A message from participants to the Pope

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Your Holiness,

On behalf of over a hundred ecclesial movements and new commu-nities we have participated in the Second World Congress inRocca di Papa from 31 May to 2 June, in preparation for the greatVigil of Pentecost. We would like to thank you for the message youhave sent us, sign of a fatherly solicitude that confirms the faith andsustains the hope of us who have been attracted by the beauty ofChrist through the encounter with a charism, which has made theChristian proposal more persuasive as a convincing response to theheart of each one of us.During this Congress we have asked ourselves what it means togive a reason for the beauty of Christ, and what it means to be Chris-tians in a world marked by nihilism, by various forms of poverty andby the reduction of faith to a vague religiosity that distances us fromthe real world.The first words of your Encyclical were cited several times in ourreports and dialogues: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethicalchoice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person,which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”.1We feel the direct link with Your Holiness as the foundation ofour freedom to explore the charism that makes Christ contemporarywith our life and, at the same time, as the chance to devote it to thebuilding of the Body of Christ, as you authoritatively urge us to do.The fact that Your Holiness recognizes that we belong to “the liv-ing structure of the Church” becomes for us a renewed responsibilityto manifest the charity of Christ as “a passion for the life and destiny of others […], in affection and in work”, until it becomes “a force forthe construction of a more just social order”.2Conscious of the challenge that relativism poses to us, from withinthe very fragility of our lives, we feel comforted in the adventure ofour daily journey by the constant verification of the truth of what YourHoliness entrusted to us at the start of your pontificate: Christ “takesnothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves tohim, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide thedoors to Christ – and you will find true life”.3That is why we re-place our life and that of the friends of all ourmovements and communities in your fatherly hands, so that our faith,founded on the rock of Peter, may bear fruit as witness of hope andwork of charity for our fellowmen.

 

Rocca di Papa, 2 June 2006

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