Hajja Salesjana Jan-Mar 2019

25 H AJJA S ALESJANA I think we must broadcast this to the world: that the Church and her Pastors feel all the young people of the world as her YOUNG, OUR YOUNG PEOPLE, because no one should feel excluded. They must feel that we welcome them, regardless of their situation and their life stories.  A second thing: Visiting the Salesian presences around the world, I have seen many churches in the dioceses that were full because they were filled by young immigrants and their familes. I saw them in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, I saw them in California and New Zealand; in Melbourne and, without going too far, in my native Spain (with thousands and thousands of Latin American brothers and sisters), and in Italy (with thousands of Filipinos in Rome and Turin). And again to myself I repeat: these are our young people, with their families, who also bring a fresh air of faith to our Churches, even as rejection, fear, intolerance and xenophobia grow in our nations. And that’s why I think that talking about young people as a Church means saying a strong decisive and brave word in their favour in all the nations of our local churches, just as Pope Francis does for the entire Universal Church. This is due to the fact that these young immigrants are even more fragile than everyone else. Shall we dare, take up the challenge? Finally, our young people should hear us say that we indeed care for them, and that we want to make a path of life and faith together with them. Our young people must feel our affective and effective presence in their midst. They must feel that we do not want to direct them, nor dictate how they should live, but that we want to share with them the best we have: Jesus Christ, the Lord. They must feel that we are here for them and, if they allow us, to share their happiness and their hopes, their joys, their pains and their tears, their confusion or their search for meaning, their vocation, their present and their future. They must feel that we are whispering God to them. Perhaps we will not reach an extraordinary orthodoxy and orthopraxis, but they will feel, through our little intermediation, that Jesus loves them and always welcomes them. Then shall everything be worthwhile.