My Dearly Beloved Youth,
It is a happy occasion for me to address you in preparation for World Youth Day, due to take place next July.
This year is your year; it is the “Year of the Youth” in our Eparchy. We have announced it, and we called and still do call people of various age groups, to work for the success of this year, so that together we may reap its desired fruit in due time.
You, my dear young people, have the prerogative to make of your year, a year filled — like yourselves— with activities and liveliness, with dynamism and vigour, that will help you understand the reality of your lives in a deep and responsible fashion.
What is of interest to us and to you is the spiritual and the social dimension, a dimension that binds you to God and to each other.
If our relationship with God passes through others, then it is fair to say that the relationship with anyone starts from the love of God that has been poured out on us, and by which we become witnesses in all times.
The Lord Jesus has loved you, each one of you, He looks at you, just as that rich young man that Jesus looked at and loved. (Mk 10:21). Jesus listens to each one of you, He stands knocking on your door, the door of your hearts; He invites you to have life and life to the full. (Jn 10:10). All that is asked of you is to listen to Him, to hear His gentle voice, in the busy-ness of the world.
He whispers in each one’s ear, asking you the same question He asked Peter: “Do you love me more than these?” (Jn 21:15), and He calls you as he called His disciples, “Go deep.” (Lk 5:4)
This invitation, my dear young people, I like to repeat within your hearing. You know well how the world of today keeps us on a superficial level, preventing us from going deep to the essence, and discerning between the genuine and the false, between the permanent and the changing. Perhaps our invitation rings true with our Maronite Youth who carry the marks of their Church, a Church rooted in Christian history, and who carry its flame that started in the Holy Land and has become now a light in all the nations.
If the Expansion of the Maronites is a field for mission and witness in the face of modern challenges and globalization, it can only be for you, our young people, a clear invitation spurring you on towards a future that awaits your ideas, initiatives and daring.
The coming Maronite World Youth Days of next July, which we called “Maronite 08”, leading to World Youth Day 2008, is the best and most effective opportunity to launch your ideas and initiatives, clarifying and elaborating them through dialogue in the 3-day Forum with other Maronite Youth coming to Sydney from all corners of the world.
A great thing is awaiting the Youth of our Maronite Church in Australia. The eyes of all Maronites from all over the world are on you, they are following your moves, and we wish to see your role as a pioneering one, in focusing the image of Maroniteness
not only in this century, but also in the new millennium.
You and other young people are better suited, more capable of devising a road-map that will lead our Church towards the future, a plan well-founded without any doubt, on firm foundations, to which history will add strength and fortitude.
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