Since my return home, many have asked me to explain to them my favorite parts of World Youth Day. I always have a hard time answering this question because World Youth Day was more than just a vacation, more than a conference, and more than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. For me, it was like coming home to see your whole family after it’s been a long time since you’ve seen them last. Hugs and smiles are abundant and genuine interest in conversation is present. My favorite part was not a tourist attraction, a special exhibit, or even the 40+ hours spent in total on a plane. Rather it was experiencing and learning to understand the power of the Holy Spirit in conventional and unconventional ways that will always be my “favorite” part.

Being at World Youth Day, I experienced the power of the Holy Spirit like I had never before in my life. In the past, I had always felt I didn’t understand how to connect with the Spirit. At Catechesis, Father Leo taught us that the Holy Spirit isn’t far away; rather it is in our actions, in our minds, and in our hearts. Seeing hundreds of thousands of young people excited about our risen Lord and being in the presence of the Holy Father was awe-inspiring and a sign of the Holy Spirit.

Walking in the streets of Sydney, I could feel the Holy Spirit’s presence, whether it was in the extra smiles from passing strangers, the flurry of yellow and red WYD backpacks, or in the tireless effort of the wonderful volunteers to get hundreds of thousands of us on the right trains and busses. It was especially present whenever I saw the bright green WYD bags used to hand out the meals to the registered pilgrims, full of extra food surrounding God’s homeless children in the street.

Despite not being very close to the altar or stage, the Papal arrival will always stick out in my mind as a time where I had an amazing experience because of the Holy Spirit’s presence and because of our Holy Father. When Pope Benedict finally arrived, the whole venue at Barangaroo was filled with excitement and compassion. He was passing by in his motorcade to get to the stage and I was suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling I can’t explain. My eyes welled up and I became filled with an inner peace that’s hard to find sitting in a crowd of hundreds of thousands. To this day, that feeling has not left me and there is an underlying peace in my heart that I know only the Holy Spirit brings. The verse that served as the theme of World Youth Day - “You will receive the power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses”- could not be more fitting to describe that day at Barangaroo and the rest of my time at World Youth Day.

Now that I’ve been back from WYD for more than a month and I’m starting my third year at Cabrini, I feel more alive and excited to be a witness for God on my campus than I have ever felt before. I will take what I learned from Catechesis, the pilgrims with whom I attended the events, and from our Holy Father to be a better witness so that my peers may learn themselves to be a witness for Christ.

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