Jubilee of Teenagers
This retreat is an opportunity to celebrate with the pilgrims of hope gathered in Rome for the Jubilee event, culminating in the canonisation of the Church's first millennial saint.
The First Letter to Timothy, attributed to Saint Paul, may have been written just over 1,900 years ago. But its message still resonates today:
No one should despise your young age, but be an example to all believers in the way you speak and behave, in your love, your faith and your purity (4:12)
That example shone forth above all in Blessed Carlo Acutis, the Italian teenager often referred to as ‘God's influencer' who used the internet to spread his faith and will be canonised at the culmination of the Jubilee of Teenagers on Sunday 27 April.
This Jubilee is a celebration of the faith of young people and, for all of us, young and not-so-young, a reminder that the words of Saint Paul apply to all of us, to be examples of faith to everyone.
Faith is often omitted in the regular checklists provided by the media on the trends teens will follow, as they insist on stating their individuality through clothing, music, friends, frenemies (“a person with whom one is friendly despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry”) and so on. But deep down, I suspect that today's teens are the same as every generation before them, trying to work out what life is all about and what the future may hold.
We are all pilgrims on that journey through life and the words of Saint Pope John Paul II, addressed to young people in August 2000, speak to us all:
It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.
I invite you to join the Jubilee of Teenagers as we continue our journey as pilgrims of hope.
The Programme
In preparation for and to coincide with the Jubilee event in Rome, a series of reflections and questions will be posted from 24 – 27 April 2025 to help us participate with the pilgrims of hope gathered in Rome.
Join us as pilgrims of hope for this major Jubilee event of 2025.