{"id":292500,"date":"2011-05-23T07:39:56","date_gmt":"2011-05-23T05:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/with-the-young-people-in-prague\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:43:04","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:43:04","slug":"with-the-young-people-in-prague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/with-the-young-people-in-prague\/","title":{"rendered":"With the young people in Prague"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> \u201cIn 2007 I was diagnosed with leukemia. At first it I reacted well to the news, but in a second moment I was fearful of dying. The support I received from the youth of the Movement, the Gen<\/strong>, which was expressed in so many ways, through sms, emails, and visits was important. During the third cycle of chemotherapy, there was a girl in the hospital with me who had just become a mother. Her condition was worse than mine, she was neither married nor baptized. Nevertheless we spoke about God, about faith, and matrimony. Athough an attempted transplant had failed to help her overcome the disease, just before her health began to deteriorate, she had expressed the desire to marry. So, when she was already dying, I proposed to her family that she receive baptism. A priest came to the hospital and she was baptized \u201cMargherita Maria\u201d. A few days later she died on the feastday of Saint Margherita Maria Alacoque.\u201d \"\"<\/a>The day-long meeting began with this strong testimony given by Agnieska and it continued with experiences from daily life offered by the young protagonists of the Movement at the Mariapolis Centre. <\/strong>\u201cTraveling the Road Together\u201d was the title given to the day which, as the organisers tell us, was meant to offer an inside look into the \u201cexceptional life of the ideal we believe in\u201d<\/em>. \u201cTo tell the truth, I was sceptical at first,\u201d<\/em> confesses Lukas, \u201cI thought that there would be fifty young people at most, but that\u2019s not what happened. Evidently the ideal of unity does have something to say.\u201d <\/em> The hall was barely able to hold the 150 youths who showed up from different regions of the Czech Republic. For most of them it was their first encounter with the Focolare Movement and they were not bashful about expressing their happiness at having found something so great. \u201cI learnt about the Focolare from a friend and I didn\u2019t know what to expect,\u201d <\/em>says 17 year old Kristina, \u201cbut it really surprised me a lot because of the great love you feel from the persons who talk here. I must say that I strongly felt the presence of God. This really moved me, because my father is not a believer and I felt very bad that he didn\u2019t get to know this movement.\u201d <\/em> <\/em> \"\"<\/a>Maria Voce and Giancarlo Faletti share their own \u201cjourneys\u201d<\/strong>, the way they met the Ideal of unity all the way to the point of deciding to follow God along the path of the focolare. Immediately questions began to rain down, and the answers were diverse and profound. To one girl who asked her where she could find the courage needed to make radical choices, free of conditioning, Maria Voce suggested: \u201cThe period of our life when we’re young is when we make important choices: if you don\u2019t make them now, later you won\u2019t have the opportunity. Yes, you need courage, but there is courage within you and you\u2019ll find it in your relationship with God. If you choose out of love, then you don\u2019t need to worry. Don\u2019t put it off forever and don\u2019t let others make your choices for you.\u201d <\/em> The invitation was to \u201clove to the maximum\u201d,<\/strong> as Jesus had done on the Cross, \u201calways beginning again\u201d, and never dwelling on “useless regret”. The audience listened attentively in silence. The 150 young people didn\u2019t want to leave. Twenty-seven year old Elizabeth confided: \u201cI\u2019m very critical and at the same time I\u2019m seeking to uderstand how and where to live the Christian life well. I\u2019m searching for my path, and so I gladly agreed to find out what the Focolare Movement was about. What I heard spoken today has been a great enrichment for me and it\u2019s encouraged me to decide to become part of something. I leave here with the understanding that whatever I do in my life, God is important and I can\u2019t only keep him for myself.\u201d <\/em>Not only for Elizabeth, but for many of those present it really seemed like a new path had opened for them.   By Aurora Nicosia<\/em> [nggallery id=43]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Journeying together: 150 young people from different regions of the Czech Republic, came together in search for something great. It was a meeting in which many felt challenged to make new unconditional choices in life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}