ROME, SEPT. 28, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Five hundred missionaries are planning to put "Jesus in the Center" of Rome and invite people to experience the joy of Christianity.
From today till Oct. 7, missionaries ranging in age from 16 to 35 will be visiting schools, retirement centers, hospitals and Churches, "to try to communicate Jesus’ love," Monsignor Mauro Parmeggiani told ZENIT.
Monsignor Parmeggiani is the secretary-general of the Vicariate of Rome and director of the youth pastoral service. On Thursday, he presented this year's plans for "Jesus in the Center."
The priest recalled Benedict XVI's words, saying, “The Christian ethic is a consequence of the meeting with God’s love." The monsignor continued, "Mission is like a caress that God gives to the young people of the Church of Rome” in order to “know and understand Jesus” and to take into consideration “a proposal of life and faith."
Christ-centered
Though various initiatives and events will characterize the mission week, now in its fourth year, the primacy of the Eucharist is common to all of them.
Monsignor Parmeggiani affirmed, "Eucharistic adoration is key, and is at the center of the entire initiative."
There will be daily Masses and the chance to go to confession.
There are other events, too. In Rome’s Piazza Navona, various speakers will try to defend the use of reason. In several churches, there will be "villages of joy," characterized by young people singing and inviting others to hear the word of God.
On Oct. 6, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope's vicar general for the Diocese of Rome, will celebrate Mass in Piazza del Popolo. This will be followed by a Eucharistic procession to Piazza Navona.
The prayer intentions that will be gathered in the churches will be divided up between 36 cloistered convents of women religious around Rome.
Flowering
To show how the "Jesus in the Center" initiative has grown, Monsignor Parmeggiani said, "In the first few years, getting into the schools was very difficult. This year it was the teachers who were calling to ask us to come."
This kind of attention is very important because, the priest said, there is an educational crisis and "the Church has something to say in the field of education."
"We have Jesus," he said, "who reveals the new man, he who makes known his great dignity, he who gives meaning to man’s life and to the life choices that man makes.”
ZE07092806 - 2007-09-28