To fully experience love and hope, young people must approach the journey of life as pilgrims and not just sightseers seeking the perfect selfie, Pope Francis said in his message for World Youth Day 2024. Source: CNS.
“Do not be like superficial sightseers, blind to the beauty around you, never discovering the meaning of the roads you take, interested only in a few fleeting moments to capture in a selfie. Tourists do this,” the Pope said in a message to young people ahead of the local celebrations of World Youth Day on November 24.
“Pilgrims, on the other hand, immerse themselves fully in the places they encounter, listen to the message they communicate and make them a part of their quest for happiness and fulfillment,” the Pope wrote in the message released by the Vatican yesterday.
The November celebrations of World Youth Day are taking place just a month before Pope Francis is scheduled to open the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica and inaugurate the Holy Year 2025.
“The Jubilee pilgrimage,” he told young people, “is meant to be the outward sign of an inward journey that all of us are called to make toward our final destination.”
While expressing his hope that many young people would be able to make a pilgrimage to Rome during the Holy Year, including the July 28-August 3 celebration of the Jubilee of Youth, the Pope said he hoped the year would be an opportunity for all Catholics to have “a moment of genuine, personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the ‘Door’ of our salvation”.
Three attitudes should characterise Catholics’ celebration of the Holy Year, he said.
“First, thanksgiving, with hearts open to praise God for his many gifts, especially the gift of life. Then, a spirit of seeking, as an expression of our heart’s unquenchable thirst to encounter the Lord,” he said.
“And finally, penance, which helps us to look within, to acknowledge the wrong paths and decisions we have at times taken and, in this way, to be converted to the Lord and to the light of his Gospel.”
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Be pilgrims, not tourists in life, Pope tells young people (By Cindy Wooden, CNS)
