Youth and adults prepare for World Youth Day
Click here for pictures from the event
By Brandon A. Evans
Nearly 110 youth and adults from around the archdiocese gathered for prayer and information as they prepare to embark on a pilgrimage across Europe to attend World Youth Day 2005 in Cologne, Germany, this August.
The event took place at Our Lady of the Greenwood Parish in Greenwood on May 21, and served mainly to inform people about how to prepare—spiritually and materially—for the pilgrimage to Europe from Aug. 10-22.
Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein spoke to the group and the event ended with a Mass celebrated by Father Jonathan Meyer, associate director of the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry for the archdiocese.
About 170 youth and adult chaperones will be going on the pilgrimage, which will be led by Archbishop Buechlein. Four archdiocesan priests will also be pilgrims.
The group will first travel to Assisi and Rome, where they will visit the tomb of Pope John Paul II. The pilgrimage will continue by train through Italy and France, and before the group reaches Cologne they will travel by boat up the Rhine River.
Once in Cologne, the youth and adults will take part in various World Youth Day events, such as catechetical sessions and the Way of the Cross.
The celebration will reach its zenith with a papal Mass on the morning of Aug. 21 in a large field outside the city of Cologne. That event will be preceded by a special prayer vigil on the evening of Aug. 20 in the same field.
During the Greenwood meeting, those gathered had a chance to take in a lot of information regarding travel to Europe, such as how to obtain a passport, what sorts of things to pack and what to expect during the pilgrimage.
The group received detailed hotel, flight and tour information as well as an itinerary listing all the things they would see—from the Sistine Chapel in Rome to the Cathedral in Cologne.
While much of the time was devoted to such details, the spiritual aspects of the trip were also given prominence.
Archbishop Buechlein reminded the young people that sightseeing isn’t the point of the trip.
“We will have some wonderful experiences and see wonderful places, but first and foremost, we are on pilgrimage,” he said. “A pilgrimage differs from other kinds of journeys or trips in that we travel together with a common faith, a common hope and a common love.
“We are going to Cologne, as the Magi went to Bethlehem, to worship Jesus.”
The idea of the Magi—whose bodies, according to tradition, are interred in the Cologne Cathedral—runs strong in the official theme of World Youth Day 2005: “We have come to worship him” (Mt 2:2).
The archbishop quoted from a 2004 message from the late Pope John Paul II inviting young people to attend this year’s event. In that message, the pope urged young people to imitate the Magi, who brought gifts to the infant Christ.
“My dear young people,” the pope wrote, “you too offer to the Lord the gold of your lives, namely, your freedom to following him out of love, responding faithfully to his call; let the incense of your fervent prayer rise up to him, in praise of his glory; offer him your myrrh, that is your affection of total gratitude to him, true man, who loved us to the point of dying as a criminal on Golgotha.”
Noting that the Bible tells us that the Magi went home by a different way, the archbishop urged the young people to come back from World Youth Day as changed people—to come back holier and full of charity.
Father Meyer told the youth and adults that the events of World Youth Day would be a unique experience in their lives.
At a Mass celebrated after the information session, Father Meyer related the mystery of the Holy Trinity to the mystery of how so many people from different places can come together to form the one Body of Christ.
For more information about the upcoming archdiocesan trip, including an itinerary, click here