\n\n
The secular world sees so many people gathered for Christ and asks what the real reason could be. It does not strike many people that they could actually be gathered for Christ. People try to root out what true motivations they have, and there is no lack of bad examples.<\/p>\n
Yet what impressed me so much about our archdiocesan pilgrimage was how many youth were so genuinely interested in gathering with the Universal Church in the name of Jesus. I was impressed to youth from so many cultures who were respectful during the prayer vigil in Marienfeld, and who spent much time on their knees.<\/p>\n
A great many–we all pray the great majority–of those at World Youth Day are there because they are serious about their faith. They are there because they are preparing to be a leaven among their peers, to be light for the world and salt for the earth.<\/p>\n
World Youth Day, in the end, will always be plagued with those who, in the secrecy of their hearts or the obviousness of their actions, aren’t there for the right reasons. And it will always be host to the human tragedy of sin in those who go in earnest to bloom for Christ but end up taking a different road. We can only hope that the grace of God through the experience of World Youth Day eventually has its full effect. The great joy though, is that so many go to make a statement to the world that the newest saints are here, that they are ready to sacrifice their lives for Christ, that they are willing to be radically cast into the image of Jesus–and that they know their flaws and want to change them. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some final thoughts that people have posted: The Roamin’ Roman was cold and wet and got sick, but still had some good moments. She also said, (apropos of someone’s remark here about the NYTIMES photo montage of WYDYouth) "everyone smokes here." Recovering Choir Director has a Juventutem report including links to photos and music notes.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}