Thursday, July 31, 2008

Impressions from the WYD 2008


Firstly, I want to apologize if this post is extremely long, but the event itself was great enough to write an entire website of it. LOL

Probably there is no farer place on earth than Oceania (at least seeing it from a perspective of inhabitants of the northern hemisphere)

Despite the distance, there we were nearly 500,000 people from different races, languages, cultures and origins, united for the same cause: hearing the words of hope and love from the Pope Benedict XVI.

What a wonderful place! Sydney is not just literally beautiful in its geographical constitution and location, but it is full of gorgeous and kind people, always willing to help you out.

The atmosphere was awesome! You could feel a great energy all around. I guess many of the Aussies got deeply moved with our fervor and happiness during those few days of the WYD week.

Following, I will try to write down the most striking ideas that I personally liked from the messages of the Holy Father in Sydney:


    • “We must allow the love of God to penetrate our hard shell of indifference, of our spiritual dryness, of our blind conformity with the spirit of our time. Only then, we can allow Him to light up our imagination and to engrave our deepest desires. Therefore, prayer is very important: daily private prayer in the tranquility of our hearts and in front of the Most Holy Sacrament and the liturgical prayer in the heart of the Church”.

    • “Young people: what will you leave to the next generation? Are you building up your lives on a solid basis? Are you living your lives sparing some space to the Spirit in a world that pretends to forgive God or even to reject Him in the name of a false concept of freedom? How are you using the gifts that had been given to you, the “power” of the Holy Spirit that is to be poured out on all of you?”.

    • “A new generation of Christians is called to contribute to the construction of a world where life can be received, respected and cared carefully; not rejected or seeing as a threat and therefore, destroyed. A new era in which love is not eager for selfishness, but a pure, faithful and sincerely free love; open to the others, respectful for its dignity. A love which promotes its wellbeing and which shines with happiness and beauty. A new era in which hope frees us up from superficiality, apathy and selfishness that hurts our souls and poisons the human relationships”.

    • “My dear young friends, the Lord is asking you to be His prophets in this new era, messengers of His love; being able to bring all the people to the Father and to construct a future of hope for the entire humanity”.

    • “Do not be afraid to say “yes” to Jesus, to find out your happiness in doing His will, giving yourselves completely to reach holiness and using your talents to service
      others!”.

    • “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving. Never doubt of the truth of our Lord Jesus’ promises, in which we receive afterwards everything that we give (our creativity, our resources, our people), in abundance”.

    • “The real source of freedom is in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Christians believe that He reveals in fullness the human potentiality to grow up in virtue and in
      Good. He frees up from sin and from the darkness”.

    • “The authentic love is certainly good. When we love we are fully human. But often it is believed to love someone when in reality they tend to possess or to manipulate the other. Sometimes, other people are treated as objects to satisfy their deepest needs. It is so easy to be deceived by those many voices in our society which sustain a permissive focus of sexuality without paying attention to modesty, self-respect and moral values that confer quality to human relationships”.

    • “We can fall into temptation by reducing the life of faith to a mere sentimental issue; therefore, weakening its power of inspiring a coherent vision to the world and a rigorous dialogue with the many visions that compete in the conquest of minds and hearts of our contemporaries”.

    • “Walk each day before the Light of Christ, through your fidelity to the personal and liturgical prayer, nurtured by the meditation of the Word, inspired by God. May the daily celebration of the Eucharist be the center of your life!”.

    • “The Holy Spirit! His function is this: to accomplish the work of Christ. Enriched with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, you will have the strength to go further, farer from the partial visions, from the empty utopia, to offer coherency and certainty to the Christian testimony”.

    • “Love has a particular characteristic: its aim is to remain. By nature, Love is lasting. The Holy Spirit offers love to the World; love that dissipates uncertainty, that overcomes the fright to be deceived by eternity itself; the true love that incorporates us to the reality that remains”.

    • "Being fully alive is to be transformed from the inside, being open to the power of God’s love. If you receive the power of the Holy Spirit, then you will also be able to transform your families, your communities and the nations. Free up those gifts! May wisdom, intelligence, strength, science and piety be the signs of your greatness!”.

    • "Christ offers more; He offers everything. Only Him, who is the Truth, can be the Way and therefore, the Life”.

    • "We must remain faithful to the yes with which we accepted the offer of friendship from the Lord. We know that He will never abandon us, that he will always maintain us with the gifts of the Spirit.

    • "Mary accepted the “proposal” from the Lord on our behalf. Let us go to her and ask her to guide us through the difficulties, so that we may keep loyal to the vital relationship that God established with each one of us”.

It is not just a challenge but also a great responsibility what we acquired there in Australia during that week. I am sure all of us, the attendants, were changed in some way by the Spirit. In a few cases, the changes will be dramatic; as for the rest of us, the changes might be slight, almost imperceptible, but representative because it will imply changing habits or attitudes, for better.

It will be a along way for WYD 2011, but enough time to get ready for another encounter with our Creator through His servant, the Pope. The challenge has been given to us and it’s a challenge of Love. Are you willing to take it?

Striving for Love,
AG


P.S. For further information on WYD 2008, please check: http://www.wyd2008.org/

2 comments:

Resty Odon said...

Wow! Nice blog you got here. =)

nikolai said...

Nice Blog and I really like the fact you being a world citizen. How excited is that?!
I kind of followed what happened on world youth day, but to be honest I was more interested in Sydney and the people there. I loved that place and really want to go back to AUS soon. So keep traveling and posting!