English 
A breath of hope reached Rome with the young people who came to celebrate their jubilee. In the streets, cheerful, enthusiastic and playful, they sang words of faith, exchanging greetings and gestures of closeness with other young people, residents and tourists. During the catechesis and prayer meetings, silent and absorbed in meditation, they were ready to share and respond to give reason for their faith.
We too, in our small way, participated in this event, one of the largest of the jubilee. One of us served as Eucharistic minister at the welcome Mass and the final Mass at Tor Vergata to distribute Communion, another sister offered her services in the university parish to welcome young people and prepare breakfast, a sister worked in communications, and others accompanied young people on their pilgrimage from various parts of Italy and the world.
In our community in Torre Gaia, we hosted about fifty young people, and each sister, to a greater or lesser extent, offered some service so that the young people would feel at home. Others offered their artistic talents at various moments.
The international novitiate organised a day of entertainment with dances, songs and activities from all continents in the space dedicated to missionary institutes located in front of the Mamertino prison. Sr. Chiara played the drums with the Diorama group during the afternoon of entertainment that preceded the vigil at Tor Vergata. This jubilee could be described in three words: joyful contagion, encounter and hope.
Joyful contagion
The young people’s passage through Rome was not just a pleasant sight to behold. Those who stopped to watch them saw their eyes light up and their mouths break into involuntary smiles. A breath of enthusiasm also infected us who welcomed them, an energy that Pope Leo had predicted during the welcome Mass: ‘you will have the opportunity to be a force that can bring God’s grace, a message of hope, and a light to the city of Rome, to Italy, and to the whole world’.
The pontiff’s final invitation at Tor Vergata resounded like a command: ‘continue to walk joyfully in the footsteps of the Savior, and spread your enthusiasm and the witness of your faith to everyone you meet.’
Incontro
The Jubilee became a geography of encounters. Young people from different cultures exchanged knowledge, shared expectations, dialogued with the city through art, music, sport. The young Italians and the young people from Hong Kong who were guests in our house experienced a morning of sharing, listening to missionary testimonies that echoed the universality of the call to faith.
It was also an encounter between generations: the young people respectfully admiring the older sisters for their missionary experience, and us making their enthusiasm and zest for life our own.
Pope Leo to digital missionaries delivered a powerful image: “Go and mend the nets.” Jesus called his first apostles while they were mending their fishing nets (cf. Mt 4:21-22). He asks the same of us today. Indeed, he asks us to weave other nets: networks of relationships, of love, of gratuitous sharing where friendship is profound and authentic. networks where we can mend what has been broken, heal from loneliness… networks that give space to others more than to ourselves… networks that liberate and save; networks that help us rediscover the beauty of looking into each other’s eyes; networks of truth. In this way, every story of shared goodness will be a knot in a single, immense network: the network of networks, the network of God“.
Speranza
The young people of the Jubilee represent hope for the future. As the Pope said: “You are the sign that a different world is possible: a world of fraternity and friendship, where conflicts are not resolved with weapons but with dialogue”. United to Jesus like branches to the vine, they will be seeds of hope wherever they live: in the family, at school, at work, in sport. Returning to their countries, they bring that contagious joy breathed in Rome, the certainty that authentic encounter is possible.
Sr. Emanuela Nardin
