Do Not Feel Discouraged By All The

Saint John Paul Ii, Pray For Us And Especially For Our Youth.

You Have A Specific And Important Mission, That Of Keeping Alive The Relationship Between The Faith And The Cultures Of The Peoples To Whom You Belong. . . . [w]e Have To Follow Christ Along The Concrete Path Of Our Daily Lives So That He Can Transform Us.

For Just As Some People Want A Purely Spiritual Christ, Without Flesh And Without The Cross, They Also Want Their Interpersonal Relationships Provided By Sophisticated Equipment, By Screens And Systems Which Can Be Turned On And Off On Command. Meanwhile, The Gospel Tells Us Constantly To Run The Risk Of A Face-to-face Encounter With Others, With Their Physical Presence Which Challenges Us, With Their Pain And Their Pleas, With Their Joy Which Infects Us In Our Close And Continuous Interaction.

Preparation For Marriage Is Very Important. It's Very, Very Important Because I Believe It Is Something That In The Church, In Common Pastoral Ministry, At Least In My Country, In South America, The Church It Has Not Valued Much.

There Is Another Important Point: Encountering The Poor. If We Step Outside Ourselves We Find Poverty. Today-it Sickens The Heart To Say So-the Discovery Of A Tramp Who Has Died Of The Cold Is Not News. Today What Counts As News Is, Maybe, A Scandal. A Scandal: Ah, That Is News! Today, The Thought That A Great Many Children Do Not Have Food To Eat Is Not News. This Is Serious, This Is Serious! We Cannot Put Up With This! Yet That Is How Things Are. We Cannot Become Starched Christians, Those Over-educated Christians Who Speak Of Theological Matters As They Calmly Sip Their Tea.