World Youth Day kicks off with message: 'Have the courage to be saints'

Opening Mass for World Youth Day 2019 in Panama. Credit: David Ramos / CNA.

Panama City, Panama, Jan 23, 2019 / 01:59 pm (CNA).- At the opening Mass of World Youth Day 2019, Archbishop José Domingo Ulloa Mendieta of Panama told young people from across the globe that a life of holiness is really possible, with the help of God’s grace.
“The Church is looking forward to this springtime of young people. We have confidence in you, we expect a lot from you, because we are fully convinced that...the changes and transformations that humanity and the Church require are in your hands,” he said.

To prepare themselves for the responsibilities ahead of them, Archbishop Ulloa said, young people must learn their personal, familial, cultural, and faith history. He emphasized the role of grandparents in transmitting family identity.

He encouraged the youth to swim against the tide of the culture, fighting for holiness rather than simply seeking the avoidance of suffering in life.
“Being holy leads us to break out of spiritual and material corruption, of all that which causes us evil and offends God,” he said. “A saint defends the defenseless – the unborn, but also the born child who is destitute, a saint defends migrants, seeks justice, prays, lives in and loves the community, is joyful and has a sense of humor, is always striving, breaks out of mediocrity, lives the mercy of God and shares it with his neighbor.”
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from around the world are expected to flood Panama this week for World Youth Day, which culminates with an overnight prayer vigil and Mass with Pope Francis Jan. 26-27.
The opening Mass for the event was held at Santa María La Antigua Field in Panama City.

Archbishop Ulloa reminded those present that sainthood is “not a myth,” but a reality for their lives. He pointed to the witness of saints including Martin de Porres, Rose of Lima, Juan Diego, José Sánchez del Río, John Bosco, Oscar Romero and John Paul II.
The archbishop of Panama expressed his hope that World Youth Day would be a “balm” for the plight of many young people, especially migrants, those from homelands experiencing violence, and people suffering due to “drug trafficking, human trafficking, crime and so many other social evils.”
He encouraged young people to trust in the Virgin, not only asking for her intercession, but also striving to imitate her virtues.
“Let's not be afraid, dear young people, have the courage to be saints in today's world,” he said, adding that in doing so, “you're not renouncing your youth or your joy; completely the opposite, you will show the world that it's possible to be happy with so little, because Jesus Christ, the reason for our happiness, has already won for us eternal life with his resurrection.”




https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/world-youth-day-kicks-off-with-message-have-the-courage-to-be-saints-27126

The Lord tells Job of his creation

Job 38

The Lord Speaks

38 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

² “Who is this that obscures my plans
    with words without knowledge?
³ Brace yourself like a man;
    I will question you,
    and you shall answer me.

⁴ “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
    Tell me, if you understand.
⁵ Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
    Who stretched a measuring line across it?
⁶ On what were its footings set,
    or who laid its cornerstone—
⁷ while the morning stars sang together
    and all the angels^[a] shouted for joy?

⁸ “Who shut up the sea behind doors
    when it burst forth from the womb,
⁹ when I made the clouds its garment
    and wrapped it in thick darkness,
¹⁰ when I fixed limits for it
    and set its doors and bars in place,
¹¹ when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
    here is where your proud waves halt’?

¹² “Have you ever given orders to the morning,
    or shown the dawn its place,
¹³ that it might take the earth by the edges
    and shake the wicked out of it?
¹⁴ The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
    its features stand out like those of a garment.
¹⁵ The wicked are denied their light,
    and their upraised arm is broken.

¹⁶ “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
    or walked in the recesses of the deep?
¹⁷ Have the gates of death been shown to you?
    Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
¹⁸ Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
    Tell me, if you know all this.

¹⁹ “What is the way to the abode of light?
    And where does darkness reside?
²⁰ Can you take them to their places?
    Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
²¹ Surely you know, for you were already born!
    You have lived so many years!

²² “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
    or seen the storehouses of the hail,
²³ which I reserve for times of trouble,
    for days of war and battle?
²⁴ What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
    or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
²⁵ Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
    and a path for the thunderstorm,
²⁶ to water a land where no one lives,
    an uninhabited desert,
²⁷ to satisfy a desolate wasteland
    and make it sprout with grass?
²⁸ Does the rain have a father?
    Who fathers the drops of dew?
²⁹ From whose womb comes the ice?
    Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
³⁰ when the waters become hard as stone,
    when the surface of the deep is frozen?

³¹ “Can you bind the chains^[b] of the Pleiades?
    Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
³² Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons^[c]
    or lead out the Bear^[d] with its cubs?
³³ Do you know the laws of the heavens?
    Can you set up God’s^[e] dominion over the earth?

³⁴ “Can you raise your voice to the clouds
    and cover yourself with a flood of water?
³⁵ Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
    Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
³⁶ Who gives the ibis wisdom^[f]
    or gives the rooster understanding?^[g]
37 Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
    Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens
³⁸ when the dust becomes hard
    and the clods of earth stick together?

³⁹ “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness
    and satisfy the hunger of the lions
⁴⁰ when they crouch in their dens
    or lie in wait in a thicket?
⁴¹ Who provides food for the raven
    when its young cry out to God
    and wander about for lack of food?

In the Pope Francis era, the Eucharist defines doctrinal tussles



ROME - Famously, Pope Francis isn’t one for spending a lot of time thinking about doctrinal questions or disputes.
The pontiff often mocks theologians for obsessing over the fine print of things, recycling a quote from Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople to Pope Paul VI after an historic 1964 meeting: “We’ll bring about unity between us, and then we’ll put all the theologians on an island so they can think about it!”
Try as Francis might, however, he can’t make doctrinal tussles in Catholicism completely disappear, because Christianity is what’s known as a “creedal” religion, meaning one in which belief matters. In reality, each of the past three years of his papacy has been marked by a defining doctrinal debate, and 2019 may turn out to be more of the same.
The fascinating point about those debates is that each, in one way or another, has centered on the Eucharist - suggesting that in the Pope Francis era, Eucharistic theology may be the defining doctrinal divide.
Of Francis’s personal faith in the Eucharist, there can be no question.
During a general audience in November 2017, for instance, Francis referred to every celebration of the Mass as “a ray of light of the unsetting sun that is the Risen Jesus Christ.” In June 2018, on the traditional Catholic feast of Corpus Christi, Francis said that only the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the food of life, can satisfy the hunger of hearts for love.
In August last year, Francis called communion a foretaste of heaven.
“Every time that we participate in the Holy Mass, we hasten heaven on earth in a certain sense because from the Eucharistic food - the body and blood of Christ - we learn what eternal life is,” he said.
Yet despite that ardent Eucharistic emphasis, critics say that Francis has endangered traditional Catholic beliefs about the sacrament.
When the pope issued his document Amoris Laetitia in 2016, it opened a ferocious internal argument over his cautious opening to allowing Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the Church to receive Communion. Although that decision touched on the theology of marriage and other matters, at its core was the question of what the Eucharist is and what the proper conditions are for someone to receive it.
Francis and his advisors insisted that the decision in Amoris didn’t involve any revision at all to Church teaching, while critics lambasted it as a fairly radical repudiation of what had come before. In any event, the point is that disagreements over how to understand the Eucharist were at the heart of the Amoris debates.
In a similar fashion, 2018’s major doctrinal row was centered in Germany, where roughly a two-thirds majority of the country’s bishops favored a set of guidelines opening Communion to the Protestant spouses of baptized Catholics under at least some circumstances.
While a handful of German prelates objected, forcing a Vatican meeting on the subject, Francis essentially left the decision to the discretion of the conference and its members, with the result that there is no uniform national standard right now.
That debate, too, was about the nature of the Eucharist, in part because it raised the question of what it means to be in “communion” with the Catholic faith in especially acute form.
Although 2019 just began, it’s possible that this year’s signature doctrinal controversy could also center on the Eucharist.
Rumors are currently making the rounds that Francis may be getting ready for an ecumenical Communion service with Protestants, in particular Lutherans, the details of which have been entrusted to an informal working group. The idea is that despite whatever nuances may separate Lutheran and Catholic understandings of the Eucharist, they would be judged insufficiently serious to prevent mutual reception of the sacrament, at least under certain circumstances.
Such rumors, by the way, have circulated since Francis traveled to Sweden in October of 2016 to mark the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and they may very well be inaccurate or exaggerated. Yet the very fact they circulate at all is revealing, in part because of what that says about people’s perceptions of this pope’s approach to Eucharistic topics.
Why has the Eucharist become the front-and-center doctrinal flashpoint of the Pope Francis era?
Part of the explanation may be that Francis inherited a series of question marks about the Eucharist and was compelled to answer them. In that sense, it may be less a matter of personal choice than the agenda any pope would have been compelled to face.
On the other hand, faith in the Eucharist as the real presence of Christ traditionally has been a cornerstone of Catholic identity, a conviction that sets Catholics apart. Under a pope who seems determined to play down such distinctions in order to emphasize commonalities, perhaps it’s no real surprise that competing visions of the Eucharist, and especially who’s eligible for it, have risen to the surface.
However much Francis may poke fun from time to time at the obtuseness or pedantry of theologians, doctrine is part of the lifeblood of the Catholic Church - and in his era, those theologians seem to have plenty to talk about, beginning with what this pope is teaching in both word and deed about the central sacrament of the faith.


https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2019/01/10/in-the-pope-francis-era-the-eucharist-defines-doctrinal-tussles/