CHRIST SEARCHES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE - YOUNG PEOPLE ENCOUNTER CHRIST (cf. TMA, 58)

The pastoral framework

5. Understood and lived as "consignment and re-consignment of the faith" the WYD expresses effectively its significance through the different aspects by which it is characterized within the Great Jubilee:

• As a whole it is an intrinsically missionary event: the love of the Father renews in the Spirit the gift of the Son to the youth of the world, stimulating them to make a free and serious choice, sending them to carry this "good news" to the millenium which is about to begin: "Something which has existed since the beginning, that we have heard, and we have seen with our own eyes; that we have touched with our hands, the Word who is life (since life made itself visible, we have seen it and we

render testimony), we are telling you" (1 Jn 1-3)

• It becomes a marked experience of conversion, reconciliation, pardon and joy as we pass to the third millennium through Christ, door of salvation.

• of grace: the encounter with the living memory of faith, represented by the apostles Peter and Paul and the early martyrs of the Church.

• It receives directly from the hands of the Pope the mandate to return the faith received with commitment for a coherent life of witness and proclamation of Christ in the world.

• It enters the story of each young person as a singular evangelical announcement of peace, freedom, hope to carry with us as we cross the threshold of the third millennium with this gift for humanity of the future.   (continue...)

6. The WYD, with its meaningful jubilee significance, must not appear foreign to the world of youth, because it is not foreign. In fact "with the incarnation the Son of God united himself in a sense to every human being" (Gaudium et spes, 22). This is why "Jesus Christ is the principal way of the Church. He himself is our path to the "house of the Father" (cf Jn 14,1ss) and he is also the path to each human person" (Redemptor hominis 13).

In these two thousand years the Word has truly become incarnate in every people, culture and tradition. He has placed his "tent" in every nation of the earth and calls every man and women to open their hearts and lifes to him. Within the dynamic of the WYD every young person is called to rediscover and renew the great events in the journey of faith begun and lived in their own community: in the family, the parish, church associations etc., with deep gratitude to God, joyous sharing of gifts and full participation in precise commitments:

• The memory of faith received in one's own local Church and lived as an event of unity and communion in the universal Church, now becomes clear and conscious and receives from the Pope. the successor of Peter, confirmation of truth and communion. (continue...)

• sincere confession to God of his or her weaknesses and sins, asking sincerely for forgiveness, experiencing the Father's mercy.

• Everyone is invited to express unconditional acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to the faith of the Church, while travelling specific paths of faith, animated by the resources of the young people themselves, such as perception of new problems of life, the search for new reasons for living and believing, the use of new language and signs, courage to make decisions, a sincere gift of self in favour of the poor and the oppressed.

• The renewal of consignment of the faith is welcomed with a solemn commitment to re-consign it full of fruits (cf Jn 15,18), bearing witness to all, in particular to young peers who, although anxious to open

their life to the transcendent, cannot find suitable answers in the culture in which they are immersed. This missionary responsibility will be lived as "The beginning of the Good News about Jesus Christ" (Mk 1,1) in the third millennium, imitating Jesus in everything among all people, taking responsibility for the questions, the aspirations, the needs of others, guiding them to Him through proclamation and witness of charity.