without the earth. What does the earth give to the plant? Life, fruits, growth, and development. You plant a little seed in the ground and after years it becomes a large and a majestic tree. When you are rooted in Christ, Christ gives you the sap, you grow and produce fruit. What fruits do you produce? According to your nature, and yours is the nature of Christ, because in baptism you were made in Christ, and you have been rooted in Christ, planted in Christ, so that Christ and you become one. What is the specific of being rooted? Always drawing the sap from the foundation in which you are placed. In the Gospel, you have the house founded, built on the rock. The pope wants to say to you that Christ is the only foundation upon which you can build your life, because all the other foundations are fallacious. When you solder a thing the pieces of the welding become one thing. If you are welded in the faith, you and the faith become one thing and there are no times when you live of faith and times when you do not live of faith. Since you are welded in the faith, you have become one with the faith, you can never forget the faith and all your decisions are decisions of faith, as all your actions are actions of a woman. It is not that you and your being a woman are two separate things, you are always a woman whatever you do because your being and femininity were welded into one thing, you were created that way. And so it must be for the Christian, he must be created one thing with the faith. Your thoughts will be of faith, your actions will be of faith, your life will always be of faith, because you are one.

Q. What is the importance of meeting and praying together with other young people?

A. Faith is never lived alone. Faith needs support. You who have a greater faith can give a firmness of faith to the person that has got a weaker one. Or you can get the completion of your faith from the faith of another person. Since you young people are the present and the future of the church it is right for you to be confronted in the faith, to grow in the faith, to communicate in the faith, and you also verify each other in the faith. Living together the personal faith is essential to our lives. For you young people have the same mentality, the same tastes, the same tendencies, it is right that there is this comparison of faith, because it is a comparison that makes you grow, makes you increase and makes you live. You who go to Madrid will find out that there is another world that lives there, and that faith is not an abstract reality, but it is concrete and embraces all strata of human life; and therefore, your faith is enriched because it goes into a new community and a new life. The meetings of faith are always enriching.

Q. Faith is personal, but you also need the faith of others to be helped and supported. What is the importance of life in the church for young people?

A. In faith the answer is personal. Faith is a call, a word that God asks you. The answer to this word is personal. What is the need of living it in communion? We must strengthen one another. If you know how I answered the Lord it also helps you to give a holy answer to the Lord. Why do you read the gospel? What is the gospel for you? For me, the gospel before being a message for me, it is the answer that Christ gave to the Father. It recounts how Christ responded to the love of the Father. And you have the gospel: a word that the Father said to Christ and like Christ answered. And you have the whole life of Christ that becomes a consequential answer of love, peace, mercy, truth, justice, holiness and forgiveness, in every field. So you see that Christ answers well to the Father and you get encouraged: “He answered so I can answer too.” Then read the Acts of the Apostles, and note that there is another answer, there is the answer of Peter, Philip, Stephen, Paul, Barnabas, and you see different answers. The word is always one, that of God, but life is different. This difference of answers you will understand that your answer has also to be different, it cannot be homologated. What is the cause of so many failures in your faith? It is in this homologated answer that you do, all the same, all in the same way. On the contrary, you must have a personal answer, a personal identity in the faith and a personal vision in the faith; and then the other helps you understand the faith and you can be in the one faith, however, you must have a personal answer that will help you realize God’s plan. But this also applies to the Apostolic Movement. The answer of the Inspirer is a personal, unique answer in the entire history of the Church. You will understand that the personalization of faith is not a sin, but it is the very essence of the faith. But you homologate the faith: all the same things, all the same life, all the same answer; but this is not faith, because the personal relationship with God is missing. We have so many priests who have embraced the spirituality of the Apostolic Movement, every one of them lives his personalized faith because I have always prevented that the faith were homologated. Everyone has to live his personal answer to the Lord.

Q. What does carrying the cross in the world mean?

A. It means bringing the love of Christ in this world. Love is the ability to give your life so that a project of God, of salvation is realized. The Inspirer of the Apostolic Movement took up her cross and brought it so that the plan of salvation of the Lord could be realized. But the Inspirer alone is not enough for us of the Apostolic Movement. It is important that everyone has this firmness in the Holy Spirit to take up his own vocation, because the cross is the answer to God’s word. You assume the word that the Lord says to you every day, you live it, you exercise yourself in it, you carry a cross of salvation because you bring the Father’s love in Christ in the Holy Spirit. Bringing this mystery of salvation that saves you and save others.

Q. Sometimes there is a particular enthusiasm for these meetings of the World Youth Day. How to make understand, and also us understand that these must be long lasting experiences?

A. The WYD does not you give the long lasting, but the daily commitment that you put in the growth of your faith gives it to you. The daily commitment is before the WYD and after the WYD. From here to Madrid you have to grow in the faith, you must go to Madrid with a more robust, a firmer, stronger faith, you should go to Madrid with a certainty in your heart: “I must realize a project of God in my life “. If you do not have this faith, you also live an experience in Madrid but the plan of life is not there and therefore you have no faith. God says a particular, singular, unique and specific word to you that he never told anyone in history. You go there, check out your project, you also expose it to others, you communicate it to your brothers and you come back with a certainty in your heart that so many of your brothers that live your own experience have a life plan that must be realized. In his document, the pope says that once, in his days, it was taught to climb up, to cultivate an ideal, to have a high and not low life plan. Sometimes there was a lack of an authentic word of God, which was not asked to the Lord. Now we have the grace of knowing a strong word of the Lord. If we begin to realize this high project of our life we ​​go to Madrid with something personal, of our own and can communicate it to others because the other wants to hear something about you. When St. Paul talked he had always this high project of his life present as an answer to God and when the prophet Agabus told him not to go to Jerusalem, he replied that he had a personal project to be realized and he had to go to Jerusalem. Paul communicated it and gave strength. If you homologate your projects of life nothing happens, and the World Youth Day will remain a striking, beautiful event, of enthusiasm, participation; but then you come back without a project, because you go without a project. You must go with a project and ensure that this project is admired by others as I admire the design of Christ and Paul and the project of all the saints who are in the Church.

Q. In everyday life, when I try to bring Jesus to other young people one of the most popular answers is that they are friends of Christ and that they bring Christ in their hearts. Can one live a friendship with Christ far from the gospel and also far from the Church?

A. They have a personal Christ, they have not got the Christ of God. The Christ of God is born from the word, it starts from a project, it starts from a desire that He has on you. It is not my friendship with Christ that counts, but it is Christ’s friendship towards me. The moment I say to Christ that I want to be his friend, He manifests me the project he has on me. If you go into the gospel there is not a single person that after the encounter with Christ does not receive a life project. There is not a single man that does not receive a life project. Can one live a friendship with Christ doing what he wants? This friendship is illusory, it does not change our exigencies. “You are my friends if you do what I tell you,” Jesus says in the Gospel. I give you a project. You realize it: you are my friend. This is the vocation. We all want Christ, but without him speaking to us. But when Christ speaks to the heart and manifests you his plan of life; then, history changes there. When you meet the true Christ He will always tell you: “Do this for me, take me into the world, let me be known to others, change life, pass to the church, save your brothers.” Do you remember the disciples of Emmaus, as soon as they met Christ, they immediately returned into the womb of the Church, without Christ they were leaving.

Q. What relationship is there between our charisma, the mission that we live within the Apostolic Movement and the Church’s mission?

The mission of the church is universal, it embraces all spheres of human life, all the works of spiritual and material charity. There is no area of ​​human life that is outside the mission of the Church. Everything is from the mission of the Church. Now, the church also lives of a particular mission, and every mission is particular. What mission did the Lord give to us? The announcement and remembrance of the word of the gospel. This is the foundation of all other missions. Once you bring a person to the word, then, this person from the word will receive his vocation, he will know what to do. We have a ministry to fulfill, reminding everyone of the word of the Lord; however, in this ministry, or in this mission, the Lord speaks to you personally and asks you how to live your personal mission. If you look at the Apostolic Movement you see that individually all the missions that are within the Church are lived by the Apostolic Movement, because everyone has a personal word of God. The vocation to marriage, the vocation to the priesthood, the vocation is a particular profession, being doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, theologians and being politicians. However, inside this knowledge of the word of the Lord the personal vocation starts. You are at the service of the universal vocation of the Church which is the proclamation the gospel as the Apostolic Movement. As a single person who lives in the Apostolic Movement you have a particular mission. While you do your mission within the world of work you will remember that to all your brothers you will need to proclaim the Gospel in the form of the word. Here is that the two missions are set and become one within the Apostolic Movement; that is why the whole mission of the Church and all the particular mission of every individual participant are there. This is nice because it is liberating, and there is no homologation of the answer, in fact, not all of you do the same things. This is the mystery that we live every day within the Apostolic Movement. And this is a holy thing.

Texts recommended for the preparation of the meeting:

– The Holy Father’s message for the 26th World Youth Day

– Prayer for the preparation for the WYD

– Homily of the Holy Father for the World Youth Day, Palm Sunday 2011