This is What Rev. Dr. James Anaparambil, Bishop of Alleppey writes as foreword to the book Amazed by the Wind authored by Dr Edward Edezhath

A Family Remembering Aloud: Reflecting on the Journey of Jesus Youth

“The wind blows where it wills…”  —  John 3:8

Scripture gives us wind as its first picture of the Holy Spirit, and it is a picture that refuses to be managed. Wind cannot be manufactured or scheduled; it can only be noticed and then followed. Anyone who has walked with Jesus Youth over these many years have long known what it says: what happened among us was never planned. It was given.

The beginnings, between 1976 and 1978, would have looked like nothing at all. A handful of young people met to pray. There was no name, no structure, and no reason to imagine anything would come of it beyond a few lives quietly deepened. But there was a hunger for God and a willingness to be led, and that turned out to be enough. From that small seed came the Jesus Youth 85 Conference, and with it a real threshold: around that gathering a scattered stirring recognized itself as one body, found words for what it was, and accepted a common direction. Inchoate however, a rhythm of personal and shared prayer, the retreat, the small group, the campus and the workplace as places of mission, the family as the first sanctuary, young people sent far from home was noticeable— each was lived long before it was ever explained, and each was tested in the living. That is usually how the Spirit works with us: not by handing over a finished plan, but by walking a people forward through faithfulness, mistakes and discernment until something takes a shape that can be passed on.

On a personal note, it has been a joy to accompany this movement — as animator, as chaplain, and now and then as a friend able to help where help was needed. That friendship has also meant, on occasion, saying the harder thing. Youthful zeal is a wonderful gift, and like every wonderful gift it needs purifying: enthusiasm needs discernment, initiative needs obedience, and a charism grows strong only when it is willing to be measured against the mind of the Church. What has moved me most is how readily this movement has accepted that. More than any strategy, such humility explains how a prayer group in Kerala came to be at home in more than fifty countries.

I have known Dr. Edward Edezhath, the author, since 1988. It has been a pleasure to exchange views and musings. He writes from inside the story, with a scholar’s patience and a friend’s affection. He does not trade in triumphs; he listens for the Spirit beneath the meetings and the milestones, and he is honest and gentle about the very human people through whom that Spirit chose to work.

Amazed by the Wind is not a monument. It is a family remembering aloud, so that those who come after may know what they have been given and what it cost to carry. I commend it warmly, and especially to the young: read it not as a closed chapter, but as good news that the wind is still blowing — and that it is still waiting, as it always has, for anyone willing to be amazed by it.

• James Anaparambil

Bishop of Alleppey

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