The message of World Youth Days is not that you have to be young to rejoice and feel free, but that you have to be a part of a community. Those who attended will come home with email addresses, Twitter followers, and Facebook friends from all over the world. They will keep in touch and remember these days as they have not remembered anything else. These might not be eternal, never-ending friendships, but they will be connections to people they had never dreamed of meeting. These new friends are people who share the same joy and energy for their Church as they do, people that they may not see back at home in the churches or schools they attend.
Do you know if your parish or diocese had any representatives at this incredible event? Whom would you ask? If you know who went, how could you follow up with them? How will they know that sharing their stories of those five days would be welcomed by the parish? What opportunities would they find in the parish to express their experience? How could the energy and enthusiasm of those days be channeled into our everyday parish life? If no one went from your parish, could you find out why and make sure it does not happen the next time?
We cannot let the experiences of these young people be bottled up and kept in a picture album or on a Facebook page. Our parishes have new leaders coming home from Madrid who can tell us all about God’s love for us, the need to be open to the Holy Spirit in our lives, and how great it is to belong to the body of Christ!
Sister Pat is a member of the RENEW staff, a Dominican Sister, and the project leader for RENEW Theology on Tap.
