Lisbon, Portugal, Aug 3, 2023 / 08:30 am (CNA).
“When you preach the real Christ, not a watered-down Christ, it lights a fire in people,” Bishop Robert Barron said to applause from tens of thousands of young people at a World Youth Day gathering in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday evening.
The event, hosted by the U.S. bishops’ conference, culminated in a eucharistic procession and holy hour, which prompted a profound silence among a crowd that had been singing, dancing, cheering, and chanting “U.S.A.” just an hour before.
An estimated more than 10,000 teens, young adults, and their leaders, as well as 30-some U.S. bishops, adored the Eucharist to silence, worship music, and meditations in Lisbon’s Parque da Quinta das Conchas e dos Lilases Aug. 2.
The national gathering for U.S. pilgrims to WYD also attracted some people from outside North America, including some German, Austrian, and Irish pilgrims, who came to the event to hear the keynote delivered by Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota.
In his speech, Barron emphasized that every person has a unique mission from God and that money and popularity are not what will make you happy.
“What will make you happy is finding your mission,” he said.
The almost three-hour event began with musical performances by DJ Ivan Diaz and Catholic worship music artist PJ Anderson.
Tony Meléndez, a Nicaraguan-American guitar player and singer-songwriter born without arms, also played. Meléndez played the guitar with his feet in a special performance for St. John Paul II in September 1987. John Paul II, visibly moved, embraced the musician.
An enthusiastic crowd waving U.S., state, and diocesan flags danced and sang along to the music.
The three artists also provided background music in English and Spanish during parts of eucharistic adoration.
The evening closed with a “vocations call” from Bishop Edward Burns of Dallas. He started by explaining that based on U.S. surveys, an estimated 38% of men in the priesthood, and women and men in religious life, attended a World Youth Day.
He invited any of the young people present considering a priestly or religious vocation to stand or raise their hands to be recognized and applauded. He said those present, including the bishops, would be praying for the many youth who raised their hands.
“Our future religious brothers and sisters, 38%, are here in our midst!” Burns pronounced to the sound of cheers. Most of the bishops seated on the stage gave a standing ovation to the young people in the crowd.
Earlier in the evening, the U.S. bishops’ conference had handed out holy cards with an icon of the face of Jesus and a QR code on the back to be scanned to find out more information about vocations.
More than 28,600 teens and young adults, most between the ages of 18 and 25, and their leaders traveled from across the United States to attend World Youth Day 2023, according to the bishops’ conference.
In addition to numerous priests and religious brothers and sisters, 61 U.S. bishops also traveled to Lisbon, many of whom were present at the Aug. 2 national gathering.
More than 35 bishops from the U.S. are also leading some of WYD’s daily “Rise Up!” sessions Aug. 2–4, which are intended to be conversation-style catechesis.
Bishop Barron, the founder of the Word on Fire ministry, is also the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ chairman of the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, which oversees the U.S. involvement in WYD.
In his speech Aug. 2, one of five he has given or will give during the week in Lisbon, he quoted from a homily by St. Paul VI given in Manila, Philippines, during an apostolic visit in November 1970.
“Jesus Christ: You have heard him spoken of; indeed the greater part of you are already his: You are Christians. So, to you Christians I repeat his name, to everyone I proclaim him: Jesus Christ is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega; he is the king of the new world; he is the secret of history; he is the key to our destiny. He is the mediator, the bridge, between heaven and earth. He is more perfectly than anyone else the Son of Man, because he is the Son of God, eternal and infinite. He is the son of Mary, blessed among all women, his mother according to the flesh, and our mother through the sharing in the Spirit of his mystical body,” Barron quoted the late pope.
“Jesus Christ is our constant preaching,” he continued the quotation. “It is his name that we proclaim to the ends of the earth and throughout all ages. Remember, remember, remember this and ponder on it: The pope has come here among you and has proclaimed Jesus Christ!”
“That’s the new evangelization, that’s the pattern, that’s the message,” Barron commented, adding that that is how Jesus wants to be known.
“When you preach the real Christ, not a watered down Christ, it lights a fire in people” and they want to know more, he said.
The bishop noted that another popular value in our culture today is safety. Safety is not a bad thing to consider, but a religion that had its God hang on a cross “is not a religion putting a high priority on safety,” he added to applause.
The main thrust of the popular speaker’s address was a reflection on the road to Emmaus episode in chapter 24 of the Gospel of Luke.
He observed that “we’re all sinners here, which means we all walk the wrong way,” and invited those present to think about the people in their lives who have walked with them in their journey of faith, who were “Christ in hidden form,” just like Jesus was for the disciples walking to Emmaus.
“Thank God for those people,” he said.
Barron also noted the example of Pope Francis, saying he believes in 200-300 years, Francis will be remembered as “a great pope of the merciful Christ who accompanied sinners.”
He went on to tell the young people that like “God listens to us: The Church should listen to you.”
The bishop invited them to also share with others the real Jesus, not just the facts or “data” about him, following the example of the Lord on the road to Emmaus: first walking with them and listening to them, and then speaking to them about the truth.
“The Church has imitated the Lord over the centuries,” he said. “The Church teaches.”
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God became incarnate among men for the forgiveness of sin and to share in God’s very Divine life. That’s the Gospel message; that’s the keryma; that’s what we’re called to proclaim. Anything short of that is mush.
Does “anything short of that” include repeatedly trashing one’s lawful ecclesiastical superiors in front of lay catholics, non-catholics, and non-believers in order to farm social media likes?
Does it include violating the Eighth Commandment by presumption to assume that when ecclesial authorities do great harm to the world and God’s Church by bearing false witness against the faith, that the practice of noting this reality is motivated by seeking acclaim rather than hope and concern that some process of redress might take place?
Yes, yes, but we also read: “Barron also noted the example of Pope Francis, saying he believes in 200-300 years, Francis will be remembered as “a great pope of the merciful Christ who accompanied sinners.”
Yes, again, but as an integral part of the irreducible coherence between mercy AND truth…
So, wondering here—if synodality goes totally off the rails on certain ecclesial and moral “issues,” whether as part of the mystery of the Church at large, will we laity be faulted by history for having prayed too little for a pope who seems to have a blind side?….A “sinner” as he often says, and therefore with a blind side just like the rest of us in one way or another.
Wondering—in the mysterious economy-of-grace—whether the gradualist self-destruction of the Church will be laid at the feet of not only the one, but especially the many? On the other hand, it was the laity who best resisted the 4th-century Arian blindside heresy, which even in the decades following the Council of Nicaea was endorsed (it is said) by possibly 80 percent of the bishops.
In future history, then, who will be the ever-new St. Jerome: “The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian”?
When Amoris Laetitia was published Bishop Barron admitted, as most of us, that the first two thirds of it was fine because it affirmed the sacrament of marriage. Then he admitted that there was moral relativism inferred in the very language of the remainder. To be blunt there is no way of reading such things as a man can “discern” in his “concrete circumstances in today’s world,” as though morality is completely different in “today’s world,” that it is God’s will that he abandon his first family and run away with his mistress to start a second family. In Francis’ concept of “mercy,” the victims of sin are not thought of, only those who might suffer the burden of God given guilt, the same depth of reasoning of any 1960s hippie. Now the lukewarmness of Barron dare not offend Francis on particulars. Let the young be deceived.
Thinking positively, we are again living in an age when St. Jerome could describe Pelagius as a “fat hound weighed down by Irish porridge, who displayed his fat even on his forehead.”
I encourage Backwardists to enjoy this sublime, saintly satire in the original. As for me, I pray daily for an increase of holy invective in the vernacular.
Would the good bishop help by pointing out or preaching to the youth the real version of Jesus?
In these trying times, what many believe to be ‘real’ may prove more attractively and more compellingly relative than real.
Hope aside, is hell real? Do any created beings dwell there? Why or why not? What did the real Jesus say about people going to hell? What has the Church said about people going to hell? I really want to know.
We may test the message by comparing what the speakers in general say to the fiery specificity of the words and actions of Christ. I’m reminded of the tongues of fire given to the Apostles at Pentecost.
The photo of the young boy with the American flag tied and draped much like a cape is disturbing. That ranks right up there with athletes draping the national colors over their shoulders after an event. Positively cringeworthy every time that I see it.
Title 4, US Code, Chapter 1, para. 8 Respect for Flag
To wit: (d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds but always allowed to fall free.
Young people – they are ambassadors of the Good News. The present and the future of the Church are safe in the hands of the youth.
You might want to try backing this up in some fashion.
It’s not like today’s young people can do any worse than some of today’s clergy who spend inordinate amounts on social media discouraging the faith by trashing Pope Francis, the local bishop, and the ordinary form of the Roman Rite.
If such a cleric was assigned to my parish I would probably join the Orthodox Church or embrace atheism.
Barron also noted the example of Pope Francis, saying he believes in 200-300 years, Francis will be remembered as “a great pope of the merciful Christ who accompanied sinners.”
I doubt it. I believe he will be posthumously anathematized like Pope Honorious III.
Speaking of “a religion putting a high priority on safety,” our Bishops who care are under such tremendous pressure to praise and do damage control for the boss. Problem is, the real Boss is not being preached. Lukewarm…
This reminded me of an extreme example of taking orders. It was an interview with a self proclaimed atheist General who headed up a UN force sent into the Rwanda genocide. He said two things I’ll never forget:
1. During the late peak of the killing, he had to sit down with Hutu génocidaires. They were still wearing banana leaves, had blood all over them and hatchets in hand. He said that they were freezing cold to the touch. This encounter made him an agnostic regarding God since he had already met evil.
2. Crestfallen, he also admitted to daily regret for not violating his orders to stand down by intervening to end the bloodshed. Instead, he simply had his forces instruct Tutsi’s who could not escape to touch as many Hutus as they could – it was their only hope of surviving by having their humanity recognized.
I told this story to Immaculée Ilibagiza. She said that this is what her father did. They murdered him anyway, like Christ. My guess is that the Apostles boldly preached the real Jesus right up to the end. No petting, pandering or enabling enablers – just the real Jesus Christ, calling all to repent.