Tim Drake posts from WYD:
CLOSE YOUR EYES AND JUST IMAGINE...
You're at a Church very much like your own suburban parish, and yet something is terribly, wonderfully wrong. From corner to corner, wall to wall, front to back the Church is filled with young people representing Mexico, New Zealand, Malaysia, England, Uganda, and the U.S. Try as you might there is no room to sit, let alone room to stand. The floor space in the aisles, along the sides, on the floor between the front pews and the altar, the stairs leading up to the altar, and the balcony are filled to overflowing with young adults in colorful outfits. Their flags drape over the balcony railing. In confessionals on both sides of the Church, young people are lined up for confession six or seven deep.
From the front of Church comes music - some familiar ("Sing Alleluia to the Lord"), some not, but it is being sung so loudly that it almost hurts your ears. The youth break into spontaneous shouts of "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," saying it faster and faster until they end in an ecstatic clapping. You get goosebumps just listening to it.
Now imagine that at the drop of a hat, one of the Church's "princes" takes the podium. After intense clapping and cheering, the room that just moments before was shaking with noise becomes deathly silent.
This was World Youth Day this morning at St. Francis Xavius parish in suburban Dusseldorf.
One of my great regrets is not going to WYD in Toronto, probably the last time I qualified, barely, as "youth."
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