Every year in Liège, the Choose Life Festival offers secondary school students four days of celebration, joy, sharing and prayer to discover God in a different way and to experience a young and joyful Church. Let's look back at the 2023 edition, whose theme was "Focus on the essential", with Xavier Léonard, one of the organisers. 

We chose to reinvent ourselves by taking a long weekend and the only compatible one was May 1st. We also changed the venue to avoid unfavourable comparisons. The college of Liège opened its doors to us, as well as the Jesuit community of Liège, on which we were able to rely by taking advantage of the Loyola space. What a joy it was to be able to get together like this and bring the festival to life, even if it was too short, as we were two full days short!  

A young and joyful Church  

Every year, the slogan changes and points to the theme we want to explore during the festival. Choice and discernment accompanied us this year. This was reflected in all the doors in our decor, all the possibilities before which we do not always know how to choose. How can we get out of this uncertainty in order to be able to choose life? (Dt 30 - "Choose life"). 

The festival is also a young and joyful Church, animated by songs and concerts. On the first night, we had Shining, who gave us a Christian rap concert. On the second night, we had Luc Mathues (from the pastoral ministry of Liège and the MEJ), who formed a singing group for the occasion in the MEJ style. But the festival band, our in-house choir, was not to be outdone, making us sing at various moments and especially enlivening the final Eucharist with the theme songs of the last few years, ending with a beautiful choral fireworks display. 

Xavier Léonard SJ