Monday, July 04, 2016

I went to World Youth Day...

...as a journalist in 2011, in Madrid in the most horrible, torrid heat. The thunderstorm at night -  with some one and a half million people on a massive airfield, and the beloved Holy Father Benedict XVI sitting out the clattering rain, the zigzag lightning and the great crashes of thunder along with the rest of us - was one of life's most tumultuous experiences. It was glorious, an answer to prayer: the burning sun had been horrible, and the Spanish Fire Brigade had been circling the airfield, hosing us down, and the Air Force bringing great stacks of bottled water...And then a tiny cloud was seen in the evening sky, getting gloriously bigger as the burning sun oh-soooo-slowly made its way down in the West. And then the storm. Magnificent.  And the Holy Father was there with us all the time:" Well,we shared an adventire together!" he said mildly, as the storm passed...

Reading this made me want to go to Krakow 2016.  But I'm older than ever, and have a Dissertation to write (more on that in due course) and lectures to give, and a family wedding coming up, and umpteen responsibilities that cannot and should not  be shelved...

Pray for World Youth Day, a piece of good news in a complicated world. Thank God for St John paul the Great who initiated this wonderful project....


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