All afternoon there were various speakers and performers keeping the gathering crowd entertained and inspired. At 7:00 the vigil service began. It was quite a thrill to see him in person. I did not need to look at the large screen, but could clearly see him with my own eyes up on the altar. There was a variety of songs and readings in multiple languages. There were 24 young people from around the world who had been selected to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation at mass on Sunday. They were each introduced. The Pope himself spoke at length in English. His English is clearly heavily accented with German, but not that hard to make out. It was a very scholarly talk, as befits one who spent most of his life in scholarly circles, first as a professor at universities and then as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Fatih. I loved it. He dropped references to people from St. Augustine to St. Francis de Sales with frequency and ease. The main topic of his talk was the Holy Spirit. He focused a great deal on the Spirit’s relation with the other persons of the Trinity and the way that the gift of the Spirit draws us into the very life of God. I would love to have the text to re-read and study as I am sure that in trying to merely listen there was much that I missed. The time was concluded with a period of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction. They had constructed a monstrance that must have been at least 6 feet across on the altar with an opening into which they inserted a regular size monstrance that was processed in. Again, I was close enough to see clearly the actual host in the center during the period of adoration.
Sunday morning there was Morning Prayer prayed at 8:00. It was the only significant disappointment of the event for me. They gathered a group of clerics and had them wearing black cassocks and white surplices sitting in the altar area. They began 5 minutes early and made no announcement inviting the pilgrims to participate, so most of them were busy eating breakfast, rolling up their sleeping bags, or chatting with others while the prayer was taking place. The Liturgy guides had the text of the psalms, but not the chant line – so unless you happened to know the particular chant tone they were using (and they used different ones for each psalm) there was no way to participate. It all looked very much like a performance and not the official public prayer of the entire Church. I was a little sad.
Mass itself began shortly after 10:00. A little after 9:00 the Pope arrived and began slowly making his way toward the altar in the Pope-mobile. That was really the first chance most of the crowd there had an opportunity to see him.
I was pleased that the experience of this Eucharist was for me much more like that in Melbourne at the Telstra Dome and less like the experience of the Opening Mass on Tuesday. That is to say, I felt connected and a part of it – like I was a part of a worshipping assembly gathered to celebrate Eucharist. There were a couple of moments that made me smile. The Pope read the penitential rite. The choir had planned to sing it. After a moment’s hesitation, for whatever reason, they went ahead and sang it anyway. Probably not a good choice on the conductor’s part, since it made the Pope look like he didn’t know what was going on! A smoother move would have been to skip ahead to the Gloria. Again, the homily was excellent. Again, I will need to get a copy of the full text to digest it completely. The 24 people who were confirmed showed forth such joy, as you might imagine. There is no doubt that they are going to remember the day of their Confirmation!
At the end of mass there were speaches. The Archbishop of Sydney thanked the Pope and all the pilgrims. It was a fitting conclusion. Then the head of the Pontifical Council on the Laity, the Vatican office in charge of planning World Youth Day, spoke far too long. He did not seem to have a sense of the occasion or place, and the fact that we had been standing there for well over 2 hours at that point. He went on and on in barely intelligible English. When he finally finished the Pope announced that WYD in 2011 will be in Madrid, Spain. While that was supposed to have been a secret, there were a group of Spanish pilgrims that had been gathered neared the foot of the altar already wearing T-shirts for the occasion, so I am guessing that it wasn’t much of a secret. I had heard rumors that it would be Madrid for over a week as well.
Finally, once the Mass was over, WYD was officially concluded. We still had several hundred thousand people to get out of the area. Given where we were, most of our group decided there was no need to rush off. They had some more entertainment. I did not start to leave until about 3:00. By then the crowds had thinnned considerably. A few people in our group left earlier, and they found themselves standing in place for 20 minutes at a time more than once.
In the end, it really was a well-done event.
