Children’s Jubilee

Laura Galimberti

A message of joy to the whole world

In linguistic groups of around 100 people dislocated in a number of parishes in Rome, children who arrived in Rome from many countries to take part in the day of 2 January, to able to experience on Saturday afternoon a great game in the discovery of the Jubilees of the past.  The activity prepared and thought out by some 200 animators of numerous Catholic Associations. Including Agesci, Scouts of Europe, Centro Sportivo Italiano, Pueri Cantores and others, was planned in four stages: the Jubilee at the time of Moses, of Boniface VIII, the changes brought to other Jubilees and the Jubilee of present times. For every moment of the game, the children received or used the symbols with which animated the waiting for the Holy Father on Sunday 2: the grains of wheat, symbol of life that grows; a handful of earth or sand of their country, to represent the time given to God Father, to live in fullness; the messages of joy and joy and gifts, sign of the capability of love present in every heart. In the last stage of the game the children discovered that on the following day it was to be their task, Apostles of the third millennium, “to open” the first of the world meetings of the Jubilee and show to the world how to live this joy through the sharing of symbols discovered in the game. And so on Sunday the grains of wheat were virtually used to prepare the bread to be “broken” during the Holy Mass; the earth was collected in a huge hourglass, the messages of joy, attached and exchanged on large world maps, smaller gifts taken home, offered from the children to their friends, now a little less far away.