Speaking to one of 2017’s biggest Catholic youth events, the Cotabato archbishop gives this recipe for influencing one person at a time.Young people have an almost innate desire to change the world for the better.
According to Cardinal Orlando Quevedo, the archbishop of Cotabato, Philippines, there are five ways to concretely change the world one day at a time, one person at a time.
- Love and friendship. According to Quevedo, true friendship is possible when one recognizes that “your friend is a person whom God created,” and that your friendship is based on this.
- Environment. “We need to leave a planet that is worth cultivating and be a resident of.”
- Proclamation of the Gospel. “First of all, know what the Gospel is about, the good news: the liberation of ourselves from sinfulness.” … “As millennials, yours is the digital language, you understand the language of computers, social media. … Use your cellphones to proclaim the Gospel of God.”
- The challenge of youth itself. Help “change [young people’s] mentality … so that idealism and energy of young people be used for the good.”
- Bearers of peace in our world. “Peace comes from God, you receive peace because of God. … [Have] peace in the mind and heart. If there is peace within people it is God’s love that [binds] two people together.”
The cardinal was speaking November 9 at the National Youth Day (NYD) 2017 commissioning and send-off Mass, one of the year’s biggest gatherings of Filipino Catholic young people.
