A true man of God goes home …
A true man of God goes home …
Notícias A true man of God goes home …

Notícias

A true man of God goes home …

minutos de leitura | 31. Janeiro 2023 | Bernhard Meuser

A true man of God goes home …

… and we are deeply saddened and moved because we – the international community of YOUCAT – lose the great fatherly friend and supporter. At the same time we are comforted because we know him at the end of a long, dramatic journey that ended in the arms of the beloved Father in heaven. May God repay him for all that we had concretely in him. He gave us “teaching”, carried us in his heart and prayed for us. Today we accompany his going home with prayers, with tears and with thanksgiving. There is a legacy of the second century Pope after John Paul II to the young generation. It is now time to remember it. In the preface to YOUCAT, he said:

“You must know what you believe. You must know your faith as precisely as an IT specialist knows the operating system of a computer. You must understand it like a good musician understands his piece. Yes, you must be much more deeply rooted in faith than your parents’ generation in order to face the challenges and temptations of this time with strength and determination. You need divine help if your faith is not to dry up like a dewdrop in the sun, if you are not to succumb to the temptations of consumerism, if your love is not to drown in pornography, if you are not to betray the weak and abandon the victims. …You all know how deeply the community of believers has been wounded lately by attacks of evil, by the penetration of sin even into the interior, even into the heart of the Church. Do not take it as an excuse to flee from God’s face! You yourselves are the Body of Christ, the Church! Bring the unspent fire of your love into this Church, however often men have disfigured its face! “Do not slacken your zeal, be inflamed with the Spirit, and serve the Lord!” (Rom 12:11).

When Israel was at the lowest point in its history, God called not the great and the respected, but a youth named Jeremiah to help. Jeremiah felt overwhelmed, “Oh, my God and Lord, surely I cannot speak, I am so young” (Jer 1:6). But God was not deterred: “Do not say, ‘I am still so young. Wherever I send you, there you shall go, and what I command you, that you shall proclaim” (Jer 1:7).” And he concluded his impassioned appeal by saying, “I bless you and pray for you all every day.”