Let’s be confessors of faith in the public square: the breath to the youth of Spain in the jubilee of young people

Mons. Luis Argüello, president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), encouraged the more than 25,000 Spanish young people present this Friday in the Plaza de San Pedro in the Vatican, to be “confessors of the faith in the public square”, within the framework of the jubilee of young people.

This was also indicated by the Archbishop of Valladolid in the homily of the Mass he presided over accompanied by dozens of bishops and priests arrived from Spain to participate in this Jubileo de la Esperanza 2025 in Rome, whose central activities will be carried out this weekend in Tor Vergata, as it happened 25 years ago with San Juan Pablo II.

According to the CEE website And in the midst of a great party atmosphere, the young people listened to the testimony of two young people and a newly married couple, who opened their hearts to encourage everyone to open their own to the Lord.

The gift of life

In the first part of the event, entitled The gift of lifethe young Maria Tagarro García-Tomassoni, from the Diocese of Astorga, gave thanks “to God for being born from the love of my parents, Álvaro and Cristina, who together with my sisters Alicia and Cayetana had the grace to be born in a Catholic family in which we were educated with the value of putting the Lord in the center of our life.”

“I also thank my grandparents for a fundamental part on my way, they taught me to love the Lord and the neighbor as ourselves. Without forgetting prayer as a fundamental part of a life with faith,” he added.

The young woman later said that the Church is her “other great family” and stressed that “today I can share the joy I feel of having received life as a gift from God and that, like Mary, the Immaculate Young of our pastoral in Spain, I declare: I do in me as you want, Lord! Because my life and your young life is already a vocation.”

The joy of forgiveness

José Tomás Cebrián Ruiz, a 26 -year -old boy from Cuenca, spoke in this second part about his departure from God and the reunion with faith:

The young man said that he grew up in a Catholic family, and it was already in the university where “I disconnected completely from God. I fell in love with a girl, although I was not a believer. I do not want to blame her for my departure, but over time I have understood that surrounding himself with people who live their faith brings you to God, and gathering with people who do not have faith also move you away from him.”

Upon returning to Spain, after an exchange time, and realizing that “God was no longer present in my life,” Joseph went to a retirement, invited by a priest. There “I really knew God. And what did I find in that retirement? Forgiveness. A broken heart that God wanted to heal just asking him. That’s how God let himself be known for me, when I needed it the most. And what happens when you really know God? Well, simply, you don’t want anything else in life.”

“I am the door that I open to happiness”

In the third part of the event, entitled “I am the door that I abide by happiness” in reference to the Lord Jesus, the young people heard the testimony of a newly married couple, Quique Mira and Mery Lorenzo, who shared that “the marriage is going to kneel every day and say yes to want to love each day. It is refusing oneself and choosing the other first.”

“But the Gospel also invites us to go out, because every vocation is also a mission,” they said later and stressed that “our marriage is our mission. In him we want to be a sign of something bigger. We are not alone. Jesus walks with us, and from there we want to go out to others: accompany, share, serve. As Pope Francis told us: ‘We are a mission for others!”

The homily of the president of the EEC

In his homily, the Archbishop of Valladolid said that “hope does not disappoint because the love of God shed in our hearts has put in your lives a dress of praise, a dress of praise that makes it possible for us to live for praise of the glory of God, renouncing the vaining.”

“We have also been given a perfume of joy, so that we take this joy to the duels and the darkness of existence. We have also offered a headband, a headband that shows the alliance that the Lord has sealed with us, because his merciful love has no turning back,” he added.

After remembering the large number of young people that this Friday could confess in the maximum circus in Rome, the prelate stressed that “now it is necessary, brothers, that we also confess the faith in the public square, because if the Lord has strength and power to forgive sins in our hearts, and thus we experience the joy of forgiveness, and our arms open, and we reconcile and love each other”.

“It is important that we confess that the Lord has strength and power to overcome sin structures, which has strength and power to overcome the dragon that continually passes his power to the beasts of this imperialist world,” he added.

“Let us confess our faith, let us witness the victory of Jesus Christ in the midst of our daily activities, and offer this victory as grace, as a gift, as a gift, not wanting to impose in any way our faith on anyone, but giving freely the joy of the Gospel, the white dress of praise, the perfume of joys, and also this new and eternal alliance that as a headband invites us to participate permanently in the Eucharist,” Argüello encouraged.

After encouraging testimony in culture, school, with the poor and in every space in which they are, the archbishop recalled that everyone will return to their places of origin “to remain pilgrims, because this is our condition, and every week we will make a stop on the road, in the pilgrimage, on Sunday, to renew our anointing for the Holy Spirit, to worship the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, to accumulate his very body, to accumulate his body To be sent, sent to announce peace. ”