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IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Junno Arocho Esteves

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Young men and women can live a true experience of the church by joining together and reconnecting with the past, Pope Francis told Catholic young people.

"The genuine experience of the church is not like a flash mob, where people agree to meet, do their thing and then go their separate ways," the pope said in his message for World Youth Day 2017.

The message, released March 21 at the Vatican, centered on a verse of the Magnificat: "The Mighty One has done great things for me."

Pope Francis has chosen several verses that reflect on Mary's faith from the first chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke as the themes for World Youth Day 2017-2019. This year and next, World Youth Day will be celebrated on a local level -- on Palm Sunday at the Vatican -- and in 2019 it will be an international gathering in Panama.

The pope reminded young people that another event, the Synod of Bishops in 2018, will also help them to reflect on how they "live the experience of faith in the midst of the challenges of our time."

"It is my hope that the journey toward the World Youth Day in Panama and the process of preparation for the synod will move forward in tandem," the pope said.

Young people are called to follow the example of Mary who, after saying "yes" to becoming the mother of God, did not remain closed in on herself but went out of her way to help her cousin Elizabeth.

"Mary does not shut herself up at home or let herself be paralyzed by fear or pride," the pope wrote. "Mary is not the type that -- to be comfortable -- needs a good sofa where she can feel safe and sound. She is no couch potato!"

Upon meeting her cousin, he explained, Mary proclaims the "Magnificat," a "revolutionary prayer" in that while she is aware of her own limitations, she completely trusts in divine mercy.

Like Mary, young men and women today also can experience "great things" if they allow their hearts to be touched by God in the "journey of life, which is not a meaningless meandering but a pilgrimage that, for all its uncertainties and sufferings, can find its fulfillment in God," the pope said.

To look toward the future God has prepared for them, he continued, young people must look to the past and remember God's mercy and love in their own lives.

"I would like to remind you that there is no saint without a past or a sinner without a future," he said. "The pearl is born of a wound in the oyster! Jesus, by his love, can heal our hearts and turn our lives into genuine pearls."

Although he rejected the notion that young people are "distracted and superficial," Pope Francis said young people today need to reflect on their lives in order to decide their future and not rely on current cultural trends that present a false or incomplete reality.

Social media, he explained, only offers snippets of a person's memories and history and those glimpses are rarely "endowed with purpose and meaning." And reality shows present young people with stories that are not real and are "only moments passed before a television camera by characters living from day to day without a greater plan."

"Don't let yourselves be led astray by this false image of reality!" the pope said. "Be the protagonists of your history; decide your own future."

He also warned of giving in to society's tendency to value the present while dismissing "everything inherited from the past, as for example the institutions of marriage, consecrated life and priestly mission," which are often written off as "meaningless and outdated forms."

"People think it is better to live in 'open' situations, going through life as if it were a reality show, without aim or purpose," he said. "Don't let yourselves be deceived! God came to enlarge the horizons of our life in every direction."

Instead, the pope said, by appreciating the wisdom and memory of the past and nourishing themselves through the sacraments in the present, young people can proclaim their own song of praise, like Mary, for the "great things" God is doing for their future.

"Spread your wings and fly, but also realize that you need to rediscover your roots and to take up the torch from those who have gone before," Pope Francis said. "To build a meaningful future, you need to know and appreciate the past."

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Follow Arocho on Twitter: @arochoju.

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Copyright © 2017 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Bob Roller

By Junno Arocho Esteves

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The confessional is a place where one can go to humbly seek forgiveness; it is not a dry cleaners where one goes to remove the occasional stain, Pope Francis said.

While forgiveness is "God's great work of mercy," Christians can take for granted the power of the sacrament of reconciliation and confess while being "unable to be ashamed" of their sins, the pope said March 21 in his homily during morning Mass at Domus Sanctae Marthae.

"You did not go there ashamed of what you did. You saw some stains on your conscience and you were mistaken because you believed the confessional was a dry cleaners to remove stains," he said.

Reflecting on the day's first reading from the prophet Daniel in which the people of Israel humbly beg God to pardon their sins, the pope said shame was "the first step" in seeking forgiveness.  

However, he noted, the Gospel reading from St. Matthew recounts Jesus' parable of the ungrateful servant who, although forgiven of a debt, refused to show the same mercy to another.

While forgiveness is "a difficult mystery" to comprehend, the Gospel helps Christians understand that going to confession is more than just making some kind of "bank transaction," the pope said.

"If you are not aware of being forgiven you will never be able to forgive, never," he said. "There is always that attitude of wanting to take others to task. Forgiveness is total. But it can only be done when I feel my sin, when I am ashamed and ask forgiveness of God and feel forgiven by the father so I can forgive."

Like the ungrateful servant in Jesus' parable, Christians can be tempted to leave the confessional thinking that "we got away with it." This feeling, the pope said, is "the hypocrisy of stealing forgiveness, a pretend forgiveness."

For this reason, he added, it is important to "ask for the grace of shame before God."

"It is a great grace! To be ashamed of our own sins and thus receive forgiveness and the grace of generosity to give to others because if the Lord has forgiven me so much, who am I to not forgive?" he said.

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Copyright © 2017 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Nancy McNally, Catholic Relief Services

By Carol Glatz

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Some 5 million people in South Sudan -- half of its total population -- are on the brink of starvation and a quarter of a million children are already severely malnourished, a representative from the U.S. bishops' Catholic Relief Services said.

Famine has already gripped 100,000 people in Unity State and other parts of the nation, and if emergency food and aid don't get to people soon, "people will start starving to death or they will die of dehydration," Jerry Farrell, country representative in South Sudan for CRS, told Catholic News Service March 21.

Farrell and other representatives from dioceses, CRS, Caritas and other Catholic aid and development agencies working in South Sudan were in Rome for a meeting March 21-22 hosted by Caritas Internationalis to discuss the worsening crisis in the country.

With so much fertile land in the country, the food shortages and famine are man-made, Farrell said, a result of almost four years of violence, displacement, climate change and economic collapse with the rate of inflation nearing 800 percent.

The Catholic Church has always been in a unique position to respond to humanitarian disasters no matter how bad the situation escalates, Farrell said.

"The church never closes down. It's extraordinary and it's part of the community," he said.

Parishes and church-run schools, hospitals and other institutions all open their doors to protect and care for people fleeing from violence. Through a network of churches and religious orders, "within 24 hours we can provide assistance" to any newly displaced.

Even with the risk of increasing violence and insecurity, the priests, nuns or church workers "might have to flee in the bush with the people for a day or so. But they come back, celebrate Mass" and immediately mobilize the national and international networks in place to send out appeals and distribute the aid to the neediest or most vulnerable, he said.

"The church is a lifeline in South Sudan, not only spiritually, but also physically. We can distribute medical supplies, food, shelter, water, through the church in communities where you would think nobody could go," he said.

The church and its local partners also know exactly what a community needs, so, for example, when violence struck Wau last year, CRS found out the people there didn't need food aid, but rather kitchen utensils -- portable stoves, pots and pans -- because their homes had been looted.

To be able to respond adequately to such unpredictable disasters, "you have to be able to talk to people with on-the-ground knowledge, and the church has that in spades," he said.

One area along the Nile River is so pristine and abundant, "I can drop a line and pull out a catfish that weighs 50 pounds," said Farrell, who insisted he was not a patient or practiced fisherman. But the people can't fish or eat if they don't have security or equipment.

People will fish, plant and harvest as long as conflict does not prevent their access to the areas and as long as they do not keep losing land and equipment to arson and looting, he said.

The local churches -- Catholic, Presbyterian and Episcopalian communities -- "have credibility and respect" with almost all sides in the civil war, he said. Many church leaders can get feuding groups to at least stop the fighting in their area and have the groups sit down for talks.

"Because the basis of the conflict in South Sudan is political, the solution is also political," he said, "so the church has a very important, critical role in bringing the parties together and does this all the time at the grass-roots level in sponsoring neutral forums."

"Everyone has to stop fighting. The people in South Sudan are so tired, they are bone-weary of fighting and there is a hunger for peace," he said.

In the meantime, South Sudan desperately needs emergency relief, long-term development programs, medical care, schooling and help for people to "strengthen their dignity" by rebuilding their lives and bringing peace.

"As a Catholic organization, we're blessed because we can actual work in all those areas at the same time," he said.

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