For this year's World Youth Day, Pope Francis gave the theme "Young man, I say to you, arise". In his message, Pope Francis launches an appeal to young people to have the ability to see pain and death - to look at pain and death in the eye. We live in a society where the reality of death, pain, suffering, poverty is camouflaged in different ways because we want to give an idea, or at least an image, of a perfect life. We are often afraid to express our weaknesses and failures because society gives us a subliminal message that there is no room for weaklings in the world. But the covid-19 situation has brought us face-to-face with the reality of sickness, death, poverty, misery, incompetence, injustice, desperation, and insecurity. We see images every day and there is a danger of getting used to them. So Pope Francis asks us: "All around us, but at times also within us, we can see realities of death: physical, spiritual, emotional, social. Do we really notice them, or simply let them happen to us? Is there anything we can do in order to restore life?
Our Christian faith is founded on Christ's resurrection. This is what inspires us to act proactively, to give our own concrete contributions, no matter how small they may be. We believe that we are part of and are weaving history. We learn from those who have gone ahead of us and we hope that with our good choices we leave a better world for future generations. Our Christian faith is personal, but it is not individualistic. It acknowledges that we are part of history. It acknowledges that we are part of a community.
