At this evening’s WYD prayer vigil, Pope Francis said: “People try to make us believe that being closed in on ourselves is the best way to keep safe from harm. Today, we adults need you to teach us how to…experience multiculturalism not as a threat but an opportunity”
“People try to make us believe that being closed in on ourselves is the best way to keep safe from harm. Today, we adults need you to teach us how to live in diversity, in dialogue, to experience multiculturalism not as a threat but an opportunity.” Francis was met with the warm embrace of one million young people at the Campus Misericordiae, the vast green space between the outskirts of Krakow and the town of Wieliczka. They walked for kilometres to get to the park and will be camping out here tonight. The Pope once again spoke to them about welcoming others, dialogue and openness: “We have no desire to conquer hatred with more hatred.” Bergoglio is adamant that this is not the way forward.
Upon his arrival, Francis was greeted with the sound of a half-ton bell. Two houses have been built in the space prepared for the two final WYD gatherings, as permanent mementos of the event, tangible symbols of mercy. The first is a day home for the elderly. The second is a caritas Centre with a warehouse where food donations for the needy of various parishes will be stored. At the start, Francis passed through the Holy Door together with five young people. He then listened to the testimonies and questions of three young people.
Francis took the floor, referring back to Rand’s story. Rand is a young 26-year-old Syrian from the martyr city of Aleppo. “We have come here from different parts of the world, from different continents, countries, languages, cultures and peoples. Some of us are sons and daughters of nations that may be at odds and engaged in various conflicts or even open war. Others of us come from countries that may be at “peace”, free of war and conflict, where most of the terrible things occurring in our world are simply a story on the evening news. But think about it. For us, here, today, coming from different parts of the world, the suffering and the wars that many young people experience are no longer anonymous, something we read about in the papers. They have a name, they have a face, they have a story, they are close at hand. Today the war in Syria has caused pain and suffering for so many people, for so many young people like our good friend Rand, who has come here and asked us to pray for his beloved country.”
Francis remarked that there are situations that seem a million miles away from our own reality until we “touch them” in some way. “We don’t appreciate certain things because we only see them on the screen of a cell phone or a computer. But when we come into contact with life, with people’s lives, not just images on a screen, something powerful happens. We feel the need to get involved.” “No more forgotten cities,” Francis said, reiterating the young Syrian’s words. Francis called for an end to “brothers and sisters of ours ‘surrounded by death and killing’, completely helpless”. The Pope invited young people to pray, sharing the suffering of “all the victims of war,” “once and for all, may we realize that nothing justifies shedding the blood of a brother or sister; that nothing is more precious than the person next to us.”
“This is no time for denouncing anyone or fighting. We do not want to tear down. We have no desire to conquer hatred with more hatred, violence with more violence, terror with more terror,” Francis said, immediately recalling that “our response to a world at war has a name: its name is fraternity, its name is brotherhood, its name is communion, its name is family”.
“Let our best word,” he added, “our best argument, be our unity in prayer. Let us take a moment of silence and pray.” Francis invited World Youth Day-goers to pray in silence for those who know that leaving home might mean “never again seeing their loved ones,” for those who are afraid of “not feeling appreciated or loved”. Fear, Francis explained, leads to closed-mindedness and this “is inevitably joined by its “twin sister”, paralysis: the feeling of being paralyzed. Thinking that in this world, in our cities and our communities, there is no longer any room to grow, to dream, to create, to gaze at new horizons – in a word to live – is one of the worst things that can happen to us in life.”
But in life there is another form of paralysis, which Francis described as “even more dangerous”. It is the paralysis that comes when we “confuse happiness with a sofa” that “makes us feel comfortable, calm, safe”. “A sofa that promises us hours of comfort so we can escape to the world of videogames”. “‘Sofa-happiness’”, Francis said repeating the expression in Polish, “kanapa-szczęście”, “is probably the most harmful and insidious form of paralysis” because it makes us drowsy and eventually sends us to sleep, “while others – perhaps more alert than we are, but not necessarily better – decide our future for us”.
For sure, Francis remarked, “for many people it is much easier and better to have drowsy and dull kids who confuse happiness with a sofa”. “The truth, though, is something else. Dear young people, we didn’t come into this work to ‘vegetate’.” “It is very sad to pass through life without leaving a mark.” Drugs are harmful, Bergoglio reminded young people, “but there are plenty of other socially acceptable drugs, that can end up enslaving us just the same”.
Instead, “Jesus is the Lord of risk, of the eternal ‘more’. Jesus is not the Lord of comfort, security and ease. Following Jesus demands a good dose of courage, a readiness to trade in the sofa for a pair of walking shoes and to set out on new and uncharted paths. To blaze trails that open up new horizons capable of spreading joy, the joy that is born of God’s love.”
He invited young people to “take the path of the “craziness” of our God, who teaches us to encounter him in the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the friend in trouble, the prisoner, the refugee and the migrant, and our neighbours who feel abandoned”. A God, “who encourages us to be politicians, thinkers, social activists. The God who asks us to devise an economy inspired by solidarity.”
This is the secret, Francis explained to young people: “God wants something from you. God hopes in you. God comes to break down all our fences. He comes to open the doors of our lives.” God “wants to turn your hands, my hands, our hands, into signs of reconciliation, of communion, of creation. He wants your hands to continue building the world of today.”
Personal shortcomings and sins are not a problem. Because, the Pope explained, “when the Lord calls us, he doesn’t worry about what we are, what we have been, or what we have done or not done. Quite the opposite. When he calls us, he is thinking about everything we have to give, all the love we are capable of spreading. His bets are on the future, on tomorrow. Jesus is pointing you to the future.” “Life nowadays,” Francis concluded, “tells us that it is much easier to concentrate on what divides us, what keeps us apart. Have the courage to teach us that it is easier to build bridges than walls! Together we ask that you challenge us to take the path of fraternity. To build bridges… Do you know the first bridge that has to be built? It is a bridge that we can build here and now – by reaching out and taking each other’s hand. Come on, build it now, here, this first of bridges: take each other’s hand. This is a great bridge of brotherhood, and would that the powers of this world might learn to build it… not for pictures on the evening news but for building ever bigger bridges. May this human bridge be the beginning of many, many others; in that way, it will leave a mark.” Hundreds of hands squeeze each other as evening falls and darkness sets over the Campus Misericordiae.
The Pope’s speech was followed by a Eucharistic adoration, during which each young person present lit a candle in prayer, creating a powerful atmosphere of reflection.
At the end of the vigil, the director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, said WYD organisers estimated that there were around 1,600,000 young participants at tonight’s vigil.
