The formative contents were proposed through workshop method:
catechetical moment, practical-creative activity, witness of life, personal
reflection, prayer, research, animation... Father Emanuele Casola spoke on the
theme “Faith and Tradition”. Biagio Conte gave his witness as Founder of the
“City of the poor and of hope”. The participants had a way to reflect on the
Tradition and Witness of faith through the streets of the city.
The youth had the possibility of making further step ahead in the formative
itinerary. The Meeting offered the possibility of verifying how the itinerary of
faith was accomplished, and make recommendations for the next year.
“Tradition and witness of faith”, were the pillars of the formative subjects 2007-
2008 that the Agrigento event – in the trail of the Verona Meeting– had proposed
to the Guanellian youth in Italy.
In the light of what they had received, during next year our youth will be
helped to give the reason of their hope with “a foot on the ground and another on
the move”. This slogan of Father Emmanuele gives the synthesis of the idea of
Tradition that in itself is synonym of stability (foot on the ground) and of
movement (foot on the move). With the values transmitted and received in the
from the local Church, the Congregations and the Movement itself, the youth
could revive the sense of Christian identity and their belonging to the Catholic
Christian Church.
During this itinerary they should remain firm in the
Word of God and in the
Magisterium, and as in a race, ready to receive the baton of faith, conscious of
having deep roots and to look at great examples, like the witnesses of faith and
saints who went before us and accompany us in the adhesion to Christ and the
Church. The youth could experience in this way how the Christian tradition
forms
strong characters, able to distance themselves
from what is not in harmony
with the Gospel, and be ready to pay a hard price, even their life, if it is
necessary...
Attracted by values, and solicited by projects of good-works (matured in
prayer, in the Eucharist, at the feet of the Cross and in self-giving), they could
offer a courageous, coherent and responsible witness within their family, at
school, in the ecclesial community and in society. As witnesses of Christ, and
desiring to promote life from its birth to its natural end, and by generating life
around them, they are “youth truly young” because alive!
During the Meeting the young people were called to “feel, see and speak...”
by the ways of the heart.
To
feel God as a Father and to feel themselves as his sons, in a relationship
that is “heart to Heart”.
To
see the poor – overcoming forms of egoism, indifference and
superficiality – and to provide for them (like the Good Samaritan, like Father
Louis Guanella, like Rosario Livatino...), so that they
are not left behind or at the
margins
of society, and to make them sit at “our own table”.
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