BRAZIL, org. World Youth Day (WYD) in the Year of Faith at the service of the New Evangelization has as its motto: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). With its strong missionary focus and a pilgrim character, it makes one think of the 2014 Message translated into the youthful pilgrimage of the universal Church. There is a sense of a missionary current that embraces the whole Church, particularly its youths. The week before the WYD in Rio will be different to all others that preceded it. This is because the week before the WYD will be a missionary week. The participants call themselves pilgrims, they call their journey to Rio a pilgrimage…and the World Youth Day Cross is called the Pilgrim Cross.
The World Youth Day Cross is on pilgrimage through the dioceses of Brazil – as a Pilgrim Cross – and is accompanied by the icon of the Blessed Virgin. Schoenstatt’s banner for the year of Missionary Trend and the Jubilee is the missionary Unity Cross and the Pilgrim Mother. Coincidence? Confirmation? Calling? It was during the first World Youth Day that the third International Pilgrim Mother Campaign Auxiliary, crowned as the Queen of the New Evangelization for America and the World, was blessed, and sent out on a mission of evangelization by Blessed John Paul II…
At the service of the Church and modern man
Last week, the World Youth Day symbols arrived in Florianopolis. “Even though I am young only at heart, I had to go and welcome them,” said one of the Schoenstatt.org collaborators. “It was so moving to find out that here they call it the Pilgrim Cross,” she commented. “Isn’t it a beautiful sign for us in our preparation for Jubilee 2014?”
At the St. John the Evangelist Church in Biguaçu, the Pilgrim Cross and the icon were welcomed with joyful dancing. One of the youth groups was wearing t-shirts with a picture of the Blessed Mother.
The eyes of faith show us that the gifts we received during Conference 2014 and all our work to find the focus and symbols corresponds with what the Church itself is preparing at this moment in its history.
The great missionary, the Pilgrim Mother, shows us the way – with twenty months to October 18, 2014 – so that 2014 will be a renewal of the Covenant that takes us into a new Schoenstatt at the service of the Church and modern man…
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| January 20, 2013 – Cruz peregrina – Pilgerkreuz |
Original: Spanish. English translation: Sarah-Leah Pimentel, Johannesburg, South Africa
