"I think of the special love with which Jesus is looking upon you. Yes, the Lord loves you and calls you his friends," the pope told the young.
In his homily at the Mass, Pope Benedict said faith is not about understanding a bunch of facts, "it is an ability to grasp the mystery of Christ's person in all its depth."
Even if it feels like a struggle at times, faith is not primarily about people working out their thoughts about God; it starts with the gift of God's love and God's reaching out to each person, he said.
Faith entails "a personal relationship with Christ, a surrender of our whole person, with all our understanding, will and feelings," he said.
But the pope went even further, telling the young that a personal relationship with Jesus always must be transformed into action, service and love for others. In addition, it must be lived within the church, the community of believers to whom Jesus entrusted his message and his mission of salvation.
"We cannot follow Jesus on our own," he said. Those who try "approach the life of faith with the kind of individualism so prevalent today" and risk not encountering the real Jesus or "following a counterfeit Jesus," he said.
Christ asks each person, "Who do you say that I am?" the pope said.
"Respond to him with generosity and courage, as befits young hearts like your own," he told the young.
"Let me urge you to strengthen this life of faith which has been handed down from the time of the apostles," he said. "Make Christ, the Son of God, the center of your life."
In his parting words of encouragement to the young pilgrims the pope said: “There is no reason to lose heart in the face of the various obstacles we encounter in some countries. The yearning for God which the creator has placed in the hearts of young people is more powerful than all of these."
The pope urged youth to follow Christ’s passion and “take upon our own shoulders the sufferings of the world, in the certainty that God is not distant or far removed from man and his troubles.”
He also named a new doctor of the church. St. John of Avila will become the Catholic Church's 34th doctor of the church and announced that the next World Youth Day would be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2013.
