By: Benedict XVI

Talking with God every day, reading the Bible, going to mass on Sundays, telling Jesus Christ our joys and sorrows, being an example for or being useful to others, are some of the advises from the Pope to young people.

1) Talking with God

“Some of you could identify with Edith Stein’s description of her own youth, she, who lived later at the Carmel in Cologne: “She had lost consciously and deliberately the habit of praying”. During these days you can recover the vibrating experience of praying as a dialogue with God. We know God loves us and at the same time we want to love Him”.

2) Telling Him our joys and sorrows

“Open your heart to God. Let yourself be surprised by Jesus Christ. Give Him the “right to talk with you”. Open the doors of your freedom to His merciful love. Show your joys and sorrows to Jesus Christ, let him enlighten your mind with His light and let Him touch your heart with His grace.

3) Trust Jesus Christ

“Dear young people, the happiness you are looking for, the happiness you have the right to live, has a name, a face: Jesus from Nazareth in the Eucharist. Only He offers life completeness to humanity. Say “yes”, together with Mary to the God that wants to devote to us. I will repeat today what I said at the beginning of my pontificate: Those of you, who let Jesus Christ enter your life, has nothing, nothing to lose of the things that make life free, beautiful and great. Only with this friendship the doors of life will open for you. Only with this friendship the great potentialities of human condition will open. Only with this friendship you will experiment what is beautiful and what makes us free. Be totally convinced: Jesus Christ does not take the beautiful and great from us; on the contrary everything he does is perfect for the glory of God, mankind happiness and the world salvation.

4) Be happy: want to be saints

“Beyond the special consecrated vocations, there is the vocation of every baptized individual: this is also a vocation for that high level of ordinary Christian life that is expressed through sanctity. When one finds Jesus and one accepts His Gospel, life changes and one feels compelled to communicate the others one’s own experience (…). The Church needs saints. We are all called to sanctity and only saints can renew humanity. I invite you to make an effort today to serve Christ, no matter what it takes. The encounter with Jesus Christ will let you enjoy inside His living and vivifying presence, to give testimony of it, later, with all the people around you”.

5) God: a conversation subject with friends

“There are so many fellows that do not know yet God’s love, or that try to fill their heart with insignificant substitutes. Therefore, it is urgent to be witnesses of the love found in Christ. Dear youth, the Church needs authentic witnesses for the new evangelization; men and women whose life have been transformed by their encounter with Jesus; men and women capable to communicate this experience with the others”.

6) Go to mass on Sundays

Do not stop participating in the Eucharist on Sundays and help others to discover it. We must understand it deeper and deeper every time and learn how to love it so that we can enjoy the happiness that flows from it and that we need. Let’s make a compromise, it is worth it! Let’s discover the intimate wealth of the church liturgy and its true greatness: we do not prepare a celebration, it is the living God, Who prepares a celebration for us. With the love towards the Eucharist you will also rediscover the Reconciliation Sacrament, in which the merciful kindness of God always allows us to start again our life.


7) To demonstrate that God is not sad

If you have discovered Christ you must lead others towards Him. Such a great joy cannot be kept for ourselves. It is imperative to share it. In many different parts of the world there is a strange forgetfulness of God. It seems as though everything were the same without Him. But at the same time there is a frustration and dissatisfaction feeling of everything and everybody. We feel like saying: It is impossible that life is that way!

8) To know how to have faith

Help mankind to discover the real star that shows us the way towards Jesus Christ. Let’s try to know Him better each time, in order to be able to guide the others towards Him. This is why love for the Holy Scriptures is so important, and consequently, to know Church’s faith, which explains the sense of the Scriptures.

9) To Help: to be useful

If we think and live by virtue of the communion with Christ, our eyes are opened, and then we will not live worried only for ourselves but we will see where and how we are needed. If we live and act in this way we will soon realize that it is much more beautiful to be useful and be available for the others than living worried for our own comfort. I know that young people dream of great things, that you want a better world. Show it to humanity, show it to the world, which is expecting this testimony from Jesus´ disciples and above all, through your love, mankind will be able to discover the star we follow as believers.

10) To read the Bible

The secret to have a “heart that understands” is to have a heart with the capacity of listening. We can reach this by constantly meditating on God’s word and bind to it, making always efforts to know it better. Dear young people, I urge you to establish a greater intimacy with the Bible, to have it at hand so that it becomes your compass to show you the way. If you read the Bible you will learn to know Christ. St. Jerome says, in this respect: “If you do not know the Scriptures, you do not know Christ”.

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Summarizing…

You must build your life in Christ, joyfully accepting His word and practicing His doctrine: young people of the third millennium, here you have your program! It is urgent that we have a new generation of apostles who follow the word of Christ, capable of facing our time and age challenges and willing to spread Gospel everywhere. This is what the Lord is demanding from you, what the Church is inviting you to do, this is what the world -without knowing it- expects from you! And if Jesus calls you, do not be afraid of answering Him with generosity, especially when He invites you to follow Him through consecrated or priestly life. Do not be afraid; trust Him and you will not be disappointed.

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