VATICAN - Pope Benedict XVI opens Rome’s Annual Diocesan Church Meeting: “The more we nourish ourselves with Christ, the more we are in love with Him, the more we feel impelled to bring others to Him: in fact we cannot keep for ourselves the joy of the faith, we feel the need to share it.”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “The discovery of the beauty and joy of the faith is a journey which every new generation must travel for itself because the faith touches all that is ours, our most intimate thoughts, our heart, our intelligence, our freedom in a profoundly personal relationship with the Lord who works in us. However the faith is also, and just as radically, a community attitude, it is the Church’s “we believe”. Therefore the joy of the faith is a joy to share … This is why educating the new generations in the faith is a primary and fundamental task which involves the whole Christian community.” This was a passage of a discourse which Pope Benedict XVI gave in St John’s Cathedral in Rome to open Rome’s Annual Diocesan Church Meeting on the theme: "The joy of the faith and education in the faith of the young generations".
Remarking on the difficulties evangelisation encounters today the Pope identified two basic interdependent lines in present day secularised culture: agnosticism and a process of relativisation and uprooting. In this situation everyone - especially children, adolescents and young people - “needs to live the faith as joy, to savour the profound serenity which comes from the encounter with the Lord... The source of Christian joy is the certainty that we are loved by God, loved personally by our Creator, by the One who holds the entire universe in his hands and loves each one of us and the entire human family with a passionate and faithful love, a love which is greater that our infidelities and sins, a forgiving love”.
The Church has the great mission to help children and young people discover Christ the path to salvation and joy. “It is indispensable - and this is the task is entrusted to Christian families, priests, catechists, educators, young people themselves towards their peers, to our parishes, associations and movements, and the whole diocesan community - for new generations to experience the Church as a truly reliable company of friends, close at all times and under any circumstances in life, whether happy and gratifying or arduous and dark, company which will never leave us not even at death, because it bears within it the promise of eternity.”
The Pope then stressed the need to fight the widespread prejudice that “Christianity with its commandments and prohibitions puts up too many obstacles to love, and prevents man and woman from living to the full the happiness they find in their reciprocal love. On the contrary, rather than suffocate it, Christian faith and morals intend to render love healthy, strong and truly free: precisely this is the sense of the Ten Commandments which are not a series of ‘no’ but rather a great ‘yes’ to love and to life”. Therefore in the work of education the important question of love must not be overlooked, “however we must introduce the integral dimension of Christian love, where love for God and love for man are indissoluble and where love of others is a very concrete commitment… to propose to children and young people practical experience of service to those in need is part of authentic and complete education to the faith”.
A central place should be given to the question of truth: “with faith in fact we accept God’s gift of himself as he reveals himself to us creatures made in his image and likeness; we receive and accept Truth which our mind can neither fully comprehend nor possess, but which precisely for this reason broadens the horizons of our knowledge allowing us to reach the Mystery in which we are immersed and to find in God the definitive sense of our existence … faith, which is a very personal human act, is a decision made in freedom and which can also be rejected. This brings us to a second dimension of the faith, it entails entrusting ourselves to a person: not any person, but to Jesus Christ and to the Father by whom He is sent. To believe means to establish a very personal bond with our Creator and Redeemer, through the working of the Holy Spirit in our heart and to make this bond the basis for our whole life”.
Benedict XVI encouraged those present to “compare the truth of faith with authentic conquests of human knowledge. Scientific progress is rapid and not rarely it is presented as contrary to the affirmations of the faith, and this causes confusion and renders the acceptance of Christian truth more difficult… dialogue between faith and reason, if it is sincere and serious, offers the possibility to perceive effectively and convincingly, the reasonableness of faith in God- not in any God but in the God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ - and to demonstrate also that in the same Jesus Christ lies the fulfilment of every genuine human longing”.
The encounter with Christ “is more direct, is strengthened and deepened, and becomes truly able to permeate and mark our entire life” in prayer. Benedict XVI, calling to mind World Youth Day in Cologne, asked young people and all those present and the whole diocese of Rome, to be “assiduous in prayer, spiritually united with Mary our Mother, to adore the living Christ in the Eucharist, to be ever more in love with Him, our brother and real friend, the spouse of the Church, our faithful and merciful God who loved us first”.
“The more we nourish ourselves with Christ, the more we are in love with Him - the Holy Father said - , the more we feel impelled to bring others to Him: in fact we cannot keep for ourselves the joy of the faith, we feel the need to share it. The need is all the stronger and more urgent in the presence of the strange forgetfulness of God which exists today in vast areas of the world, and to a certain extent, even here in Rome”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 6/6/2006, righe 69, parole 1.013)