I almost didn't go to World Youth Day. Upon arriving with my family at an aunt's vacation house in Milford, PA. late on the night of Saturday, July 20th, with a long day of driving behind us and another early morning and long day in the car ahead of us on Sunday as we continued the trek from Cape Cod to our home in South Bend, IN, I was feeling exhausted, drained of energy, and could think of nothing I wanted more than to get to my house and sleep for an eternity. However, I was scheduled to report to Notre Dame's campus early on the morning of Monday, July 22nd, and while I knew that World Youth Day would be an awesome experience, a week of sleeping on a floor and being constantly on the go was just not sounding appealing to me at the moment. My parents suggested that I stay home for a couple days and meet up with the ND group in Toronto later in the week, also an attractive possibility, but in the end I decided that if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. Thus, when we finally got home at around 8:00 that night, I spent the next several hours trying to unpack, repack, assess my laundry situation, run to the store, and catch up on the events of the last two weeks with my best friend, before I could fall into bed for a few hours of sweet sleep.....
We boarded the bus at 7:45, about 45 of us Domers and our 11 additional
travel companions from the University of Portland (a school that is, like
ours, run by the Congregation of Holy Cross). Holy energy was running
high during the nine hours or so it took us to get up to Toronto, and
excited chatting filled the air as friends who hadn't yet seen each other
during the summer caught up on their news and as we shared with each other
our hopeful expectations for the week ahead. Our trip leader, Fr. Bill
Wack, CSC, told us that the two words that would define our week would
be "patience" and "flexibility" (and he turned out
to be very right about that); he was also eventually pressured into entertaining
us with his retelling of "Prinderella," a story about a girl
whose gairy fodmother gives her a dancy fress replace her rirty dags,
etc. Definitely hilarious. Speculation about whether we would be able
to shower during our time in Canada (look for the answer to that one a
bit later on), joking comments tossed between several of the guys about
which of them was going to "take one for the team" and come
out of World Youth Day ready to jump into a seminary, good-natured disagreements
about which movie to watch, and of course some singing made the time pass
until we stopped for lunch at McDonald's in a small town right at the
US-Canadian border. There, one of the employees told us that we were merely
one in a string of busses to stop at their restaurant en route to Toronto
that day - a relatively unimportant comment, and yet it illustrated that
we were indeed part of a massive pilgrimage. The image in my mind was
that of a globe of the earth, with a big lit-up star on Toronto and little
lines leading to it from literally all over that globe. The world was
converging on Toronto - awesome!!
This sense of being part of a global transit was heightened by the scene
that greeted us when we finally arrived at one of the World Youth Day
registration centers. As our bus pulled into the parking lot, we looked
around in awe at all of the vans and buses, most proclaiming their sometimes
relatively distant places of origin. But even cooler was to look out and
see all the people that filled the parking lots. We tried for awhile to
keep our energy in check and stay on the bus, but when we spotted a group
of Africans singing and dancing and teaching a gathering of bystanders
how to participate, we just couldn't resist anymore. Fifty-some excited
college students poured off of the bus into the crowds; after a slight
hesitation, some of us headed over to the Africans, while others ran to
join a group of American kids playing four-square. We mingled and played
until our leaders emerged from the registration building, and then it
was time to get back on the road. During this last leg of the trip we
had something new to keep us occupied: all registered participants in
World Youth Day were given a nice red backpack, the kind with the one
strap going across the chest, filled with neat stuff. The WYD organizers
had thoughtfully supplied each pilgrim with (among other things) a wooden
cross necklace, a map of the area, a colorful bandana, a candle and holder,
a couple of guides to the city, a schedule for the week and guide to the
liturgies, and a little Canadian flag and flag pin. Fun!!
We were staying at St. Martin de Porres school in Scarborough, Ontario
- or "Scarberia," as a local woman dubbed it in talking to one
of us on a metro, in reference to its distance from the heart of Toronto.
The building supervisor led us to the classrooms that would become our
bedrooms for the next week, with the guys housed on one side of the corridor
and girls on the other ("just can't get away from parietals, I guess"),
and I was part of the lucky group of ladies who were able to claim a spot
in the library, which boasted the luxury of carpeting! Yay!! After dropping
our stuff, we were released for an hour or so to go in search of dinner
in the area around St. Martin's - not the best neighborhood, but safe
if you stay with a couple other people - and returned just in time to
celebrate Mass in the school's tiny gymnasium with the other student groups
staying at St. Martin's. We were sharing our living quarters with several
other groups from schools and churches also run by CSC priests, and this
arrangement proved to be for us a microcosm of the larger World Youth
Day experience in terms of the diversity represented. In the bathrooms
and the hallways of the school, we were surrounded by not only English-speakers,
but also students whose primary language was French (e.g. a group from
a high school in Montreal) or Spanish (e.g. a crowd of Chileans, and several
Hispanic youth groups from the US). The Mass that we shared on this night
was celebrated in all three languages, meaning that at any given time
there were some people in the room who couldn't understand what was being
said, but the awesome thing about the Mass is that it's the same no matter
where you are or what language you're speaking!! Thus, even when people
couldn't understand the language being used at the time, they could still
tell where the priest was in, for example, the Eucharistic Prayer, and
therefore could respond at the appropriate time in their native tongue.
At the 'Our Father,' we joined hands all across the gym as each prayed
in his or her own language - a powerful witness to the Church Universal.
Wow.
Mass was followed by general reverie, if you will: singing, basketball
playing, food and drink. Before long, however, the toll of the long day
of travel caught up to us all, and we retired to our classrooms for a
night of surprisingly comfortable sleep.
Tuesday, our first full day in Toronto, opened with morning prayer,
once again prayed multi-lingually. Then we enjoyed the first dose of what
would be our breakfast every day of the trip: an apple, a bottle of water,
a blueberry muffin, a cranberry granola energy bar type thing, and a little
box of apple juice. Thus, having filled our spiritual and physical needs,
we were ready to make the trek downtown to the Exhibition Place, the hub
of World Youth Day activity for the week. As we had been warned, it was
a long journey to the heart of Toronto. Altogether we spent an hour and
a half or two hours en route to "the Ex" (as some of the locals
referred to it), traveling by bus, subway, and streetcar. As we got closer
to our destination, we started spotting groups of World Youth Day pilgrims
on the streets, often wearing matching t-shirts or bandannas, and usually
carrying a flag proclaiming their country. Most prominent were a couple
of big groups of Poles, who are known for their loyalty and devotion to
this the first Polish Pope. We also passed a bunch of Italians, and Fr.
Kevin told us that 20,000 or so Italians had registered for WYD - an impressively
large number considering that they, unlike most of the people in attendance,
could see the Pope relatively easily back whenever the desire struck them.
Upon finally reaching the Ex, we were briefly searched by security people
and then - we were in!! The grounds of the E.P. are fairly large, so when
we first got there, we really couldn't get a feel for all that was available
to us there. But what we could see was enough. We stood in a big open
area looking at the huge building to one side, the stage being set-up
off to the other side, tents for selling merchandise and food in a few
areas near the entranceway, and people absolutely everywhere. I spent
the next several hours wandering around with my friends Kevin, Kevin,
and Danielle. First, we checked out the exhibition hall that held booths
for all kinds of different Catholic organizations (jokingly referred to
as the "Jesus Job Fair" because most of the booths belonged
to religious orders, who had kicked their recruiting techniques into high
gear for the occasion); then we made our way over to the outdoor stage
to say hi to a friend of theirs before heading for the Skydome. I was
supposed to be meeting with several kids from other universities whom
I had met via an email student advisory board for the Cardinal Newman
Society, but several of them got held up by last-minute changes in the
plans of their respective groups, so we only ended up finding one of the
people we were looking for. His name was Jereme, from Thomas Aquinas College,
and he came back to the E.P. with us so that we could share our first
World Youth Day meal. WYD meals are almost a whole story in themselves.
They were set up so that one person out of every six waited in line to
get the food and water for the rest of his/her group....but the catch
was that you really couldn't get a meal unless you had collected six meal
tickets, which often required collaboration with random people who also
had the wrong number in their group. This sounded like a terrible idea
at first but it really did make a lot of sense in practice, and most of
the time the food-obtaining process went surprisingly smoothly and quickly.
Jereme left us after lunch, and my friends and I, while walking back towards
the main building, discovered the Adoration hall. Wow. What an amazing
sight that was: a simple, brick-floored building with its doors open on
both ends and the flags of the world hanging from its ceiling and the
monstrance sitting elevated right in the middle. It was perfectly quiet
in the building, an oasis from the noise surrounding it on all sides,
and was full of people reverencing the Eucharist....some kneeling, some
lying prostrate, some standing, some sitting cross-legged.....some wrapped
in their flags....some holding rosaries.....all expressing their devotion
to Jesus. We tore ourselves away from this holy place knowing that we
had to come back before long (which we did - I think I ended up spending
at least a little time at Adoration every day we were downtown) and headed
back to meet our group so we could grab seats for the big event of the
night, the Opening Mass. To be perfectly honest I don't remember this
Mass very well.....what I can tell you is that it was outside, involved
several languages, lots of singing, and a surprisingly efficient distribution
of Communion. It was agreed that in this instance it would be forgivable
to leave Mass early, because everyone wanted to be sure and get a prime
spot at the LifeTeen event, where one of the musicians was Notre Dame's
own Danielle Rose!!
LifeTeen came through, as always, with a high-energy program featuring
lots of music, a skit or two, and a talk given by Matt Smith (of MTV's
"The Real World"). The definite highlight of the evening was
Adoration; as the priest carried the monstrance among the crowds of kneeling
young people, the power of the Blessed Sacrament was completely tangible.
Wow. The resulting "spiritual high" enabled us to endure fairly
cheerfully a very long wait in the line of people trying to leave the
E.P. and an even longer journey back to St. Martin's. We ended up not
making it back by our 12:30 curfew, but we were fortunately not locked
out (as had been threatened). Thus, a day that had begun well ended happily
too!!
Wednesday was the first day of the morning catechesis sessions, and
fortunately for we who were residing in far-off Scarberia, our own St.
Martin's had been designated an English-language catechesis site! Yay!!
This made us very happy because it meant that rather than waking up even
earlier than usual to begin the trek downtown, we could enjoy a fairly
leisurely morning before settling in to be catechesized on our home territory.
I started the morning off with a trip to WalMart with a couple other girls,
in search of flagpoles on which to proudly display Tim O'Malley's Fighting
Irish leprechaun flag.....and Daniella's Hungarian flag. An odd combination,
yes, but it made our group very easy to pick out in a crowd. We made it
back to the church just in time for the catechesis session, led by the
bishop of the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas. Unfortunately I don't remember
his name, but he gave a very nice reflection on what it means to be "the
salt of the earth." One insight in particular has remained in my
mind the highlight of his talk, and that was his reminder that salt is
only useful in relation to other things. Thus, in order for Christians
to be the salt of the earth, we must not only be faithful but also must
bring that faith to bear on every interaction we have with other people.
After the session we made our way downtown, got lunch, and then went in
search of Danielle Rose.
Danielle was playing a short concert with Matt Maher, another fantastic
Catholic musician who is also a big favorite of the Notre Dame crowd because
of his involvement with NDVision, a summer program for which a bunch of
kids on the WYD trip had been counselors. My friends and I eventually
made it over to the park that was the site of their midday concert, and
when we arrived, "Father Abraham" was being sung in full force.
This song is not just a regular old singing song, however; in involves,
by the end, hopping around shaking your head and arms and butt and anything
else that's shake-able. And Danielle and Matt had the whole crowd doing
this - awesome!! They sang some beautiful songs, including one based on
the Song of Songs that I think I have to name as my favorite offering
of the concert. After the last song, a gorgeous sung version of the "Hail
Holy Queen," I headed for another concert stage with a group of people
who were hoping to hear the father of a friend of theirs from Notre Dame
performing. Unfortunately, he never materialized, but we did get to see
the beginning of Tony Melendez' show. Now, here's a guy who is pretty
amazing - he has no arms, so he plays the guitar with his feet!! And does
a really good job at it, too.
Soon, though, we had had enough music and enough sun, and headed back
across the street to the E.P., in search of internet access and a place
to just chill. We made our way to Medieval Times and grabbed a table that
was right next to one of the horse-compartments; so here we are, me, Kaitlyn,
Brian, Tommy, Luke, and Phil, sitting at a table in this dimly-lit room
with lances hanging on the walls and a couple of thrones up towards the
front, and there's a white horse looking at us through a window right
next to our table. Kind of an odd environment really, but the boys were
all tired and the darkness of the room lent itself perfectly to a group
naptime. So, while they rested, Kaitlyn and I ended up having one of those
really interesting, roaming conversations that the busy-ness of college
life doesn't seem to allow for nearly often enough: "So Jennie. What
do you think you're going to tell your kids about dating?" One of
the terrific things about this trip was the opportunity to have conversations
like this, lots of them, with a variety of people. We really did have
a fantastic group up in Toronto, everyone who went is serious about their
faith and serious about living for Jesus, and most of us are pretty much
always up for talking and trading ideas about the shape that such a life
should take. Learning from each other was (and is), I think, just as important
as learning from the catechesis sessions and such. But anyway, back to
my story. So we got dinner, ate at our group's usual meeting spot ("the
grassy knoll, by the fire hydrant" - a location that became close
to our hearts by the end of the week), and me and a few others decided
to spend the rest of the time we had downtown poking around again at the
"hall of booths," a.k.a. the Jesus Job Fair.
I really loved being in that big room; the friendliness of the people
manning the booths was so welcoming - and plus, it was a great place at
which to collect lots of "flair" (buttons and pins to stick
on our red WYD backpacks -- the Franciscans especially had a bunch of
cool stuff to give away, we discovered). I stopped with my friends Kevin
and Jen at a booth for an organization called "Life Athletes,"
because I noticed that the big guy sitting there had on a polo shirt that
said "NFL Alumni South Bend." I told him that I was from South
Bend, he smiled and asked me what parish I went to, and we started chatting
away. Well. It turns out that this ex-New York Giant, Chris Godfrey, had
gone to Notre Dame's Law School after his football career was over, and
he had met my dad there!! When we realized this connection, he pulled
out a picture of himself on the football field and scribbled a note to
my dad on it, telling me to deliver his best wishes. In the meantime,
Kevin was practically drooling over the flashy Super Bowl ring that Chris
was wearing, and Chris was totally cool about it and even let us try on
his ring!! AWESOME!! His ring size is 15, compared to my 6 2 or something,
so needless to say that ring absolutely dwarfed my hand. So fun to try
it on, though - and then we had to get going, because we were scheduled
to be having Mass that night with Fr. Hugh Cleary, the Superior General
of the CSCs, back in Scarborough.
The Mass was very nice. It was highlighted for me by the unexpected presence
of my friend Monica, who had arrived with two of her sisters earlier in
the evening. I had known that she would be driving up sometime in the
middle of the week, but I didn't know exactly when, so seeing her waving
and smiling from the other side of the church was a happy surprise for
me :) After Mass, a bunch of people decided to put their excess energy
to good use by starting up what turned out to be a never-ending game of
four-square (four-square was a sort of recurring theme for the week);
some of those crazy kids played for what was probably a good couple of
hours almost, and the rest of us drifted off to bed in ones and twos.
Little did we residents of the school library know that this would be
our last night in our comfortable, carpeted room......
Thursday morning I took a shower!! Now, this may not sound like a big
deal, but the shower situation during this week turned out to be a bit
complicated. We had several options available to us as far as keeping
clean goes: 1) wash ourselves in the bathrooms by sticking various body
parts into the big grade-school style trough sinks (many of us used this
option at some point or another during the week, and while it may seem
gross to have people brushing teeth, washing off faces, hands, and dirty
feet, and shaving legs simultaneously all in the same sink, everyone was
very laid-back about it all); 2) walk several blocks to a nearby community
center, where real showers were available to us from 7 to 8 every morning
(I never did this, although many found it the best option - but only after
it was made clear to all of the girls that no one was allowed to take
a 15 minute shower when there were about 20 people in line behind her.
Oops.); and 3) put on swimsuits and "shower" in the hose in
the parking lot!! This was tons of fun and I ended up doing it three times.
It was definitely a great bonding experience and an exercise in patience
and cooperation, trying to get a whole bunch of people clean in a short
amount of time, so we enjoyed our impromptu "shower parties."
The other Event of Thursday morning was our eviction from the library.
Sister Margie came outside while several of us girls were finishing up
our breakfast, and told us that the caretaker of the school wanted us
to move our stuff out of the library immediately. Apparently a government
inspector had come by and declared our presence in the library to be a
fire hazard; he said that unless we all relocated by that night, he would
close down the school and kick out the entire group. Well. This was unfortunate
news indeed, as the other classrooms currently being occupied by females
were all pretty full and really couldn't comfortably accommodate a bunch
of extra girls plus everyone's bags and such. But those of us who were
still around at the time the eviction notice was given did our best to
fit ourselves in other places. The problem was not completely solved until
that night, when we decided to inhabit a previously unused classroom on
the first floor - leaving us isolated from the rest of our group, but
with plenty of space.
The "official" happenings of the day got underway with a reflection
on what it means to be the light of the world, given by Bishop Eugene
Cooney of Nelson, British Columbia. Bishop Cooney was a great speaker,
and we stayed at St. Martin's to celebrate Mass with him as well. After
the Mass, armed with the unexpected gifts of free candy (!) with which
we had been greeted when we left the Church, we made the daily trek down
to the E.P. Our first order of business upon arriving was to stake out
a prime spot for the Papal Welcoming Ceremony, which was set for later
that evening. We found a nice big space right along the PopeMobile route,
sent envoys to our fellow Domers who had already been downtown for awhile,
and settled in to enjoy the afternoon.
Fast-forward now to about mid-afternoon, when Danielle, Kevin, and I decide
that we want to go get some pizza. We wander over to the other side of
the papal route, which is where the pizza stands are, and are patiently
waiting in the longest line ever when we start noticing a flurry of activity
behind us. We decide at this point to forget the pizza and just start
making our way back to our group. Unfortunately, this plan turns out to
be not so easy to execute: the papal route had already been barricaded
by the time we tried to cross back over it, and the police were definitely
not about to make any exceptions and let us through. To make a long story
short, we followed like five different sets of directions for how to get
across, ended up taking an underground tunnel between two buildings, and
made it back to our spot with only a few minutes to spare before John
Paul II passed by. The three of us ended up standing behind bunches of
people who had all crowded up to the fence, so we actually didn't have
a very good view at all as the PopeMobile passed by, but that turned out
to be okay for reasons that will be explained in Saturday's installment.
As the crowds cleared and our group reconvened, we felt compelled to celebrate
our proximity to the Holy Father by pulling out all of the Notre Dame
stops, if you will. So we did the usual cheesy, stand-in-a-circle-with-your-arms-around-each-other
rendition of "Notre Dame, Our Mother," followed by the Irish
Jig (which we taught to the Portland kids and even to one or two random
people who were watching us interestedly), and then, of course, we concluded
with the greatest college fight song ever written, the Notre Dame Victory
March. This time, as with every other time we sang our song during the
week, we could see some of the nearby people joining in and singing along
with us. Fun!!
The Papal Welcoming Ceremony was really awesome -- as in awe-inspiring
and amazing. It opened with a parade of nations, during which every nation
in attendance was announced by name while representatives presented its
flag to the Pope. This took awhile, as you can imagine, since 172 countries
needed to be announced, but I wouldn't have complained if it had lasted
all night. It was so incredible to hear and to see just how widespread
the Catholic faith is. Every country's name was accompanied, of course,
by wild cheering from its native children; the Poles, Italians, and Canadians
were among the most enthusiastic, but I have to say that the cheering
for the United States was probably the loudest and the longest-lasting.
Even more amazing, however, was hearing the much smaller (or at least,
far less represented) countries announced, especially countries like Israel,
or the Sudan, which are in such bad shape right now. Some of these countries
are being torn apart by war, or by famine, and yet here were groups of
people whose faith transcends these earthly evils and who put a lot of
effort and a lot of money into getting themselves to Toronto to be with
their fellow Catholics and with their Pope. I know I was not the only
one whose eyes got a little watery as the nations of Africa, Asia, and
the Middle East offered greetings to the Pope right alongside the Catholic
strongholds of Europe and the Americas. Wow. The rest of the ceremony
involved several speeches, including one given by JPII, and of course
lots of music. Dinner followed, and then we headed for Medieval Times,
en masse, for a concert given by Danielle Rose and Matt Maher.
The concert was a little slow getting started, because of some major technical
difficulties, but once Danielle and Matt were finally able to really get
into their music all other concerns faded away. Both of them write songs
that are so beautiful and so powerful, and any passersby who looked at
the audience of this concert would have seen many young people with their
eyes closed and their faces wearing very peaceful and reflective expressions.
One highlight - especially for us Notre Dame kids - was Danielle's song
"Shelter Your Name," during which she invited up several members
of ND's fold choir to sing backup for her. Another highlight was Matt's
cover of "Crash Into Me" by the Dave Matthews Band, a song that
as he pointed out is really pretty amazing in the way that it can move
people sometimes, but that needs a bit of rewriting towards the end to
make it jive a little better with the Catholic message. So, "hike
up your skirt a little more/and show your world to me" became "leave
your skirt on girl/and show your purity," and variations on that
theme. The new, Catholic version of the DMB favorite was definitely a
big hit!!
Friday morning saw a group of us get an especially early start for the
Exhibition Place, with the object of attending to a catechesis session
led by Francis Cardinal Arinze, of Nigeria. He was speaking about being
reconciled to God, and he did a great job with it. Here I borrow from
Krissy Caponi's assessment of the talk: Athe thing I like about Arinze
is that he takes crap from nobody. If he has something to say, he'll say
it. If you ask him a stupid question, he'll give you the answer straight-up.
During the Q&A, a woman asked him what she was supposed to do about
reconciliation since her parish has one priest for 1000 families and rarely
offers the sacrament. He basically said that if you want it badly enough,
you're going to find a way to get it. He grew up in Nigeria, where people
regularly walk five miles each way - barefoot - for the sacraments, and
so she could probably get in her car and drive somewhere to find a priest.
That shut her up real quick. The consensus feeling after hearing
Cardinal Arinze speak was that none of us will complain if he really does
end up being the next Pope, as the Catholic rumor mill is declaring him.
Kaitlyn, Krissy, and I left after the talk to go get lunch, and we ended
up eating chili under a tree as rain fell all around us, while a nice
young Canadian man tried valiantly to keep up a conversation that started
with him expressing his admiration for Notre Dame. Definitely an enjoyable
meal. We split after eating far too much chili; Kaitlyn and Krissy wanted
to venture off the E.P. grounds to go in search of a lecture on sacred
architecture, and I opted to pass the next part of the afternoon alone.
I headed back to the main hall, because I felt that I had still not had
quite enough time as I would have liked to look around at everything the
booth place had to offer. I wandered around for awhile, looking at stuff,
collecting flair, and talking to people (including a couple kids I knew
from South Bend who had come up with their youth group). I spent some
time with a pair of sisters, students at the Franciscan University of
Steubenville, who were originally from Italy but whose family now lives
in Florida. They were really sweet girls, wandering around the room taking
in all the sights just as I was, and when we heard over the loud-speaker
an announcement for a small-group talk on the vocation of marriage, the
three of us decided to go. This talk ended up being pretty neat; it involved
three young married couples, each with a child or two in tow, telling
their stories and reflecting on their married life thus far. My favorite
of the three "love stories" was that of the first couple. The
woman had gone to World Youth Day >93 in Denver, as a young person
whose faith had always been strong. She also went to WYD >95 in Manila,
which is where she first met the man, who had spent several years as an
unbeliever and was just starting to want to really know God and find the
Truth. They were not particularly drawn to each other initially, but they
talked for hours during the Saturday night they spent outside, reconciled,
and started to build trust and mutual respect. They continued to grow
closer after returning to the States, and it was at WYD >97, in Paris,
that he proposed to her!! They didn't attend WYD 2000, in Rome, because
it was right before their first child was due; but now here they were
at Toronto 2002, sharing the story of how God used these awesome events
to bring them together. Now, how cool is that?! My new friends and I agreed
that it was definitely a really neat story.
After the marriage talk, I parted from the Italian girls and walked over
to the Automotive Center, a big building that was housing a performance
stage as well as some pro-life booths and a bunch of art exhibits. I had
been wanting to see the art all week, and I spent a lot of time quietly
and slowly taking it all in. Then I made my way over to the smaller building
that was playing host to the activities sponsored by the World Youth Alliance.
I sat and listened to a panel consisting of a couple of lawyers (one of
whom I knew, as it turned out), a fashion designer, an artist, and a political
consultant. They were having a broad discussion, fueled mostly by audience
questions, about ways in which the Culture of Life can be built in and
through each of these various fields; it was very interesting but I was
afraid that if I sat for too long I might fall asleep, so I moved on,
once again, to the Adoration hall.
As I was approaching the building I ran into Janel and Christina, a couple
of Notre Dame girls, so we entered together and realized very quickly
that we had stumbled upon a rosary session led by a group from Ireland!!
After the rosary we headed to the grassy knoll to meet up with everyone,
and there it was decided that some of us wanted a "real" dinner
- not that the WYD food hadn't been good (because it honestly really had
been much better than we had expected), but by this time in the week a
restaurant meal was sounding too appealing to pass up. And so a bunch
of us headed for the Rainforest Café. Now, I had never been to
one of these before, and I have to admit that I thought it was a little
weird at first. But once I got used to sudden "rainstorms,"
and to being surrounded by creatures and thus having a constant backdrop
of animal noises, it was really quite entertaining. The conversation was
enjoyable, food was delicious, drinks were fun (and very colorful!) -
and we even ordered a "volcano" dessert that came with lit sparklers
in it. Let me also note here that one other factor making this meal particularly
memorable was the presence among us of a new-found friend, a man named
Kevin who had been hanging out with Amy and Lenny and decided to join
our group for dinner. Kevin is from Denver and is a really interesting
guy; he is a travel agent, has written a book about sacred sites in Europe,
and likes to go running when it's boiling hot out. We really enjoyed getting
to know him, and he seemed to enjoy being with us as well and with Amy
especially. He reluctantly parted from us on the way home, but as it turns
out, we had not seen the last of Kevin....
Here I am once again going to borrow from Krissy Caponi's retelling, this time at length:
"Saturday dawned hot, humid, and foggy. Well, if it didn't dawn that way, that's how it was at 7 when I rolled outside. The people who ran our site had been stockpiling food, it seems like, and all of a sudden on Saturday we have more breakfast than we know what to do with. Everyone was yelling at me to take more, and honestly I just couldn't. Although later I was wishing I had some of that water, but more on that to come. One of the Canadian priests showed up with a bag full of Power Bars, and let me tell you that is exactly what we were looking for on our pilgrimage hike.....[w]e assembled to begin our pilgrimage with a prayer, and Fr. Bill insisted that we get into a circle. That is no easy task with 60 people, mind you. Our circle was so big that if you wanted to talk, you had to shout. So we shouted morning prayer and hit the road out of there. The nice thing about staying so far away is that we got seats on the subway because no one else was on it where we got on. We could have ridden the subway all the way out to the park, but since we are not (big) cheaters, we did our pilgrimage route. The route took us 8k over fields, under huge power lines, through neighborhoods, and around an office park, but we got there. It was really warm on that walk, as I'm sure you know, and there were police everywhere telling us not to stop....[t]hen there was the time we were accosted by tarp-sellers, and Kaitlyn believed the hype and bought into the whole ruse. Three tents set up along the side of the road, with guys yelling about how muddy the ground was and didn't we want a tarp? Of course we did! We just made Kaitlyn buy it....[p]retty funny, huh? Not nearly as funny as getting lunch. I guess we somehow missed the big lunch tents on the way to the park, so when our group was all set up in Purple Section 62 and people went to the food location on-site to get lunch, they had to walk for an hour to get it instead. I actually don't know the whole story, because when the folks got back with the food they looked like they'd rather eat US for dinner so I didn't ask them about how it went. Beyond food, let's talk about habiting the outdoors. When we set up our stuff on the (non-muddy) ground, I noticed little bits of grass hanging on to my sleeping bag. I tried to brush them off, but they kept hopping back on. That's when I realized that it wasn't grass, it was tiny grasshoppers....."
And that pretty much describes the first half of our day. Let me just
add a comment about the excellent location we grabbed for ourselves when
we got to Downsview, the park where the Big Papal Events were taking place.
Like Krissy said, we were in the purple section, which was a random assignment
we got back when Fr. Bill first registered our group. This was a very
good thing, because purple turned out to be the front section - in other
words, we were close enough to the stage to see not only it but even to
make out the shapes of people on it!! So, we started off with an advantage
over the majority of people flocking to Downsview. Next, when those of
us who were in the first contingent to make it to the park got to the
purple section and started looking around, we realized that it would be
far more intelligent not to move as close to the front as possible, but
rather to hang back a little and grab a nice big area towards the back
of the purple section - which was right along the PopeMobile route!! So
we claimed a huge corner area, in purple 62, which bordered on the road
and was right next to a Eucharistic tent. We were also right next to a
few guys of some kind of Hispanic origin who were standing next to the
fence playing music on random instruments and singing along.....and this
went on for hours. It was pretty random, but we blocked it out after awhile
because we had other things on our minds. Like our lack of a lunch and
our missing friends who had gone in search of it. And the grasshoppers.
And the terrible heat. Fortunately we had at least one Boy Scout type
among us - Phil rigged up some shade by tying a rain poncho to the fences
in the corner, so a few people at a time could take solace from the sun
if they were really getting unbearably hot.
People passed the time waiting for JPII by playing cards, reading, napping,
catching the occasional frog who showed up in our midst....we also learned
that going to use the bathroom was a good way to waste a whole bunch of
time because to get to the area (note: the only area) in which there were
about a million port-a-potties all lined up, it was a pretty good walk
- especially after the roads were blocked off in anticipation of the Pope's
arrival, thus requiring us to take the field-route and weave through and
among and over other people's belongings (and other people). This became
even more of an adventure after it had poured down rain, turning the fields
into mud soup - but now I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, we amused
ourselves pretty well, and were especially glad to have surprise visits
from Denver Kevin and from a few Notre dame girls who had come to WYD
with an Opus Dei group. Dinner time seemed to come fairly quickly; shortly
after we finished eating, the roads were closed and excited people began
to infiltrate our carefully guarded personal space. I ended up being crowded
right up against the fence, which of course was okay because it meant
that after the long wait was over and the PopeMobile finally passed by,
I had an excellent view of the Holy Father.
I had seen the Pope up close before, last summer when I was able to go
to a Wednesday Audience at the Vatican, but he has changed so much just
in a year. He looks much more aged. As he went past, I noticed that one
of the "Cardinals" (or secret-service type people in disguise?)
riding with him kept his hand on the Pope's back the whole time, offering
a bit of extra support. It looked like it was an effort for him to even
raise his hand in greeting to the crowds as he went past. And yet, love
and peace and joy radiate from him, from his face, even in the midst of
his suffering. I didn't even attempt to take any pictures, not wanting
to be distracted from absorbing the moment and fixing it deeply in my
memory. It's really an incredible feeling to be looking at a man who is
just so holy, so close to God.....and who will undoubtedly be a saint.
I was in the presence of a saint. Awesome.
As the PopeMobile continued to slowly make its way towards the stage,
and the crowds pinning us to the fence dispersed, we heard a beautiful,
clear, familiar voice being projected over the loudspeaker. It was Danielle
Rose, who had been given the awesome opportunity to sing the Litany while
the Pope wove through the crowds!! What a special moment for her, and
for us also by association. After Danielle finished singing and before
anything really important got underway up on stage, I made the trek to
the bathrooms, and while standing in line there I started chatting with
a priest who, it turns out, is from the Diocese of Peoria, IL (my family's
home diocese for 9 years or so while we lived in Champaign, and also the
new home of South Bend's former auxiliary bishop, Daniel Jenky, CSC);
this priest has even met my dad, through the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars
- SMALL WORLD!! So that was kind of exciting.
The vigil featured an address given by the Pope, in several different
languages as always. Fortunately, however, simultaneous translation was
being offered via local radio stations - so if we put on our headphones
and tuned in to 104.9 fm, we were able to listen to the entire thing in
English. [Note: links to the text of this address as well as that of every
other talk given by the Pope during WYD can be found online at http://www.cdeducation.org/oym/connections/papal.htm
at the bottom of the page]. This was also the event for which we had been
given candles in our WYD goody bags and as darkness fell and the park
was lit by thousands and thousands of candles, and the scene really brought
to life the Pope's message that we are all to be lights shining in the
darkness, just as our candles were doing this night. The Pope brought
the vigil to a close with a tongue-in-cheek invitation to us all to join
him for Mass the next morning (as if we really had a choice at this point),
wished us a good sleep, and bid us farewell for the evening.
So what do people actually do when they're spending the night in a huge
field with about 800,000 or so other people from all over the world? Well,
some people really do sleep. Or try to....but apparently the organizers
of the event did not think this would be the most fruitful use of our
time. So, as an alternative, they provided a "Vocations Concert"
that began around 12 or 12:30 am and lasted until probably close to 2
am. This was no ordinary concert, either - highlights included a song
about marriage that basically consisted of the lines, "woman and
man, man and woman" sung over and over in an incredibly unpleasing
voice; and a dance remix of the Catholic classic, "Here I Am, Lord."
Disturbing at best. There were also some groups that clearly agreed with
the judgment that noone should be allowed to sleep for awhile at least
-- the Poles especially seemed to possess very impressive organizational
skills, as they convened and paraded through the park en masse just about
every hour or so for half the night, singing and waving their flags. When
we realized that sleep wasn't really going to be a feasible option while
this concert was going on - and reflected on the fact that we were essentially
in the middle of a crazy Catholic worldwide PARTY - some of us chose to
go exploring. We found a lot of fun dancing, among other things, going
on back in the nether regions of the yellow section and beyond; Kaitlyn
and I decided to take this opportunity to meet lots of people, so armed
with notebooks and pens, we made it our goal to collect signatures from
as many countries as possible – and to find Irish husbands while
we were at it. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any luck with that
last part, but we did meet and chat with bunches of people, and most seemed
very happy to sign our books. When we finally made it back to the ND site,
the Vocations Concert was thankfully winding down, and we settled in to
sleep.
I actually slept pretty well for a couple hours….until the rain
woke me up at about a quarter till six. I don’t always think particularly
clearly when I first awaken, and my reaction on realizing I was being
rained on was to pull my sleeping bag over my head to protect myself from
the raindrops, and try to go back to sleep. A few minutes later I realized
that this was one of the worst ideas I had had in a long time, but by
the time I hopped up and started trying to save my stuff, my sleeping
bag was of course soaking wet. At this point, the tarp that Kaitlyn had
bought on the pilgrimage walk really came in handy – a bunch of
us managed to fit our belongings under it to save them from further destruction,
but as it turned out, the rain didn’t last long anyway – not
this time at least. But now we were all awake and stayed that way, eating
breakfast and just kind of taking it easy until the crowds started to
take over our space again in their determination to get as close to the
PopeMobile as possible when it passed. It was sometime during the period
in which we were all standing around in a big mob, waiting for the Pope,
when it started to rain again…and rained….and rained.
This time the rain meant business. The Pope passed, the crowds dispersed,
and everything was very wet. But we were still in very high spirits --
heck, we were at Mass with the Pope!! But still, being cold and soaked
is not so much fun. Someone pointed out that the most logical way to maximize
rain protection was to just all huddle together under the few umbrellas
we had among us. So we did. We also realized before long that the rain
was somehow messing up the sound system, meaning that we really couldn’t
hear the official music very well at all. This was one of those times
when the Folk Choir kids really came in handy. They led us in some beautiful
singing, as the rain fell, and any discomfort or frustration we were feeling
melted away as we praised God.
When the Pope finally made it to the stage, he greeted us by commenting
on how we wouldn’t need to do a sprinkling rite during the morning’s
Mass, seeing as how we had all just been experiencing a “natural
sprinkling rite.” The rain did stop, however, sometime during the
Opening Rite, although the clouds took their time scattering, until the
Gospel Alleluia – at which points the clouds totally broke and the
sun shone through in full force. It really was an amazingly powerful moment,
just like something you would read about in a Catholic storybook or something.
But it happened, in real life, in Toronto. Praise God!!
The Pope was really at his best during the Mass. His homily was awesome
(follow the link above to read it in full); it’s so clear when he
speaks that he loves young people very very deeply. “You are young,
and the Pope is old, 82 or 83 years of life is not the same as 22 or 23.
But the Pope still fully identifies with your hopes and aspirations,”
he told us. “Although I have lived through much darkness, under
harsh totalitarian regimes, I have seen enough evidence to be unshakably
convinced that no difficulty, no fear is so great that it can completely
suffocate the hope that springs eternal in the hearts of the young. You
are our hope, the young are our hope.” Another highlight of the
Mass came at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer. For awhile now,
the Pope has regularly been allowing a cardinal to pray this part of the
Mass. But on this day, the Pope did it himself!! It took a few minutes
for him to make himself comfortable and steady standing at the altar,
but once he was settled, he prayed the entire Eucharistic Prayer in a
strong voice. It was incredible to see, and made us realize once again
how important our generation is to him and how much he wants to support
and encourage us. At the end of the Mass, he made the official announcement
that World Youth Day 2005 would be held in Cologne, Germany – but
unlike every other WYD to date, he did not conclude by saying that he
would see us there. His goodbyes at the end of this Mass were very special
and very poignant; I think that everyone there, including JPII himself,
realized full well that he would not be attending another event quite
like this one. What an incredible blessing and privilege for us, to be
able to participate in what is in all likelihood the last World Youth
Day celebrated with our saintly Pope, John Paul II, the great friend of
the young!!
Turning to Krissy’s narrative once again: “We were ‘supposed’
to stay in place for an hour after the mass ended, to give the public
a chance to clear out, but we got out of there as soon as we could. Oh
man, I thought it was going to be the same nightmare it was in Rome, but
it went as smoothly as possible, all thanks to the public transport officials.
Bus after bus was lined up on a street near the park, and in sixes they
pulled forward to receive riders. People could board at either the front
or the back of the bus, and my group of 12 was directly across from the
front door, so we thought we had a good chance of getting on relatively
soon. After the fourth bus left without us, we realized that we needed
to avoid being outflanked. As Drew said, we Americans are too polite.
Be politely impolite! With an emphasis on impolite! The bus took us right
to the subway station, and within minutes they had moved the crowds so
efficiently that we were on a train heading home. I was shocked by their
efficiency. After the shock wore off, I went to sleep.
“The great thing about taking a bus home is that we weren't really
on any kind of schedule. That gave us time to get cleaned up before boarding
- praise God - and even to get McFlurries from our backyard McDonald's
one last time….”
The ride home, once it got underway, was fairly uneventful. I sat at the
very back with Jen, one of my favorite new friends from the trip, and
I spent a lot of time sleeping…watched a movie or two...had some
interesting conversations during the intervals in which I was awake. I
also started to learn how to knit – fun!! And then almost before
we were quite ready for the week to be over, there was the Golden Dome
up ahead….and we were home.
I know that this narrative falls woefully short of really conveying
what it was like to be in Toronto during that last week of July. In trying
to share my stories of the daily happenings of our trip I fear that I
have lost in the telling some of the larger, more intangible experiences:
the strength and solidarity I felt in seeing and hearing and being part
of a huge worldwide faith community; the peace in my heart as God showered
graces upon us, the joy that was constantly overflowing all over the city
and can be seen in all of its beautiful purity in moments like our spontaneous
praise and worship session in the rain. But these things cannot be adequately
expressed with written words anyway. However, they can be seen, seen in
the pilgrims who were part of this blessed event. God moved in Toronto,
very powerfully, and noone who was there could leave untouched. The effect
of WYD 2002 will look slightly different in every person, because every
person went to Toronto at a different point along his or her faith journey,
with different concerns, different fears, and different gifts to present
before the Lord. For me, the most noticeable results of my time at World
Youth Day are a renewed peace in my heart, a deepened readiness to do
God’s will, to serve Him with my time, energy and talents, and a
willingness to do this out of my abundance instead of only after my own
concerns have been addressed. To “give God what’s right, not
what’s left,” as a sign exhorted at Downsview on Saturday
night.
The most appropriate way that I can think of to close this reflection
is to leave you with the refrain of the World Youth Day 2002 theme song,
“Light of the World/Lumière du Monde.” We
sang this song about a million times throughout the week; the refrain
is fairly simply written, but it is an important and poweful message when
taken to heart:
The light of the world
The salt of the earth,
We scatter the darkness
When love becomes our way.
The light of the world
Christ is our light.
We shine with his brightness,
The reflection of his light
From day to day!
Alleluia, Amen!!
