Journey to the World Youth Day closing Mass

Editor's note: This is the third  part of a four-column series. Check the Aug. 12 and Sept. 9 editions of The Catholic Week online at mobarch.org to read the first two installments.

There is God, amid the anguish of those who doubt and are troubled in spirit? These are questions that humanly speaking have no answer. But Jesus’ answer is God is in them. Jesus is in them; He suffers in them and deeply identifies with each of them. He is so closely united to them as to form with them, as it were, one body.”
~Pope Francis
World Youth Day 2016 
Stations of the Cross Address

To conclude an inspirational week at World Youth Day, the closing Mass would be celebrated by Pope Francis at Campus Misericordiae (Field of Mercy).  It is a large field about 10-12 miles from the Krakow city center.  After attending Mass, we had to make a decision on whether to walk to the site of the closing Mass or travel by train.  Our group decided to walk with other pilgrims.  Much like the other large gatherings, we were assigned a spot in the field.  A few people from our group traveled by train to get us a spot in our section.  These sections were significantly larger than the sections earlier in the week.  
We started walking down the road toward the closing site.  In the beginning, there were not very many pilgrims or people.  For about two miles, all we saw were people outside their homes greeting us along the way.  They seemed overjoyed to have visitors from other countries for such a faith-filled event.  We could not communicate by language but sharing smiles and nonverbal exchanges meant a lot to everyone.  
Along the road, the crowd started to grow.  When we arrived in a small town, both sides of the road were blocked by fences separating residences from the street.  Pretty quickly, the street was completely filled with pilgrims and there was no movement forward.  There was a bottleneck at some point up ahead but we could not see what was stopping our progress.  World Youth Day is in August so the sun was beating down on all of us and it was extremely hot. At the house where I was stuck in traffic, a man brought out his hose and started spraying the crowd with water.  The water was truly a blessing and greatly appreciated!  That small amount of water gave me the strength to continue forward when the crowd was finally able.  At the end of the street there was a location to pick up food for dinner and breakfast in the field.  The bottleneck was caused by too many people trying to get food at this one location.  We would later find out that there were many locations to pick up food but at that moment it seemed very important to get food at that location.  Once we received the food, we were very close to the Field of Mercy and the crowd was spread out along a much larger road.  Just outside the barricades for the final destination, there was a bridge that we had to go under.  We were only allowed to go under one part of the bridge because vehicles heading to the location were using the rest of the road under the bridge.  Another bottleneck was created.  We were so close but yet it seemed so far.  It took a long time to go under the bridge.  Finally, we made it and we were at the giant field.  It did not take long to find the rest of our group and it turns out they had been there for a few hours and looked well rested.  I was a bit envious but I am still glad that I made the challenging walk to the site of the closing Mass.  There was a lot of excitement that night in anticipation of the closing Mass!  I can vividly remember drums beating constantly throughout the night.  With so much anticipation, it was very difficult to fall asleep even though I was extremely tired.
Next month’s Conclusion:  The Closing Mass and the Journey Home
— Tex Phelps is the Director of the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry for the Archdiocese of Mobile. He may be emailed at [email protected]