Will you let fear defeat you?

As we said in the previous editorial, the pilgrimage began many years ago. It doesn’t start today: it comes from far away, from so many paths walked, from so many days lived, from so many young people who, before us, dared to say yes. What begins now is a fresh start: a new challenge, a new excitement, a new perseverance.

Ten months to go. Ten months that can slip away in silence, like water through your fingers, or become the most beautiful stretch of this way we have been walking for a long time. Because you don’t get to Korea with just a plane ticket: you get there with a heart ready to meet Christ and to throw the doors of our hearts wide open to him.

Let no one be fooled: this is not a pleasure trip. It is a pilgrimage, a way of self-giving and sacrifice. Pilgrimages aren’t made with money alone: they are paid for with faith, with perseverance, with hours of prayer and days of quiet work helping with the various initiatives we want to get off the ground.

That’s why whoever signs up takes on some very concrete commitments.

The first, the deepest: to seek Jesus. In prayer every morning, in the daily Eucharist, in confession, which cleanses and gives you back your breath. That is where strength is regained, and there your whole life becomes a song of praise where you recover the excitement after having lost it.

The second: the little things of every day. At home, with your parents, with your brothers and sisters, in your studies. As St Thérèse taught us this summer: little things, done with love, become an offering, something eternal and universal love. May every book you open to study already be a stage of the way, and every exam one more step towards Korea.

The third: formation. Getting to know Jesus to love him more and better. This year, those of us going to Korea commit to taking part in the parish formation circles. Here, with our own people, where we learn and become family, heart to heart, where week after week we nourish our faith and meet our brothers and sisters face to face.

The fourth: to be a family. Whether we are many or few, in July 2027 we won’t arrive in Korea as a handful of strangers, but as a real Family. And that is woven from today, thread by thread, also in the fundraising campaigns: in all of them, not just a few. It’s more than €2,200 per person, but no one carries it alone. Common fund, grain of sand, shoulder to shoulder. As in real families.

Korea is not a question of money. It is a question of faith and desire. And steps, as we know, are climbed one at a time: every effort, one step towards holiness.

I don’t know if you realise it, but in reading these lines we are already becoming aware of the scale of the adventure: one of the most impressive pilgrimages of your life. We say it without fear, because we are sure it will be so.

There won’t be many of us who sign up —commitment is frightening—, but those of us who do will live an experience, with every nerve, that will transform our lives.

We will cross the world to meet Korea: its people, its simplicity, the Pope.

Not everyone will accept the challenge. Those of us who go will go with the certainty that God is with us, as on so many other pilgrimages.

Will you be able to throw away this opportunity God is giving you: to live an experience of family and holiness alongside young people from all over the world? Will you let yourself be defeated by fear, by faint-heartedness, by that “we won’t manage it” that snuffs out so many dreams before they are born?

“Take courage! I have overcome the world”.