{"id":340994,"date":"2012-03-28T06:20:50","date_gmt":"2012-03-28T04:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/the-pope-to-young-people-be-witnesses-of-joy\/"},"modified":"2024-06-06T12:06:18","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T10:06:18","slug":"the-pope-to-young-people-be-witnesses-of-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/the-pope-to-young-people-be-witnesses-of-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pope to Young People: Be witnesses of joy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img alt=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-59486\" style=\"margin-right: 10px;border: 0pt none\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/WYD_Spain.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"362\" height=\"238\" \/>  This year,\u201d the Holy Father begins by saying, \u201cthe theme of the World Youth Day is brought to us by an exhortation from the Letter of St Paul to the Philippians: \u201cRejoice in the Lord always! I say it again, rejoice!\u201d (Phil 4:4). Joy is in fact an essential element of the Christian experience. (. . . ) And we see what a great strong attraction it has. In a world so often marked by sadness and anxiety it is an important witness to the reliability of the Christian faith.\u201d  As he describes some of the characteristics of joy Benedict XVI underscores that \u201cour hearts are made for joy\u201d and that \u201cGod is the source of true joy.\u201d He explains to young people how to find and to \u201cpreserve Christian joy in their hearts through living the Word.  His message goes on dealing with \u201cjoy and love\u2019 which, according to Benedict XVI, are intimately linked: \u201cLove produces joy, and joy is a form of love.\u201d And recalling a statement of Teresa of Calcutta: \u201c. . . God loves those who give with joy. And whoever gives joyfully gives more.\u201d  He then goes on to discuss \u201cthe joy of conversion\u201d and the challenge of discovering \u201cjoy in trials\u201d. \u201cSuffering,\u201d says the Pope, \u201ccan be transfigured by love and be mysteriously inhabited by joy.\u201d Here he offers two young people as models: Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901-1925) and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chiaraluce.org\/it\/Home\/Index\"><strong>Chiara Badano<\/strong><\/a> (1971-1990), quoting a letter that Chiara Badano wrote to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/chiara-lubich\/chi-e-chiara\/\"><strong>Chiara Lubich<\/strong><\/a>, dated December 20, 1989 in which the young Blessed confesses \u201cI suffer much physically, but my soul is singing\u201d.  The text concludes with an invitation to young people to become \u201cwitnesses of joy\u201d because, according to the Holy Father, \u201cyou cannot be happy unless others are: and so joy must be shared.\u201d  <strong>Complete text:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vatican.va\/holy_father\/benedict_xvi\/messages\/youth\/documents\/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20120315_youth_en.html\">MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI FOR THE TWENTY-SEVENTH WORLD YOUTH DAY 2012<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The message of Benedict XVI for the 27th World Youth Day 2012 beneath the banner of joy \u201c. . . in a world so often marked by sadness and anxiety\u201d.<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-340994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340994","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=340994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}