World Youth Day - Madrid

Popemobile makes its way through the crowd

"But I am not the star, I am only the vicar. I point beyond myself to the Other who is in our midst." -- Pope Benedict XVI on the eve of World Youth Day

I'm a little late commenting on World Youth Day, that spectacular gathering in Madrid of faithful youth from all over the world that took place August 16-21, but life's events conspired against me. Our long-planned trip to Iowa to celebrate the wedding of the son of our good friends and then Diane's surgery this past week monopolized much of my time. As it turned out, because we were on the road during most of World Youth Day, I didn't even get to watch the events on TV. I did catch a few reports on the mainstream media and was once again amazed at how they willfully distort religious news. Almost two million young people come together to celebrate their faith and the media coverage I saw focused on a few hundred protesters. My, my...how so many in the media despise the Church. Not to worry, though. Were not the last words of Jesus to His apostles, "And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” [Mt 28:20]?

Young people greet the pope in Madrid

In recent days, as I reviewed some of the coverage after the fact, the joy and faith of these young folks was so apparent. Joyfully, singing and waving the flags of their homelands, they filled the streets and the squares of Madrid, and when they greeted Pope Benedict XVI they seemed almost to burst in their enthusiasm.

A few years before he became Pope Benedict XVI, I met the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on a Roman street not far from St. Peter's Square, and had the opportunity to speak with him for a few minutes. He is a very unassuming man, a rather small, shy man. I expect he's more at home in the role of professor than as Vicar of Christ, the leader of Christ's Church on earth. But setting aside his personal desires, he responded to the call of the Holy Spirit and these young people responded to him with the kind of exuberance you'd think they reserved only for rock stars.

What brought these young people together? What could possibly draw so many of today's teens and twenty-somethings to Madrid to celebrate their faith, the faith of the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church? Why would hundreds of thousands of the world's youth look to the Catholic Church for direction when everyone who is anyone knows that the Catholic Church is a repressive organization determined to impose its medieval morality and ancient rites on a progressive world? And why would these same young people express such enthusiasm for this old man, this defender of the Faith, a faith rejected by so many of their parents?

Pope Benedict greets the youth of the world

Interesting questions, aren't they? And what's more interesting is that today's faithful youth seem also to have rejected the liberal, relativistic version of their faith espoused by so many of my generation. Instead, they have turned to the Church and its magisterial teachings in search of the "permanent things", the unchanging truths that provide a stable anchor in this unstable world. They look at the world we have handed them and they say, "Thanks, but no thanks. You have given us a world that ignores its holy roots, a world cluttered with material goodies, but void of real meaning."

Do you remember that TV show from the 80s called "Fame"? It featured the students attending a high school in New York City devoted to the performing arts. The show's theme song included the following lyrics:

I'm gonna live forever. I'm gonna learn how to fly.
I feel it comin' together. People will see me and cry.
I'm gonna make it to heaven. Light up the sky like a flame.
I'm gonna live forever. Baby, Remember my name.

The words point to a human desire, one that is especially evident in the young, for something greater than what the world seems to offer most of us. "I want to live forever..." are words that seek immortality, but these children of the 80s could see their fulfillment only in the fame that comes from being a celebrity, a false form of eternal life, one that crumbles into dust along with everything else in the material world. And yet, tucked in among the lyrics is the statement, "I'm gonna make it to heaven...", words that betray what the human heart seeks above all else, true eternal life, the happiness that comes only from being in the very presence of God.

Kurt Cobain

I believe many of today's youth have come to recognize this. They see the unhappiness and despair of those who were promised so much by the world. They see their celebrities, their supposed heroes, the ones who "made it", and they see them self-destruct right before their eyes. The despair of a Kurt Cobain is very real when he says, "The finest day I ever had was when tomorrow never came", and then kills himself.

Or they watch a talented Amy Winehouse dissolve into absurdity on a series of public stages as she is eventually overcome by drugs and alcohol.

They see these finders of fame and others like them and ask, "Is that what comes from material success? Is that what I want?"

Amy Winehouse

The wise ones among today's youth are searching for something that transcends the ephemeral pleasures offered by the world, and in doing so they have turned to what their ancestors bequeathed them, a bequest long ignored but retrievable. They have found the Faith, and in the discovering they can hardly believe the joy it has brought them. For now their lives have real meaning.

Interestingly, while these thousands of joyful young people were gathering in Madrid, many of England's youth were engaging in a collective temper tantrum, burning and looting and assaulting. Given so much in the way of material benefits, they simply want more. Pampered, not required to work for anything, continually given whatever they demand, they are continually dissatisfied. Since their society has rejected Christianity and by extension its moral values, why should they feel any need to adhere to a morality deemed obsolete by their parents?

Young looters in London

If we're not careful, we can see such increasingly common riotous behavior and believe it to be the future. We, too, can be led to despair for the world. Don't let this happen to you. Remember, the world was changed once before when twelve men were sent out by Jesus Christ to evangelize a troubled planet. From a human perspective the odds against their success could not have been higher, but they carried with them the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will not be denied. In the same way, today's young evangelists have been sent from Madrid to bring Jesus Christ's message of salvation to an even more troubled world. And they, too, will carry the gifts of the Spirit. They, too, will be instruments of God's grace in the lives of those they encounter. Pray for them always.

This is why I never despair, regardless of the chaos that seems to rule the lives of so many in our world today. These young people who joined Pope Benedict in Madrid have the kind of faith that moves mountains. They are natural evangelists for they approach their world unafraid, filled with the confidence that comes only from the Holy Spirit. We old folks can learn from them. One 18-year-old American girl in Madrid, Hannah Davidson from Kansas, told a reporter, "My faith is definitely stronger and I am going to promote it a lot more." Simple words but can you think of a better way to say it? I can't.

A "Young" Pope Benedict XVI

As Pope Benedict told this global gathering of youth during one of his homilies,

"They will wonder what the secret of your life is and they will discover that the rock which underpins the entire building and upon which rests your whole existence is the very person of Christ, your friend, brother and Lord, the Son of God incarnate, who gives meaning to all the universe."

This call to evangelize, then, must be realized not simply through our words, but through the lives we lead as Christians. As the pope stated, "They will wonder..." It is Jesus Christ, this light of our lives, that must shine through the gloom of the world, calling others to want to know the secret of our Christian joy. It's an open secret, one that the Church has preached and taught for 2,000 years.

Here's a brief video on World Youth Day in Madrid. I think you'll enjoy it.

A few days after World Youth Day, the pope, speaking to a group of his former students, apologized for the many Catholics who have ignored the call by Jesus to evangelize. "We who have known God since we were young, must ask forgiveness...we bring people so little of the light of His face, because from us comes so little certainty that He exists, that He is there, and that He is the Great One that everyone is waiting for." This, of course, echoes the pope's frequent call for radical Christian discipleship, repeating the call issued by Jesus again and again in the Gospels. It is a call we cannot ignore.

God's peace...