5. Prepare spiritually for your journey. 6. Be open to the Holy Spirit, wherever he may be leading you. 7. Keep the fire burning … the end of
World Youth Day is only the beginning.
These seven points provide an outline of the key aspects of the World Youth Day journey.
1. Remember that World Youth Day is a pilgrimage( not a vacation).
It is vital that participants understand that World Youth Day is a pilgrimage, not a vacation or field trip. Pilgrimages are joyful and challenging journeys. Your participants have probably been on several trips throughout their lives and it can be tempting to approach WYD as one among many. The pilgrim journey is – or should be – so much more.
On a vacation, the goal is rest. On an excursion, the goal is adventure. On a pilgrimage, the goal is conversion.
People in the United States are often introduced to pilgrimages in high school literature class when they read Geoffrey Chaucer’ s Canterbury Tales. The idea of going on
19 a pilgrimage, then, might be seen as old, archaic, even outdate. A modern pilgrimage story is the 2010 film, The Way, about one man’ s journey on the Camino de Santiago. In this movie, the main character goes to Spain to identify the body of his son, who died making the pilgrimage. Initially skeptical of such a spiritual exercise, the father decides to continue the journey to honor his son. He finds his own faith illuminated along the path and is transformed in the company of new friends.
In Europe and the Middle East, pilgrimages have a very long tradition and are not limited to Christians( as the Jewish people and Muslims also have strong connections to the pilgrim experience). People go to the Holy Land to visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Church on Mount Tabor in Galilee, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, among many other important sites. Pilgrims go to Italy to pray at the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul or to the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. Pilgrims travel to France to visit the Grotto at Lourdes, to Portugal to visit the Chapel of the Apparitions in Fatima, and to Panamá to pray with Our Lady of La Antigua.
In the U. S., it may seem as if there are not as many pilgrimage sites since it is such a young country and its religious history is still being