It is often said, and true that WYDs are pilgrimages. But what if life itself were a kind of pilgrimage?

Imagine that you could go on a trip for an indefinite period of time: six months, a year,
three years. That you could choose any route you wanted. That you could choose for your trip any purpose you wanted: to have a long vacation, to meet people of different cultures, to complete your education, etc.

Perhaps such a dream seems impossible to you. And yet, in a sense, even without leaving on a trip, we all the power to make our life a pilgrimage, a “journey of reflection” whose meaning we come to understand a little more clearly each day.

FOR PERSONAL REFELCTION
• If someone asked you to describe in a
few words your life purpose, how would
you reply?

THE BIBLE

The Bible is also the story of a long pilgrimage: that of an entire people. When, through the Bible, we listen to the experiences of these men and women of another era, we often discover amazing and useful similarities with the lives of women and men today. Bible passages throughput will help you shed light on these connections.

WYD: AN OASIS ALONG THE WAY

On any journey, we need to take a break every so often along the way. This is a kind of oasis, a meal and a bed to renew our strength. That is what WYD offers today’s young adults. It’s not that WYDs are luxurious. Makeshift camps and simple meals are typical for thousands of pilgrims. But when it comes to the search for meaning, WYD can become an incredible source of inspiration for the rest of your life. It is like a huge camp filled with a sense of kinship and solidarity. It will be up to you to discover what such an oasis offers you. It is something like an oasis in the desert offers the hot and thirsty traveler what a good hotel can provide to the exhausted business person, or what the cool water of Jacob’s well represented for the weary traveler in the Palestine of Jesus’ day.

FOR PERSONAL REFLECTION
• Name one or two good reasons you applied
to attend WYD.

THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS

In his Encyclical Letter Faith and Reason (Fides et Ratio), John Paul II states that the direction we must give our lives depends on how we answer the big questions:

Moreover, a cursory glance at ancient history shows clearly how in different parts of
the world, with their different cultures, there arise at the same time the fundamental
questions which pervade human life: Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life? These are the questions which we find in the sacred writings of Israel, as also in the Veda and the Avesta; we find them in the writing s of Confucius and LoaTze, and in the preaching of Tirthankara and Buddha; they appear in the poetry of Homer and in the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles, as
they do in the philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle. They are questions which have their common source in the quest for meaning which has always compelled the human heart. In fact, the answer given to these questions decides the direction which people seek to give to their lives.

A TREASURE HUNT

Everyone wants to be happy. In all our endeavors (work, study, personal relationships, social life), that is always on our minds. Everything brings us back to that simple goal. Let’s look more closely at this goal.

We do not always connect our search for happiness with questions about the meaning of life. Isn’t it enough to have good health and material things? Or do the roots of happiness go deeper than that?

Let’s compare the following approaches to searching for happiness:

During the Second World War, Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl survived the Nazi concentration
camps. Ina book called Man’s Search for Meaning; he tells us that those who survived this hell, without even having a strong constitution were those who were able to let themselves suffer. They could do this because their life had a meaning and drew them beyond their suffering and made them stronger than suffering itself. From this he concluded that, truly, it is the meaning we give to our life that makes it rich, beautiful and strong.

THE WAY OF RESTLESSNESS

Young people question things:

• I never have time for myself, time to think, to breathe, to put my thoughts and my priorities in order. Everything goes too fast. There’s not enough time to live in the present!
There is noise, stress, people rushing around, but for what?
• I really wonder: To make money and buy things? Is that all there is to life?
• Is there life before death?
• I want to do something great with my life, make the world a bit better, if I can.
• Am I the only one having these feelings, these crazy desires?

THE WAY THAT ASKS LIFE’S BIG QUESTIONS

The following words were spoken by Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, Archbishop of Montreal, to a gathering of young people in Paris at WYD 1997:

“What must I do to be happy? What must I do in order not to waste my life and sink into mediocrity? In order not to get stuck in lifestyles that have no future? What must I do so that I may move forward towards greater light? That I may be more loving? That my life may be a song? That it may be a great and beautiful adventure? I hope you ask yourself these questions while looking Jesus straight in the eye and placing total confidence in
him, for he is the way, the truth and the life. Do you believe that?”

FOR PERSONAL REFLECTION

• Compare these three ways of searching. What do they have in common?
• In which of these three approaches do you recognize yourself most? Why?

OPEN THE BIBLE

One day, Jesus felt the need to rest away from the crowds. But they followed him to a deserted place, where there was nothing to eat. Read the rest of the story carefully (Matthew 14:13-21). Try to compare the hunger of the crowds that follow Jesus with the search for the “civilization of love” that John Paul speaks of.

FOR PERSONAL REFLECTION

• If you were asked to replace this bread that Jesus shared with the crowd by an
ideal to be shred by all, what would that ideal be?
• Pay special attention to how the disciples acted: how were they able to put themselves
at the service of love?

from Joyce Hansen, Detroit USA
youthmin@passionist.org