Leave it to the professional bloggers

For a good blog of what all happened in Sydney, see Tim Drake's blog at www.pope2008.com. He really does a fabulous job and has lots of inside information. He is very accurate in what he has described here in Sydney. Going back to what I personally experienced beginning Friday morning. I got up early enough to be at the Sydney Opera House via train when the 'credential office' for priests opened at 9am. There were horror stories earlier in the week of priests waiting as long as 7 hours to get their credentials for the Opening Mass with the Holy Father (most I talked to waited 3 to 4 hours) so I decided to wait until the last day to get my credentials for the Final Mass at Randwick, and I'm glad I did. I was in and out of the credential office in 5 minutes, which gave me time to go to where I had left my camera the night before, but alas, the sisters didn't have it. The good part of the morning was that I was able to stay at a catechesis site hosted by the Sisters of Life, and it was a great site. The speakers were good, and the sisters led all the prayer service beautifully, and planned for Mass beautifully. There were about 25 concelebrant priests there. Afterwards they had a lunch much better than the lunch we had at our Catechetical Site at Wahroonga, and after grabbing an espresso and cookies I headed to meet the Kansas City group at Barangaroo for the Stations. I have to admit that at first I thought the idea of having tens of thousands of people meet all over Sydney and to have the stations acted out live at various places over the course of three hours was too ambitious. And for the first four stations I thought I was right. The sun was in our eyes at Barangaroo, and the kids seemed disinterested mostly in stations taking place a couple of miles away. Besides, we were all very uncomfortable in our holding pens, and the stations were moving very slowly. But after Jesus was scourged at the Opera House, and we knew that the Stations were moving on to Barangaroo, people starting plugging in to the event. By the time Jesus walked right by us prior to going on the main stage at Barangaroo to meet with women of Jerusalem, I had seen enough to know that this was going to be one special event. They timed the stations to end perfectly at a corner of the harbor just after sunset, and the pictures created by the live crucifixion with the harbor as a backdop were breathtaking. I was completely pulled in emotionally, as were all the people around me, and the music and cinematography and the acting kept getting better and better until we realized that the Stations were perhaps the one part of these World Youth Days that no one will ever be able to top. The actors were superb, and they worked so hard for three hours to pull off this monumental task, for the benefit of all of us. After the stations were over, we grabbed our stew once again (although I couldn't eat it for a third night in a row) and walked about three miles to the Sydney Opera House for the performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, which was the signature performance at the Opera House for these World Youth Days. It was magnificent, but by this time, things were catching up to me and I was quite tired so I didn't enjoy the performance as much as I would have liked. All the same, it was an extraordinary day at Sydney, but the next days get even better! I'll write more later.