Can digital games help us understand real life religion? With World Youth Day: Religious Interaction at a Catholic Festival, Skjoldli suggests that they can. The change is particularly visible from Skjoldli's new theoretical framework religious interaction, which draws on digital game studies. The framework centers on three key terms—interaction, interface, and immersion. Interaction constitutes the core of the stipulative definition of religion operative in this framework: interaction with culturally postulated superhuman persons. Interface represents the means by which interaction takes place. When interaction becomes emotionally charged, immersion takes place—whether it happens in religious contexts, gaming contexts, or other human activities like watching sports, reading books, playing instruments, listening and/or dancing to music. Religious immersion, Skjoldli suggests, is helpful for understanding—and making intelligible—the emotional charge of human-superhuman relationships, the power and vulnerability of the religious interfaces that enable them, the significance of emotionally charged experiences they afford, and the vexation expressed when interactions are frustrated by distraction, distortion, or destruction. In this book, Skjoldli employs her religious interaction framework in an analysis of how the Catholic festival World Youth Day (WYD) changed the meaning of pilgrimage in Catholicism. WYD emerged from a ritual, historical, and cultural context abundant associations to pilgrimage as the term is conventionally understood by scholars. WYDs are also consistently called pilgrimages, even when the host locations are not officially sanctioned as such. A substantive investment for the Catholic Church centrally, locally, and for the local event organizers, each WYD draws hundreds of thousands to millions of young Catholics from around the world. The pope always participates by giving speeches and leading some of the ceremonies. WYD is persistently referred to as a pilgrimage, and Skjoldli analyzes what pilgrimage has meant, what it means now, and how it changed in the context of WYD.

To young Christians of the world, Pope Francis has a message for you: "Christ is alive, and he wants you to be alive!" In his fourth apostolic exhortation, Christus Vivit, Pope Francis encapsulates the work of the 2018 synod of bishops on "Young People, The Faith, and Vocational Discernment." Pope Francis has always had a special relationship with young people, and in his fatherly love for you he shows that: You can relate to young people in Scripture who made a difference You identify with the Christ who is always young You face difficult issues in the world today You yearn for the truth of the Gospel You are capable of amazing things when you respond to the Gospel You learn and grow with help from the faithful of all generations You need bold and creative youth ministry You can discover who God made you to be You are urged to pray for discernment Christus Vivit is written for and to young people, but Pope Francis also wrote it for the entire Church, because, as he says, reflecting on our young people inspires us all. "May the Holy Spirit urge you on as you run this race. The Church needs your momentum, your intuitions, your faith. We need them! And when you arrive where we have not yet reached, have the patience to wait for us."

Presents a collection of talks on the theme of gathering to worship, given by the Pope at World Youth Day in 2004, along with several talks that he gave in the same five-day period to Jewish, Muslim, and Protestant church leaders.

The Power of Forgiveness, Pope Francis on Reconciliation calls the reader to explore the mercy of God, received in a profound way by turning toward God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This heartfelt collection of the Pope's reflections on the need for repentance, awareness of sin, God's divine mercy, forgiveness of others, and confession and absolution, is a transformative read for Catholics of all vocational states!

This volume provides all who minister to young people with an effective blueprint for building a truly meaningful ministry

OUR DEAR YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN, we have great confidence in you. You are beloved sons and daughters of God and He is mindful of you. You have come to earth at a time of great opportunities and also of great challenges. The standards in this booklet will help you with the important choices you are making now and will yet make in the future. We promise that as you keep the covenants you have made and these standards, you will be blessed with the companionship of the Holy Ghost, your faith and testimony will grow stronger, and you will enjoy increasing happiness.

An inspiring celebration of life and new experiences--perfect for graduations and fans of Oh, the Places You'll Go! Roads give you chances to seek and explore. Want an adventure? Just open your door. Join an adventurous rabbit and his animal friends as they journey over steep mountain peaks, through bustling cityscapes, and down long, winding roads to discover the magical worlds that await them just outside their doors. Award-winning author Pat Zietlow Miller's lilting rhyme and bestselling illustrator Eliza Wheeler's enchanting, lush landscapes celebrate the possibilities that lie beyond the next bend in the road--the same road that will always lead you home again.

Introduces young readers to Catholic beliefs as expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

This moving biography of Pier Georgio Frassati, who turned from a life of privilege to one devoted to working with the poor, and who died at the age of 24 from the polio virus, presents a portrait of a man whose love of God transformed his life and the lives of those around him. Inspired as a young man by Pier Georgio, Pope John Paul II recently approved beatification for Pier Georgio.

This definitive biography of Pope John Paul II explores his historic influence on the world stage: “Magnificent. A tremendous achievement” (Washington Post). As head of the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005, John Paul II was one of the world’s most transformational figures. With unprecedented cooperation from the Pope, as well as the people who knew and worked with him throughout his life, George Weigel offers a groundbreaking portrait of him as a man, a thinker, and a leader whose religious convictions defined a new approach to world politics—and changed the course of history. The Pope played a crucial yet underexplored role in some of the most momentous events of his time, including the collapse of European communism, the quest for peace in the Middle East, and the democratic transformation of Latin America. With an updated preface, this edition of Witness to Hope explains how this “man from a far country” did all of that, and much more—and what both his accomplishments and the unfinished business of his pontificate mean for the future of the Church and the world.