Lackner at Loretto Festival: Open space where God can be in you
The Pentecost festival of the Loretto community began on Saturday with events at 32 locations in five countries. The aim is to create “a network of praise, prayer and sermons” and thus open up a space “in which many young people can get to know the Holy Spirit in a new way”, according to the organizers in advance. Archbishop Franz Lackner also referred to the situation in Ukraine during the service with the young people in Salzburg on Saturday morning.
He invites everyone to think beyond themselves, says Lackner. “Let’s think of the people in Ukraine, let’s also praise and praise God for them.” The Archbishop appealed to the young people to open spaces “where God can be completely in you, surprise you”. He himself only remembered situations much later in his life where God had been with him without him knowing it. Today, society has often even forgotten “that it has forgotten God”, and faith in the “so-called Christian Occident” seems to be liquefying, says Lackner.
The archbishop was convinced that the word “is more inner than we are aware of”, the Holy Scriptures are not a way of acting, but that each individual appears in it with his or her story. He advocated giving God space “where He can just be there.” God wants to be with people, with God even failure is “a happy failure”, he has often experienced that himself.
Worship, prayers and inspirational conversations
Worship, prayers and inspirational talks are central elements of the event, which takes place over the Pentecost weekend (June 4-5) across Austria and beyond. At peak times, up to 10,000 young people and young adults came and celebrated a “Festival of Youth” at Pentecost in and around the Salzburg Cathedral before the Corona pandemic, this year it was time to “Pentecostal beacons across the entire German-speaking area and beyond to distribute,” said the organizers in advance.
In addition to regionally different programs with lectures and talks, prayers, church services and leisure activities at locations in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, South Tyrol and also in the English capital London, the participants are temporarily connected via live stream. Andreas Boppart, theologian, preacher, author and head of the Christian missionary organization “Campus for Christ Switzerland” created an impulse on Saturday morning in Salzburg that could be seen at all participating locations. In Salzburg itself, the main auditorium of the university is once again the scene of the Loretto Festival. Other locations in Austria are Altenmarkt, Breitenfurt, Feldkirch, Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Linz, Mönchhof, Rechberg, Wieselburg, Vienna and Wiener Neustadt.
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