Blessed are the merciful! World Youth Days, Cracow 2016

By Fr. Mieczysław Piotrowski S.Chr.,
Love One Another! 2017-39
Youth

The XXXI World Youth Days, which took place in Cracow (July 26 through 31, 2016), were a great, joyful, celebration of faith in the real presence of Jesus in the Catholic Church. Youth from 187 countries of the world took part in them.

Two and a half million pilgrims took part in the mass with Pope Francis on the last day of the WYD. St. John Paul II, who initiated these meetings for youth from all over the world in 1984, looked upon the event from Heaven.

The enthusiasm and joy of the faith of the participants at the WYD bear witness to the fact that the only source of indestructible love and joy is faith in the reality of the presence of the risen Christ in the community of the Catholic Church. Jesus is truly present and acts through the sacraments. He forgives all sins in the sacrament of reconciliation, and gives eternal life in the Eucharist, filling the human heart with His divine mercy.

Follow Jesus fervently

During his first meeting with the youth at Cracow’s Blonia Park, the Holy Father said that awareness of the real presence of Christ calls us to follow Him and fervently adhere to His example. This means permitting His merciful love to penetrate our hearts, so that we might also be merciful, that we might manage to forgive and have sympathy in our hearts. The Holy Father said “When Jesus touches a young person’s heart, he or she becomes capable of truly great things. […] a merciful heart is motivated to move beyond its comfort zone. A merciful heart can go out and meet others; it is ready to embrace everyone.”

„If you are weak, if you fall, lift your eyes up; there you will find the outstretched hand of Jesus who says: »get up and follow me«” (Pope Francis)

The Holy Father said with pain that there are young people who, at the age of 23, 24, or 25, behave like retirees. “It pains me”, he admitted. “I worry when I see young people who have »thrown in the towel« before the game has even begun, who are defeated even before they begin to play, who walk around glumly as if life has no meaning. Deep down, young people like this are bored… and boring. They become a nuisance and squander some of the best years of their lives, wasting their energies chasing the peddlers of fond illusions”.

The Holy Father felt that the youth who came to Krakow wanted a different life. “This, my dear friends, is why we are gathered here to help one another other, because we do not want to be robbed of the best of ourselves. We don’t want to permit to be robbed of our energy, our joy, our dreams by fond illusions”.

The Pope went on to explain to the youth what the true key to happiness is. “There is only one way, which cannot be bought or sold, to find fulfilment and to gain new strength. It is not a thing or an object, but a person, and he is alive. His name is Jesus Christ.” Francis reminded the pilgrims that the Savior is with us not only when our lives are working out for us, but also when we fall. “Jesus challenges us, spurs us on and helps us to keep trying whenever we are tempted to give up […]. When mountain climbers reach the peak of a mountain they sing a lovely song which goes something like this: the art of climbing is not a matter of never falling down, but in not lingering in the falls. If you are weak, if you fall, lift your eyes up; there you will find the outstretched hand of Jesus who says: »get up and follow me«. But how many times? Peter asked Jesus: how many times? Seventy-seven times. Jesus always extends his hand when we fall”.

At the Thursday meeting at the Blonia Park the Holy Father finished his catechesis on the need for mercy: “Whoever welcomes Jesus, learns to love as Jesus does. So he asks us if we want a full life: Do you want a complete life? Start by letting yourself be deeply moved in spirit! Because happiness is sown and blossoms in mercy. That is his answer, his offer, his challenge, his adventure: mercy. […] Here we are, Lord! Send us to share your merciful love.”

Where is God if there is evil in the world?

On Friday, July 29th at the end of a deeply moving Way of the Cross, Pope Francis posed the question: “Where is God, if evil is present in our world, if there are men and women who are hungry and thirsty, homeless, exiles and refugees? Where is God, when innocent persons die as a result of violence, terrorism and war? Where is God when cruel diseases destroy the bonds of life and love? Or when children are exploited and humiliated, and suffer from serious pathologies? Where is God in the face of the anguish of those who doubt and are troubled in spirit?”.

The Pope pointed out that we can only look to Jesus and ask him. “And Jesus’ answer is this: »God is in them«. Jesus is in them; He suffers in them and deeply identifies with each of them. He is so closely united to them as to form with them, as it were, »one body«. […] Jesus Himself,” Francis continued, “determined to identify Himself with these our brothers and sisters tested by pain and anguish, by consenting to walk the way of suffering to Calvary. Dying on the cross, He commits Himself to the hands of the Father and, in sacrificial love, takes upon Himself and into Himself the physical, moral, and spiritual wounds of all humanity. Embracing the wood of the cross, Jesus embraces the nakedness and hunger, thirst and loneliness, suffering and death of men and women of all times”.

“There is only one way, which cannot be bought or sold, to find fulfilment and to gain new strength. It is not a thing or an object, but a person, and he is alive. His name is Jesus Christ” (Pope Francis)

The Holy Father reminds us that we walk the road to Heaven when we imitate Christ by performing the physical works of mercy (feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, accepting travelers into our homes, comforting prisoners, and visiting the sick) as well as the spiritual works (counseling the doubtful, teaching the ignorant, admonishing the sinful, comforting the sorrowful, forgiving injury, patiently bearing wrongs, and praying for the living and the dead). At the end of his talk Pope Francis called upon the young to respond to Jesus’ invitation to become a concrete response to the needs and sufferings of humanity, as well as to be signs of His merciful love. “In order to fulfill this mission,” the Pope said, “[Jesus] shows you the way of personal engagement and selfsacrifice: this is the Way of the Cross. The Way of the Cross is the way of happiness and the way of following Jesus to the end, in the often dramatic situations of everyday life,” he added. “It is a way that fears no lack of success, ostracism or solitude, because it fills ours hearts with the fullness of Jesus. […] The Way of the Cross alone defeats sin, evil and death, for it leads to the radiant light of Christ’s resurrection and opens the horizons of a new and fuller life.”

The truth about Divine Mercy

The main theme of the World Youth Days in Cracow was the truth about the Divine Mercy of which the Lord Jesus reminded us in the message conveyed by St. Faustina. In the Diary of this mystic we read: “My daughter, write that the greater the misery of a soul, the greater its right to my mercy, urge all souls to trust in the unfathomable abyss of My mercy because I want to save them all. On the cross the fountain of my Mercy was opened wide by the lance for all souls – no one have I excluded” (Diary 1182).

The Lord God always loves and always forgives, but His boundless mercy can only work in the hearts of those who, with the trustfulness of children, accept the merciful love of God and radically sever themselves from all sin. “But – horror! – there are also souls who voluntarily and consciously reject and scorn this grace. Although a person is at the point of death, the merciful God gives the soul that interior vivid moment so that if the soul is willing, it has the possibility of returning to God. But sometimes the obduracy in souls is so great that consciously they choose hell; they [thus] make useless all the prayers that other souls offer to God for them and even the efforts of God Himself” (Diary 1698).

Consciously and voluntarily remaining in sin, completely rejecting God’s mercy leads to a hardness of heart which causes a person at the moment of death to reject God’s mercy and choose eternity in hell. St. Faustina writes: “Today I was led by an angel to the chasms of hell. It is a place of great torture; how awesomely large and extensive it is. […] Let the sinner know that he will be tortured throughout all eternity in those senses which he made use of to sin. I am writing this at the command of God, so that no soul may find an excuse by saying there is no hell, or that nobody has ever been there, so that no one can say what it is like. I, Sister Faustina, by the order of God, have visited the abysses of hell so that I might tell souls about it and testify to its existence. […] What I have written is but a pale shadow of the things I saw. But I noticed one thing: that most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a hell. When I came back to my senses, I could hardly recover from the fright. How terribly souls suffer there. Consequently I pray even more fervently for the conversion of sinners. I incessantly plead God’s mercy upon them. Oh my Jesus, I would rather be in agony until the end of the world, amidst the greatest sufferings, than offend you by the least sin” (Diary 741).

Source: https://loamagazine.org/archive/2017/2017-39/blessed-are-the-merciful-world-youth-days-cracow-2016

The above article was published with permission from Miłujcie się! in April 2021.

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