The Strength of God is the Joy of His People

Holy Saturday Rimini, Italy - April 19, 2003

I thank you, Fr Giorgio, for letting me speak at an impressive moment in the life of all these friends of ours, young friends, and for the answer that our hearts, the heart of each one of us feels it must seek so as to give this answer in a great renewal of universal brotherhood.
Maybe we shall also learn in our friendship to devote time to, and to experience deeply, our relationship with the Bible, which is the book that the Lord has chosen to establish in order to illustrate, to illuminate, what is enlivened and clarified by the Bible.
At the beginning of the book, where the Bible speaks of the prophet Abraham who has realized the immensity of the religious drama of this people consecrated by the greatness of God, we shall become aware–moving along page by page, one page after the other, moving from word to word, from thought to thought–of everything that the Lord has intended to say to man, to the men who seek Him, to the man who is listening to His voice, to the drama of man.
The question is very simple: God responds to the necessity that man has when he feels how much more his experience is motivated, enlarged, and made strong and sturdy the more he follows the word of God. I took the liberty of accepting the invitation to welcome you in order to indicate to you a phrase, a thought with which God makes man say, makes man tell, everything that interests him (the search for the human has as its “interest” that which makes life worth living, otherwise man’s existence would be useless, and it would be especially useless to talk about God): “Man seeks happiness,” says the Bible.
“ Man seeks happiness,” the fulfillment of an intense and happy seriousness. What is the method God uses to “pursue” man, that is to say, to create beings in history, introducing them to the meaning of everything? From the moment when the Lord takes us by the shoulders and pushes us forward, from that moment, there is nothing that can take the place of God’s gift in life.
Perhaps it would be a good thing for you to become involved, to involve your priests or more mature adult people with you, so that they may clarify the words and phrases said, used by God. Otherwise, you will make a great clamor (like a great hullabaloo) when you try to invent answers to your needs and discover instead that answers come only if you put your head on Christ’s shoulders.
Man’s strength is completely focused on the search for satisfaction, for happiness. Now, God not only exists in these feelings, but in these feelings is His answer, His presence, the Presence that makes one say, “That’s the way it is!”
The strength of the Lord is our joy. The formula used by the ancient prophets to concentrate the attention of all their followers, their acquaintances, is thus re-established in a unity of evidence, with the same force and clarity with which Fr Giorgio today was speaking about our sequela of Christ: follow Christ! Because following Christ is something we can–and inevitably we must–do.
“ The strength of God is the joy of His people.” “The strength of God is the strength of His people.” These are words that our entire life is called to understand, to embrace, and to carry wherever we are. Let us help each other to carry together, let us help each other together to let this strength of God that is joy for man operate: the strength of the Lord is the joy of His people.