Here and Now with Francis 1/15/16 (youth, faith, Jubilee, mercy, Christianity)

By Anonymous

From the message to young people
You are preparing to be Christians capable of making courageous choices and decisions, in order to build daily, even through little things, a world of peace. [...] Yours is a time of life which is full of amazing changes. Everything seems possible and impossible all at once. I repeat what I said to some of your friends: “Remain steadfast in the journey of faith, with firm hope in the Lord. This is the secret of our journey! He gives us the courage to swim against the tide. Pay attention, my young friends: to go against the current; this is good for the heart, but we need courage to swim against the tide. Jesus gives us this courage! … With him we can do great things; he will give us the joy of being his disciples, his witnesses. Commit yourselves to great ideals, to the most important things. We Christians were not chosen by the Lord for little things; push onwards toward the highest principles. Stake your lives on noble ideals” ( Homily at the Conferral of the Sacrament of Confirmation, 2013). [...] Think carefully about the hope and desires you will hand over to Jesus in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and in the Eucharist which we will celebrate together. As you walk through the Holy Door, remember that you are committing yourselves to grow in holiness and to draw nourishment from the Gospel and the Eucharist, the Word and the Bread of life, in order to help build a more just and fraternal world. [full text]

From the homily
Faith always wins, because it turns even defeat into victory, but it is not something “magical” – it is a personal relationship with God that cannot be learned in books, and is in fact a gift from God, a gift that is our for the asking... The Apostle John says that the victory over the world is our faith. “Our faith wins, always!”: “Faith is the victory. Faith: like [that of] this man [who said], ‘If you want to, you can do it.’ The losers of the First Reading prayed to God, bearing the ark, but they had no faith, they had forgotten it. This leper had faith, and when you ask with faith, Jesus himself told us mountains will move. [full text]

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