It's a little dizzying to see how fast the days are passing and how little time is left before the WYD Lisbon 2023 begins...
To promote greater contact between young people and the awareness that they are participating through the TA international group, we have introduced a series of online international encounters by language and time zone to facilitate participation and interaction.
Jesus looked at him with love
On the 25th of March and 22nd of April, we had two encounters in Spanish, for those above and below 18 years old, groups from Spain, Argentina, Guinea and Spanish-speaking participants from Germany and other contexts. On the 15th and 23rd of April, two encounters in English: from Asia, Philippines, India and Japan and from USA, Canada, Ireland and Palestine.
The main theme of the encounters was the Gospel of the rich young man (Mk 10, 17-22) who anxiously seeks Jesus to ask him “the million-dollar question” and gets a big disappointment…
In the first part, we invited them to imagine the motivations and feelings of the rich young man, what drove him to approach Jesus and what stopped him from taking the step of following him, but also to connect the scene into their daily lives, to perceive themselves in their searches and contradictions, and to see how Jesus looks at them with affection like the rich young man (Jesus, looking at him, loved him...).
In the second part, the proposal consisted of imagining something we don't really know, what if the rich young man thought better about it and decided to leave his comfort zone to follow Jesus? Again, on two levels, first imagining the feelings of the rich young man, Jesus and the disciples in the face of this change and then becoming aware of personal experiences of rejecting an invitation and then later accepting it.
A journey with many steps
For the realization of the encounters, we collaborated with some of the animators who accompany young people on this journey towards WYD in their local contexts and it has allowed us to get to know each other a little better with the thought that some of us will have the luck to meet in Lisbon.
At this moment, we are closing the registration process of the TA group on the WYD platform. The group is composed of 326 young people and 45 animators (AP and ACIT members, MIT and collaborators, many of them are teachers from TA schools). The countries of origin are diverse and a majority comes from Spain, obviously, but there are also from Argentina, Canada, United States, Dominican Republic, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Philippines, and Palestine.
We are particularly grateful for the participation of the young people and animators who have joined this itinerary even though they are not travelling to Lisbon in August (India, Guinea, Mexico, and Bolivia). They especially made it possible for us to feel united as a TA family on this journey.
We continue on the road to WYD and beyond!
TA International Commission for the WYD 2023.
Published in WYD 2023
