In Tanzania, during the Eucharistic celebrations, the presentation of the gifts is a very fascinating rite. All the people come before the altar and place their offerings. Even small children, carried by their parents, receive a coin to leave before the altar. I have seen some children refuse to leave the coin that had been given to them: they had already entered into the logic of profit that guides our society. Nothing is free, everything is bought, and therefore it is necessary to have money, something to offer….

The event you are experiencing here evades the logic of interest. You have freely accepted the invitation to participate in this Jubilee. Many of you have hosted or have been hosted for free. Your arms stretched out in a welcoming gesture, your hands extended freely to those around you ready to share because all has been given to us in order to be shared with others.

My dear young brothers and sisters, from this experience you receive a revolutionary message which must give your lives a new direction. Thanks to this message you will be able to become prophets and indicate new paths of life to all you meet on your way.

It is the message of gratuitousness (of sharing freely?). The Bible tells us that naked we came from our mother’s womb and naked will we return to the earth. St. Francis added, "The only things that are truly ours are our sins". All the rest is not really ours because it has been given to us. To live in this perspective means to go beyond the experiences of anxiety, of the uncontrollable desire to accumulate in order to consume, according to the teaching of the world that makes us slaves. We kid ourselves thinking that happiness consists in satisfying some need and not in its being something free. We do not realize that continuing to accumulate we are always less satisfied and we become unjust towards those who do not have what is needed just to live.

Gratuitousness, or sharing freely means becoming a gift to others without asking anything in return. Every time don’t extend my hands towards others, and/or I shut myself up in my selfishness, I block the dynamics of love and life. The hands that are opened and extended fraternally towards others, a smiling and welcoming face, a gesture of solidarity… these are the seeds of life that change our world. This is true love that can free the world from evil!

But how can we form ourselves to give freely and to love truly? How can we resist the temptation to accumulate what is superfluous? St. Francis gives us the answer, repeat with him "You O Lord are all the wealth I need." I want to use what you have given me without becoming a slave. Thus poverty becomes freedom, a place for sharing with others. Consequently the joy of sharing is generated within us. Freedom in our use of things and solidarity become the path that brings us to true happiness.

The Jubilee Year we are living is an invitation to freedom, to return to the land. It helps us to re-enter into the profoundness of our being, to find again our identity, to free it, thus, from the many forms of slavery. It is an invitation to "bring home" our body with all its instincts and its desires to put them back in order. As long as we remain divided from within we will never be instruments of peace for others, because we are not inhabited by peace.

During the experience of gratuitousness and solidarity in this Holy Year the Lord will help us to exclaim together with St Augustine: " You were within me and I looked for you outside of myself; You were with me, but I was not with You." I truly wish that you all will know how to interpret your own history, your own story of life, as he has done "we looked for happiness in the satisfaction of many desires that came from outside, without realizing that we possess true happiness within ourselves. We only have to accept it and live it."