Sermon from the First Catechesis -- World Youth Day XX

Sermon at the Mass following the catechesis
Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Archbishop of Cologne on 17 August 2005 in the Eisstadion in Neuss

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
1. The Three Wise Men were Christ’s first pilgrims, and for us they are at the same time the great pace-setters in our search for Jesus Christ. – But this is not all! This also makes them the great prayer leaders of Christianity. Their lives are a clear indication: “When God approaches, it’s decision time”. The three set off on their search for God and follow the star until they have found it. As strong as the impact of the God’s presence is on Man, it does not paralyze him! On the contrary! Through God, people become awake, alive and free. We can see this in Mary in Nazareth at the proclamation, in the way in which she, as a young person aged 16, grew beyond herself so to speak in the face of this dramatic situation. She was not confused and broken. She thinks and she asks. And she answers in an astonishing manner. And in doing, so she decides the Salvation of the World. Never did words come from a human mouth which had a more significant impact. And God expected these all-important words to come from a young person.

God asks young people to run the road of life for nothing less than Himself, the greatest asset. For humans, everything is at stake. Those who truly realize this take a deep breath. Hence, Man is empowered before God to take decisions which would otherwise be beyond his ability. The three Wise Men from the East leave their past and set off to God’s great future by kneeling down before the Lord and worshipping Him and bringing Him gifts.

2. Dear young friends, God does not want people who are pushed. God’s perspective on life, especially on the true life, addresses the individual, and is not concerned with trends, not with what happens to be “in”, not with what everyone says, thinks and does. It is about the will of the individual which makes them kneel down before the face of the Living God. Such human willingness makes His joy whole. Here, in the truest sense of the word: “Man’s willingness is his heaven”.

3. As the Three Wise Men have shown us, we should pray together. Song is the highest form of worship. It is at the same time the most potent form of worship. This is presumably why singing together is also the order of the day. Worship needs song like a bird needs air. The shepherds were informed in Bethlehem by angels’ song that something unheard of had just taken place. Christianity made this song its own and repeated it from one century to the next: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests." (cf. Lk 2:14). For this reason, the preparatory committee attempted to find a song for World Youth Day linking the hearts of the young people with God and one another. With “Gloria in excelsis Deo”, I always have to think of the woman who brought us this wonderful song. How do we actually know that the birth of the Lord was greeted with these words? It is not the shepherds who reported it to the Evangelists, as they never met them. It was also not St. Joseph, who had already died when the Lord selected His Apostles. Along with all the wonderful things reported to us by the Evangelist Luke about the events in Bethlehem, these words were kept in the heart of the Lord’s Mother Mary: “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.“ (Lk 2:19). The Gloria was the song of the angels and Mary’s secret song before it became our song. It is from them and from her that we can receive the joy of God and His Glory.

The Gospel says of the Three Wise Men: “and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage.” (Mt 2:11). This means that in worshiping Christ we find ourselves next to the young Mary, who also worships and who sings the song to us. Singing people are always believing people. We must ensure that our communities become singing communities once more, thus making them believing and hence worshipping ones. In singing worship, people learn that peace on earth is only given if homage is given to God above first of all. Peace among people is born out of homage to God, which Man sings to Him. Homage to God is Man’s peace.

4. If in these days of the world youth meeting we kneel down before the Lord who became one of us, this is the most direct and profoundest expression of brotherhood among us humans. Worship permits me to recognize that God knows me in a highly personal manner, as if I were alone in the world. Globalization permits humans to gain an awareness of a magnitude of scale in which they perceive themselves as a mere spec of dust in an overwhelming mass of existence. The saving grace of this mentality lies in the small word “You”, especially since this refers to the great “You” whom we call God and before whom we prostrate ourselves to worship Him. This is frequently the case: The greatest can be found in the smallest; the great explosive force can be found in the smallest atom; the great God who became Man, Jesus Christ, in the diminutive Host; the great Salvation of the world in the unassuming words: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased”. We may say this “You” when worshiping God because the Virgin of Nazareth found grace with Him. She leads us to God via ourselves and to the individual next to us, in other words to the “You” and to the “I”. God Himself pushed back the curtain that separated the world from Him, and He enters our space and our time, in person.

5. At that time, He approached the astonished girl from Nazareth through the angel’s proclamation. And it now becomes clear that this is how He approaches and wins us as people. Since then, we have dared to say “You” in our worship. This unique “You” is what we say to Him. This “You”, that is the unique characteristic of the hour of His birth in the Holy Trinity, when the Father placed His Son in His “You” as an expression of His very self, may now resound on earth since He became one of us and makes our “You” become His “You” in worship.

6. The Holy Father John Paul II could not have conceivably given us a better motto for World Youth Day than: “We have come to worship HIM”. As at that time, the three Wise Men stepped out of the darkness of time into the light of Bethlehem, now many young people from 193 countries of the earth with all their positive and negative sides have come to the Epiphany of the Lord to Cologne. And they will return from here to their home countries in a few days’ time – and I have been praying for this for many years – greater, happier and more blessed – as did the Three Wise Men in their turn. Man is never greater than when he kneels down to worship because he is never more liken to God than when he kneels down and worships. Man is never further than where he kneels down in worship because God’s breath touches and moves him at that time. And Man is nowhere closer to the earth than where he kneels down and worships because God wants not only Man, but the earth which is not to end in chaos, but in the cosmos of His Glory. “God wants the earth”, says Saint Teresa of Avila, “So let there be no coward among you!” Amen.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner Archbishop of Köln