Just a Typical Sunday Morning with the Pope

This morning we awoke bright and early to the sound of a booming voice over the loud speakers announcing the approaching arrival of the pope for mass. At the sound of this voice, we immediately leaped to our feet in joy and began to sing the WYD theme song as loudly as we could! Well… maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.  It certainly wasn’t the most pleasant night of all due to the rain and the cooler temperatures of the night. So, maybe getting up wasn’t all that easy, but slowly we managed to get to our feet and start moving. As you might imagine, the bathroom lines were extraordinarily lengthy, but with aid of our personal toilet paper (there is none supplied) we were able to face the crowds and make our way through many many more people to our spot. After eating a quick breakfast, it was about time for mass with the pope to begin. It was a long, but beautiful mass in the Spanish language. But luckily, some of us were able to hear an English translation through radio broadcasting.  The pope spoke encouraging words to the youth of the world concerning evangelization and how important it is despite the struggles we may encounter along the way.  After mass, we packed up and headed out as a group on our way back to the hotel. We took the subway for much of the trip, but it was still exhausting and we were on our feet for quite some time. You can only imagine how relieved we were to arrive back at the hotel and take a cool shower and change into clean clothes after two days of sweltering heat.  After a few hours or relaxation some of the group headed out to experience the thrill of Spanish culture with a bull fight.  During this time the other half of the group enjoyed dinner in Madrid and some last minute souvenier shopping. We ended the night with small groups. Tomorrow we will be heading home on the plane in the morning. It has certainly been a trip that we will never forget!

Sleeping under the stars… or the clouds

Well today is the big day! Our pilgrimage day! We started the day early with breakfast at the hotel and prepared to embark upon our pilgrimage to the airfield where we will be spending the night and in a prayer vigil. Our walk ended up being probably about 10 miles in all, including a slight detour and confusion with the route. Once we finally reached the destination that would become our home for around 24 hours we set up our campsite and then drank lots of water due to the 105-degree weather and the hot beating Spanish sun. Once everyone was rehydrated and feed we began to explore. The most visited places were the water fountains for refill our water bottles and the fire trucks that were spraying all the youth with the fire hoses because of the extremely hot weather. This hot weather was a huge challenge in many ways but with many prayers the lord helped us conquer this challenge. As the never-ending amount of people continued to pour into the airfield the mass crowds were overwhelming! As we all started to trade our small USA/SMM items and get to know youth from every part of the world it began to sink in that we were with over two million other youth preparing to do Adoration with the pope. Some people (A.K.A Fr. Ariel) took short naps leaning up against the “bathrooms” to seek shade from the heat.  Finally it was time for the Holy Father to arrive and we took our places when we began to notice the dark clouds rolling through the sky. As we proceeded with evening prayer and adoration we began to see lighting then thunder and next the rain hit and the storm came at full force.  Everything was paused until the weather settled down a bit once the weather settled down we were able to enjoy the presence of the pope.  Then there was time for more exploring, sleeping, and even some dancing with certain groups that stayed up and sang and danced. Then it was time for bed and mass in the morning with the pope!

Way of the Cross

We started today with another catechesis session in St. Teresa’s Church. Our keynote bishop was Bishop Anthony Fisher from Australia. His main message was about going out and being a missionary for Christ in our every day lives. With this, he gave us the 10 Commandments for New Evangelization. The first is “Christian, become what you are” meaning be proud of your faith and who you are. The second is “get inspiration from the best places” which includes Adoration, the Word of God, and lives of the saints. The third is “be open to God’s call.” The fourth is “let God lead you down new paths.” The fifth is “dare to be creative.” The sixth is “make ordinary life your first realm of evangelization.” The seventh is “take a genuine interest” which means become friends with and learn about the person before sharing your faith with them. The eighth is “give personal testimonies” because personal stories are more relatable. The ninth is “your message should always be centered on Jesus Christ and the Gospel.” And finally the tenth is “seek the support of godly friends.”  After a quick lunch and some resting time, we headed out to Stations of the Cross. Due to the large amount of people, we watched them on a jumbo tron, but it was really powerful. This is because the cross was carried from station to station by different groups of youth including youth from Haiti and Japan, youth from Rwanda and Burundi, and youth who have been freed from drugs. All in all, the Stations of the Cross helped us to enter into the passion in a new way. We are ending the day with a good night’s sleep so that we can be well rested for the big walk tomorrow!

“Estaes la juventud del Papa” (We are the youth of the Pope)

After a quick breakfast, we started our day with Catechesis again at St. Teresa’s Church. Today’s program was formatted in a similar way to yesterday’s, but today Bishop Rolando Tirona from the Philippines did our Catechesis. He was very full of life and humor and it was such a joy to hear his stories and to learn more about discipleship, experiencing Jesus, and prayer. He gave an acronym for discipleship that spells iPod. The I stands for interiority and the need to listen to God from our interior selves, the P stands for prayer and the importance of being present to our prayer, the O stands for obedience to oblation and how through obedience to God we will learn to sacrifice for God, and finally D stands for devotion to duty and how our faith must be seen by others and other people must experience it as well. Following Mass with Bishop Tirona at the end of Catechesis, we broke up into groups to have lunch and head back to the hotel to prepare for going to the welcoming festivities for Pope Benedict. We had about an hour and a half to freshen up, meet with our prayer partners, and prepare to leave. As we got closer to the stage where the Pope would give his address after journeying through the streets, it became clear that we were not going to be able to get anywhere near the stage and that we were going to watch the address on the nearby jumbo-tron. But the good news was that we would still get to see the Pope as he rode by us in the Pope-mobile! So we staked out our spot and proceeded to wait in excitement and anticipation with all the other pilgrims for the moment that we have all been waiting for: to catch a glimpse of the Holy Father! As it got closer and closer to 7, more and more people flooded the area where we had been waiting and it was soon so crowded that we couldn’t move! The crowds were pushy, and it became difficult to hold our ground, but we persevered and continued waiting in anticipation. Finally, after about 2 and a half hours of waiting in the intense Spain sun with 2 million other people surrounding us, the moment we had so patiently endured waiting for arrived! The cheers and joyful chants as well as the helicopters overhead notified us that the Pope was coming! Finally, we saw the Holy Father for a few moments as he drove past!!! It was such a joyous moment! We then were able to listen to Pope Benedict’s address by watching the nearby jumbo-tron. He asked us to pray for each other, which was really a neat thing because we have been praying for the pope and he has been praying for us! He also encouraged us to root our faith in Jesus and strengthen it. After the welcoming liturgy, we were all filled with such a joy and energy that on our way back we were dancing and singing! After fighting some intense crowds around WYD protestors and many pilgrims, we had a chance to get a bite to eat and are now headed off to bed to get some sleep for another full day tomorrow! Buenas noches!

Pope Benedict!!!

The Whole Wide World is On My Train

Day number two of our WYD activities was filled with praying and playing in the city of Madrid. We started our day with breakfast and Catechesis at St. Teresa’s Church.  Catechesis is a way for us to learn more about our Catholic faith through a mixture of witnesses, key note addresses, music, Adoration and Mass.  We met up with fellow English speaking pilgrims and we expected to receive our Catechesis presentation from a Bishop, however we were pleasantly surprised to have Catechesis with a friend from home, Cardinal Francis George from the Archdiocese of Chicago. The main message this morning was to build relationships and to take up our faith and grow within it.  Allowing ourselves to grow in our faith involves us putting in roots, and watering them to grow, we are working on “Being Rooted” like St. Peter tells us in the Bible.   

            Following Catechesis, we all adventured on the Metro along with hundreds of thousands of our closest friends.  We split into two groups for afternoon activities.  One group ate lunch and chose to attend a Soul Band Concert with a band from Australia, here we learned that a soul band in Australia plays praise and worship music. Following the concert in the heat, we decided ice cream would be a great way to cool ourselves down.  The other group ate some lunch with ice cream for dessert, and then headed to the English Camp which is run by the Knights of Columbus and the Sisters of Life. This was a great opportunity to bond with people who spoke our language, and even reunite with some friends from home.  Here, this group chose to go to Confession, sit in on a live taping of Life on the Rock, and we were chosen to attend a press conference about media and youth with a soon to be Cardinal.  After some more exploring in the English camp, we split in groups again for some evening activities.  We headed to the Metro stations or traveled on foot, to a night full of music and theater. One group headed to a concert in the English language called Contagious Faith, so now we are ready to come home and spread the word.  Here we sang, jumped, danced, and some even got up on stage.  On the way back to the hotel, we decided to have our own concert and sing for everyone we passed and walked with.  Another group headed to a concert in French which involved singing, dancing, jumping, and even some mimes.  We were able to trade with lots of people from many places to get some fun trinkets to bring home.  After this concert, we headed for churros and chocolate followed by dinner, yes you read that correct…DESSERT FIRST! J  A third group headed to the theater to learn about St. Therese and her life.  We are very excited for tomorrow because Pope Benedict will finally arrive in Madrid!  We are ready to greet him with exuberant joy and tons of energy.  So that means…we are signing off for tonight to rest up for the big day tomorrow!! Hasta Luego!

Pictures

Pictures will hopefully be coming soon our internet connection is not very good which makes it very difficult. Sorry for the inconvenience.

WYD Has Officially Begun…A Day of Navigating Maps and Trains!

Our day started with sleeping in, enjoying a wonderful breakfast that was full of many options, receiving our WYD backpacks, and spending time in small group! Upon receiving our WYD backpacks we began to explore all that was in them and there were many great treasures, such as a YouCat, Magnificat, Pope comic book, our Australian style WYD hat, and fans to keep us cool, and this is only a small sampling of all we were given. In each of our small groups we looked through the many options of activities that could be done today and decided which ones we would prefer to do.  As we started on our journey, some groups decided to start with a small shopping trip, a search for lunch and than a Lithuanian concert to follow, after meeting up with other groups we then had dinner. The other group decided to go see Christopher West and theology of the body, this involved them to be daring enough to ride 3 different trains. During this session they heard many things including quotes and words that meant a lot to them such as,

“Beauty has the power to pierce us, to open our hearts to the greatest things we desire. One of the gifts of beauty is that it awakens our desire for God” -JPII

In other words, we must desire heaven. This presentation also included music and art in the sand that went along with Christopher’s talk. Following everyone’s afternoon adventures, we all met up at the hotel to then proceed to the opening mass location!  This mass was estimated to have a million people at it and despite the challenges that went along with such a massive group of people it was a beautiful mass to officially open World Youth Day! This mass included a warm welcoming from the Cardinal Archbishop of Madrid inviting us into their city and their family, and also the blessing of a Blessed John Paul II relic, which was very amazing to witness, as he was the founder of WYD! We ended our night with prayer partners, small group to decide tomorrow’s activities, and now we are prepared for a good night of sleep! Adios!