Last week I paid off $700 towards my trip to Brazil next year for World Youth Day 2013. Not gonna lie, I got pretty excited because that payment makes me somewhere halfway to paying off for the trip. Pretty exciting!!!
And yesterday, I had a little taste of World Youth Day. My diocese and the other major neighboring diocese hold their own smaller scale World Youth Day once a year at Six Flags Over Texas. No big deal. What a great way to test your faith and sense of mortality whenever you ride of some those roller coasters! Lol...
I had a lot of fun riding Mr. Freeze, Batman, the Shockwave, and Runaway Mountain. Lines were long...all these Catholics were in line for some reason... Haha.
Six Flags Over Texas is a fairly large park, and it seemed like every other person was wearing some sort of t-shirt representing their parish. I never fully grasped just how many people were there for World Youth Day until the closing Mass with the bishops. I estimate something over 2000+ people were there for this event--kinda crazy. Yet we fit inside of Six Flags' amphitheater. A Mass gathering, if you will.
When I went to this event last year, that was my first time ever serving as a Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion during the closing Mass. I was called upon to serve as an EMHC again for this year, and the opportunity is always so humbling because ...well...I'm not worthy that Jesus should enter under my roof, yet me, a lowly servant, must literally present Him to the faithful to share that intimate communion with Him. Annnnd, not only that, I was part of an army of EMHC's because...there was this huge Mass gathering of Catholics. Cool stuff.
Lastly, this was a significant event. This is probably one of the last few (or THE last?) major youth event that we get to see Bishop Vann since he's going SOCAL on us. A cherished moment in having him celebrate the Mass for us, for sure. And I laugh because his homily was about Twitter, and he did his usual Confirmation routine of asking questions about if we could tweet today's message, what would those tweets be?
Anyway, again...Six Flags was but a mere taste of the big World Youth Day knowing that Rio's World Youth Day will be on a much grander scale. And my excitement only grows from here!
Walk by faith.
- JD
