BEND — The most frequently asked question of the past week has been, “How was World Youth Day?” How was it? As I expressed to a number of folks there were so many elements of WYD and so many experiences that it will take a long time to process. There was the presence of the Holy Father, the Catechetical venues, the display booths, the wonder of the southern hemisphere, the various groups of pilgrims, the choreography of the liturgies, the intensity of the stations of the cross, the camaraderie of bishops, the devotion and exuberance of the youth, the prevalence of song, the open displays of faith, the abundance of confessional use, and much more. As one local Sydney newspaper put it in a bold headline: A tsunami of faith and joy. Individual words would have to include incredible, amazing, staggering, phenomenal, overwhelming. It was certainly much more than just interesting.

The dynamic operative is quite difficult to absorb. What is it about an 81 year old man in a striking white cassock which has the power to raise more than 100,000 young pilgrims to their feet in a near frenzy of enthusiasm and joy? What is it that these young people are searching for in the Church which this event seems to offer? What do these days provide which make them so unique, so wonderful and so stimulating for all of us? These are the questions with which I grapple as I now try to “process” the experiences of the past week.

The youth who traveled with the Diocesan group to Sydney left Sydney as the same people who had arrived and yet they were not the same. Their lives have been touched in a very graced manner and I suspect that all of them will somehow be different and live differently. One of the things which I tried to do with the young people in the course of catechesis was to help them identify what it was that they were experiencing so strongly. Why did they listen with greater attentiveness to the scripture? Why were the stations of the cross so moving? Why were they so inclined to sing? How could they be at Mass for nearly two hours and not experience either boredom or dread? What was happening? What were they receiving? What was so different?

Two things occur to me. The first is that the Holy Spirit whom these youngsters had already received in both Baptism and Confirmation was somehow set free within them so that the whole of their lives could be more deeply immersed in the Spirit of God. Thus it seems that a large portion of what we all experienced in Sydney was not the reception of new power from the Holy Spirit but rather a setting free of that same Spirit. There was a brief moment in time when all in Sydney knew with great clarity what it meant to be a son or daughter of God and to live the life of the Spirit. This was experienced and it resulted in an outpouring of faith and joy, indeed, a tsunami of faith and joy. The memory of that week long moment in Sydney fills the heart with great longing for the coming of the kingdom of God for it was, in many ways, a momentary realization of that kingdom.

The second thing which occurs to me, and it is directly linked with the first, is that this tsunami of faith and joy could result precisely because the presence of so many believing and committed Catholics created an atmosphere in which the faith could be appreciated and lived more fully. It can happen that such an atmosphere may be created in very small groups for very brief periods of time and so one can achieve a similar experience on a very small scale. But the possibility of having that experience literally spill out into the streets of a major Australian city is difficult to imagine and yet it happened. In that week long moment the Church literally moved from the safe confines of the Parish Church on Sunday morning and went to the streets of Sydney. Having heard, perhaps as if for the first time, “The Mass is ended, go in peace,” these pilgrims did go, they went to the streets of Sydney and there proclaimed that Jesus is Lord. It was a kind of new Pentecost. On that original Pentecost the Apostles were barricaded behind locked doors despite their belief in the Risen Lord. Yet when the Spirit came to them they took to the streets. The young people at Sydney, having had the Spirit stirred up within them, likewise took to the streets and they took the streets and they captured the hearts of the people of Sydney in a most amazing fashion.

The pilgrims from the Diocese were a bit worn and a bit tired on the trip home but they were also noticeably different in their demeanor. I got the sense that they now understood a little better what it means to be a member of this wonderfully broad and diverse One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. As several indicated it was wonderful to be in a setting where nearly everyone they encountered held to the same set of beliefs and was enthusiastic about being members of the Church. So many of our youth come from very small parishes and the experience of being with more than 200,000 worshipping Catholics in one venue is difficult to absorb. What they did absorb, however, was how good and pleasant it was to be a part of something so grand. One of the greatest needs of the human person is the need to belong and to have a strong felt sense of belonging. As Catholics we should and often do feel that we do not belong to this world, that we are “strangers and aliens” here. That sense of being alienated from a very secular world can be both confusing and disorienting. For the young person of strong faith there is a great need for that sense of connectedness to something other than this world, to something greater than what the world has to offer. It is my conviction that the experience of WYD-SYD provided to the pilgrims a wonderfully unique experience of connectedness which they very much needed and desired. As I told the pilgrims at the outset: We are going to Australia and you may want to see a koala bear but whether you see a koala bear or not is of little significance. Whether you meet the Spirit of the Lord in a new and invigorating fashion will be the measure of the success of the pilgrimage. I do not know how many saw koala bears but they did all meet the Spirit anew.