By Bishop Nicholas Hudson
Seek to encounter Christ! That is the message Westminster pilgrims from Newman House have been receiving these first days of the Jubilee of Youth.
I had the joy of celebrating Mass for these students in the chapel of the Venerable English College on Tuesday 30th July. The Scriptures seemed to amplify the words spoken by Pope Leo when he anticipated last Sunday the arrival of half a million young people in Rome and said, 'To encounter Christ – that is why I await you; to encounter Christ and be strengthened by Him in faith, in the commitment to follow him with integrity.'
The Martyrs’ Picture, before which we gathered for Mass in the College, has emblazoned upon it the phrase, 'I came to bring fire to the earth' – Jesus’s own words as recorded by St Luke (12, 49). I suggested that this is the same fire as Moses witnessed in his first encounter with the God who spoke to him out of the fire burning in a bush. Such an encounter is what must have fired the hearts of those forty-four priests, who had studied at the English College, to embrace the supreme sacrifice of martyrdom.
Such an encounter we should each be seeking on this pilgrimage, I urged our student-pilgrims to beleive; to seek the grace to be indeed 'the salt of the earth, the light of the world' that Pope Leo encourages us to be. For this is what the Holy Father urged upon the young people who filled St Peter’s Square when he made what Archbishop Fisichella announced as a 'surprise' for us - a surprise appearance of Pope Leo after the Opening Mass!
These words of Pope Leo at the end of Mass were of a piece with Archbishop Fisichella’s opening remarks, when he told the young people, 'Many of you made sacrifices to be here; your sacrifice will not go unanswered. He comes to seek you. And you must keep your hearts open to His presence.'
That each of our young pilgrims gathered in Rome around the Holy Father these days of Jubilee might be open to His presence and rewarded with such an encounter – let this be our fervent prayer.