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My top 10 favourite quotes from the new Apostolic Exhortation “Christ Lives”

Allyson Kenny

Thursday, April 4, 2019

These quotes aren't intended to be a summary of Christus Vivit (in English, Christ Lives) as a whole. Rather, they are the passages that touched my heart most deeply.
For an abridged, easier-to-read version of the document, stay tuned! I've put together a 10-page summary (as opposed to the original, which is 68) that will be especially useful for time-strapped young people, youth ministers, teachers, educators, and parents.
Note: Numbers within parentheses refer to paragraphs from the document, not page numbers.
 
  1. (20)If you have lost your inner vitality, your dreams, your enthusiasm, your optimism and generosity, Jesus stands before you as once he stood before the dead son of the widow, and with all the power of his resurrection he urges you: “Young man, I say to you, arise!” (Lk 7:14). (2) When you feel you are growing old out of sorrow, resentment or fear, doubt or failure, he will always be there to restore your strength and your hope.
  2. (35) Let us ask the Lord to free the Church from those who would make her grow old, encase her in the past, hold her back or keep her at a standstill …the Church is young when she shows herself capable of constantly returning to her source.
  3. (109) Whenever you are enthused about life in common, you are capable of great sacrifices for others and for the community. Isolation, on the other hand, saps our strength and exposes us to the worst evils of our time.
  4. (113) Perhaps your experience of fatherhood has not been the best. Your earthly father may have been distant or absent, or harsh and domineering. Or maybe he was just no the father you needed. I don’t know. But what I can tell you, with absolute certainty, is that you can find security in the embrace of your heavenly Father, of the God who first gave you life and continues to give it to you at every moment. He will be your first support, but you will also realize that he fully respects your freedom.
  5. (174) Please, do not leave it to others to be protagonists of change.  You are the ones who hold the future! Jesus was not a bystander. He got involved. Don’t stand aloof, but immerse yourselves in the reality of life, as Jesus did. Above all, in one way or another, fight for the common good, serve the poor, be protagonists of the revolution of charity and service, capable of resisting the pathologies of consumerism and superficial individualism.
  6. (199) If we journey together, young and old, we can be firmly rooted in the present, and from here, revisit the past and look to the future. To revisit the past in order to learn from history and heal old wounds that at times still trouble us. To look to the future in order to nourish our enthusiasm, cause dreams to emerge, awaken prophecies and enable hope to blossom. Together, we can learn from one another, warm hearts, inspire minds with the light of the Gospel, and lend new strength to our hands.
  7. (201) During the Synod, one of the young auditors from the Samoan Islands spoke of the Church as a canoe, in which the elderly help to keep on course by judging the position of the stars, while the young keep rowing, imagining what waits for them ahead. Let us steer clear of young people who think that adults represent a meaningless past, and those adults who always think they know how young people should act. Instead, let us all climb aboard the same canoe and together seek a better world, with the constantly renewed momentum of the Holy Spirit.
  8. (255) Your own personal vocation does not consist only of the work you do, though this is an expression of it. Your vocation is something more: it is a path guiding your many efforts and actions towards service to others.
  9. (286)...I would remind you of the most important question of all. “So often in life, we waste time asking ourselves: ‘Who am I?’ You can keep asking ‘Who am I?’ for the rest of your lives. But the real question is: ‘For whom am I?’” Of course, you are for God. But he has decided that you should also be for others, and he has given you many qualities, inclinations, gifts, and charisms that are not for you, but to share with those around you.
  10. (299) Dear young people, my joyful hope is to see you keep running the race before you, outstripping all those who are slow or fearful. Keep running, “attracted by the fact of Christ, whom we love so much, whom we adore in the Holy Eucharist and acknowledge in the flesh of our suffering brothers and sisters. May the Holy Spirit urge you on as you run this race. The Church needs your momentum, your intuitions, your faith. We need them! And when you arrive at where we have not yet reached, have the patience to wait for us”.


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