TestAntonio

Hello and welcome!

At other World Youth Days, I have always done the catechesis in a church, and there would be a couple hundred people, but this time the groups I had were huge, in the thousands. There were 70,000 Spaniards at World Youth Day, plus many people from Latin America, so they needed many catechesis sessions.

On Friday, I had another catechesis in Spanish at São João de Brito. It was in a huge stadium that the Polish pilgrims were using alongside the Hispanic group. A group of friars was there, so I asked them to sing a little bit while we got things organized. I gave a catechesis, and then we had sort of an open mic, where we passed the microphone around and let people ask questions. It was very interesting, and they asked very good questions.

In my catechesis, I talked about the Eucharist. I referenced the story of the rugby team from Uruguay whose plane crashed in the Andes. They were missing for three months and were presumed dead, but 19 survived by consuming the flesh of the ones killed in the accident. They said what gave them the courage to do that was Christ’s words, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you do not have life within you.” I talked about the Eucharist allowing us to survive, not just an airplane crash or cancer or a heart attack, but even death, because Christ promises life everlasting.

After the Mass, one of the priests who was concelebrating came up to me and said he was from the school the team had attended, a Christian school run by Irish Christian brothers in Montevideo. All the students from that school came up. I was blown away!

There was also a group of young people from Costa Rica helping to organize. It was a wonderful experience, as all of the “Rise Up” sessions were.