On Pilgrimage: Memories of World Youth Day 2016 - 1st of a Series

I had hopes of delivering real time accounts of my experiences during World Youth Day, but irregular internet availability and the heaviness of the schedule made the journalistic approach almost impossible. I did take some notes along the way, so with those and the memories contained in my mind, I'll have to settle for a memoir as opposed to a report. The plan is to spend the next couple of weeks writing about my Pilgrimage through Spain, France and Poland, culminating with the papal visit to Kraków. 

World Youth Day (WYD) is not for the strong. More accurately put, it's not for the weak who think that they are strong already. Mention of this irregularly triennial event to the vaguely knowledgeable but otherwise uninitiated usually elicits oohs and ah's, to go along with a lot of saccharin about what a blessing it is to see the pope. But like saccharin, such sentimentality is a fake sweetness that leaves a strange aftertaste on the tongue.

WYD is miles of walking everyday in the scorching sun followed by thunder storms and gusty winds, alternated with cramped rides on over crowded buses and trains, on public transit systems ill equipped to see their daily ridership treble overnight. It is living in youth hostels that sometimes resemble army barracks, with 5 or six to a small room and sharing toilet and shower facilities with hundreds of others. If you are blessed enough you'll stay in a three star hotel that makes you wonder what the other two stars were awarded for. While the more recent WYDs have done a better job with food distribution, it can mean enduring food and water shortages. It means spending the last night in an open field that is normally a race track or strip mine, a landfilled swamp or a combination of the three, sandwiched between five to seven mile hikes to and from the site. There is nothing sentimental about WYD. It isn't a sightseeing tour. It is a journey of faith that tests the participants' physical and spiritual limits. 

No, WYD is not a romantic holiday to some exotic pleasure dome that happens to have daily Mass. It is hard work that, when entered into with a spirit of humility, makes the weak truly strong. World Youth Day isn't for the weak, or more accurately isn't for the weak who are content to stay that way, because WYD is a pilgrimage. 

I've been on two such pilgrimages - Sydney, Australia in 2008 and the latest one that ended a few days ago in Kraków, Poland. Fr. Dominic Tran, SDB who organized this year's trip, (along with Fr. Abraham Feliciano, SDB - youth ministry delegate of the Salesian's Eastern U.S. Province), is a veteran of six WYDs. He knows the ins and outs, and the spirit of what WYD is supposed to be about. We had a wide ranging itinerary that brought us officially to three countries, five main destinations with a number of side trips squeezed in over a period of 18 days. At times the stops seemed random, and maybe to a certain extent they were. But what I experienced was that we were where God wanted us at every moment. The path may not have been straight and broad, yet it was true and sure.

Over the next few weeks I'll be reflecting on my experience. I accompanied 92, mainly young adult pilgrims on this journey. Even though all were over 18 years of age, I'll be using pseudonyms when referencing any of them. The only participants I'll mention by name are the Salesian priests, brothers and seminarians who went along on the trip. This isn't an exposé, nor am I dishing dirt, not that there's any to serve up. I just want to respect privacy. These are very personal reflections. There are 92 other points of view among the pilgrims, so I'm not suggesting that mine represent the absolute last word on what WYD 2016 was about.

The pilgrimage had two very distinct phases. Phase one ran from July 16 to July 24. During these days we went from Barcelona, Spain, taking coach buses into France where we visited Lourdes, spent three days in Taizé, then making a stop in Liseiux on the way to Paris. After a one day two night stay in the City of Lights we flew to Kraków for the second phase. 

In the two days before WYD began in ernest, we toured the city, while making stops in Wodowice - St. John Paul II's birthplace, Częstochowa - with its shrine of the Black Madonna, and the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau. While we were happy to be in Poland finally, without having to change loggings every other day, the pace didn't let up. In truth, it got even busier. We returned to the United States late Monday night - August 1, and many of us didn't return to our respective homes until Tuesday morning. 

I was a part of a group of 93 pilgrims from New York, New Jersey, Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta, Seattle, Washington, DC, and Toronto - along with other points Canadian. I'm sure I missed a place, but you get the idea - we came from all over the map. The diversity wasn't limited to the participants' residency. We came from a mix of Asian, Western and Latin American cultures. Some of us understood what a pilgrimage was all about, some of us really didn't know what was going on until we were well into the journey. 

I believe that by the end each of us was changed in some way. We encountered the Lord in the liturgies we celebrated, in prayer and fasting, and in the people we encountered along the way. For myself, I got a clearer vision of life as a pilgrimage that constantly calls me deeper into relationship with God. I had a conversation with a Protestant woman from the Netherlands at Taizé - which I'll describe, along with the entire experience there in a later post - where I found myself giving council to her, but was really giving it to myself as well. The message was that accepting Christ as Savior and Lord is the first step, not the last. Accepting Christ starts a process (continues it, really), and can only be walked with the cross on our shoulder and eternity fixed in our eyes. 

These are the bare facts. In the weeks to come I hope to share, not simply the where and when, but the why of my journey. I did not choose to go on this pilgrimage, really. I went gladly when circumstances made it possible, if not exactly necessary, for me to accompany the six pilgrims from our parish of St. John Bosco in Chicago. I believe that for some reason the Lord wanted me on this journey. I believe that he had a reason for each of the 93 of us, as well as the 2.5 million others to come to Poland in July, 2016. Each person had a very personal call, that was, at the same time, wrapped up with a divine motive we all shared: God wanted it, not because I am strong, not because I'm holy - but because I am weak and am in need of His holiness.