Dear young people

Brothers and sisters

May the Lord give you peace!

We are already at the gates of our pilgrimage, for our departure for Portugal. The departure for our adventure… but I insist: for our pilgrimage. The other time I explained that the word pilgrimage means: “skin”, to put on the skin… and it is the most sensitive part of our body. Therefore, to pilgrimage means: to get inside, to walk with all our skin, our senses and all our strength…

But I would like to draw attention to something that everyone is repeating to us these days: that we are going to have an “experience”…. A nice experience. But what does it mean: to gain experience? And here we must be careful. Making “Experience” not making an “experiment”. For example: you experiment with food. Experimenting with putting cheese in soup… or putting mayonnaise in pasta….. no… not good…. And we do not go on our pilgrimage to “experience”: what it is like to sleep in a school, or what the food of Portugal is like….

No…. We are called to gain experience… experience is knowledge. Knowledge is knowing a person. It is knowing Jesus… having experience with Jesus. It is listening and having experience with the words Jesus, which Pope Francis will pass on to us. It is to experience being brothers and sisters. Sharing spaces, food, friendship and above all our faith…. And we want to return from Portugal, from Lisbon, from Fatima, not the same people, but different ones. If we experience God’s love we will be different people. We will experience that God loves us, that Jesus wants to walk with us, that the Virgin Mary will be with us. And you will never be alone on the road of your life…. I’m really curious to know: how would we get back from Portugal? And we have to meet even after….

And it is beautiful because today we are accompanied by the holiness of Saint Mary Magdalene whom we celebrate today. Mary Magdalene gets up very early in the morning and goes to the Sepulchre. To seek the body of Jesus…. Why? Because she had experienced Jesus. She had experienced her love for him.

Dear young people, after these meetings, this beginning of “experience” we want to “leave”…. As pilgrims…. With our “skin”… and returning to Cyprus with “experience”… We will return to Cyprus like Saint Mary Magdalene, seeking Jesus… and listening more and more to his voice… and recognizing his voice… and repeating the gestures of Jesus… breaking bread (the Eucharist), more brothers and sisters among us, with more love. And with the desire to announce as Mary Magdalene did… with the desire to announce to other young people: God truly loves us, Jesus is with us and Mary Most Holy walks with us…. Amen..