2023-08-06 21:40:00
August 6, 2023 / 2:40 pm
Msgr. José Antonio Eguren, Archbishop of Piura in northern Peru, recalled that only Christ can fill the human heart with meaning and fullness, during the homily of the Mass that he presided over in his cathedral, on the day that the World Day of Youth (WYD) Lisbon 2023.
In his preaching this Sunday, in which the Transfiguration of the Lord is celebrated on Mount Tabor, the Peruvian Prelate vowed that the Virgin of Fatima “bless copiously all the young participants so that, having had the grace to see the glory of Christ on the high mountain of this World Day, now come down with renewed enthusiasm and set out, with Holy Mary, to bear witness to other young people like them, who Christ is the only one capable of filling the human heart with meaning and fullness.”.
Bishop Eguren then highlighted that “World Youth Days are not a mere intercultural meeting place where young people meet to live in peace and just exchange their experiences. This is fine, but the World Youth Days aspire to much more”.
These Church events, stressed the Archbishop, “aspire to be an event of conversion and evangelization, specially designed with love for the young people of the entire world.”
“This is how Saint John Paul II inaugurated them, they were continued by Benedict XVI, and with that same spirit and objective Pope Francis has summoned them once again. The purpose of World Youth Day, Lisbon 2023, has been to make Christ known to young people as the light and salvation of the world”.
In this way, he specified, the young generations are invited to “open the doors of their hearts, through a sincere conversion of life, discovering the Lord Jesus, as the only way to go, the only truth to try and the only life to live”.
The Peruvian Archbishop then stressed that in all WYD “we have witnessed the immense good that they have done to millions of young people and to the Church itself.”
“How many conversions, how many vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life, how many Christian marriages, how many evangelization and apostolate initiatives have been born from the World Youth Days!” he exclaimed.
WYD Lisbon 2023 took place from August 1 to 6 in the Portuguese capital. Among his various messages to the young pilgrims, Pope Francis stressed that in the Church there is a place for everyone and that God loves his children as they are.
In the last event, the meeting with the volunteers, the Holy Father encouraged the young people to be “love surfers” – alluding to the giant 30-meter waves of the Portuguese town of Nazaré – in the waves of life.
Walter Sánchez Silva is a senior writer at ACI Prensa, with more than 15 years covering Church events in Europe, America and Asia.
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