World Youth Day is an experience unlike any other. It is not only a faith-fulfilling journey that not only strengthens your love for God but is also a pilgrimage that breaks you down to the center core of what being a Catholic really means.
I was blessed with being able to attend WYD 2011 in Madrid, Spain. The beauty of being surrounded by millions of my brothers and sisters in Christ overwhelmed me with joy, passion and happiness. I had never seen our faith so massive.
Every Sunday you sit in church with people who know you and whom you know, certainly a valuable piece of anyone’s spiritual journey. WYD opens doors that pilgrims might not otherwise have opened for them.
Priests often explain the global Church and how large it is, but you never really grasp that it’s not just huge, it is massive and it is ever growing.
The moment I walked into the WYD Mass, all I could do was smile; I absolutely could not grasp what seemed like hundreds of miles of Catholics who had all come together to celebrate the Body and Blood of Christ. Then and only then did I truly realize how big of a Church we really are; how beautiful, how grand and how glorious we as Catholics are. And how universal. I wanted to fall on my knees and cry at the amount of love we all share with our God.
As a soldier of Christ you would expect to be put through some sort of warfare against evil, whether it be personal or through some other means. But before we are soldiers we have to be trained, and we have to go through tests. For me WYD, and smaller pilgrimages like it, break you down to the core of your spiritual well-being in order to build you back up to become the soldier God needs you to be for him. This is what I am looking forward to when I go to Krakow. In my personal life as well as my spiritual life I feel the need to be broken down again, the need to be rebuilt so I can be a stronger soldier for Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit. It’s a hard journey but it is well worth it. I hope to bring back what I learn from this epic journey with Christ and to be able to share with all of you this beautiful experience. Something I hope will reach the hearts of many who strive to be rebuilt, and who long for a stronger relationship with God.
As my journey begins, I pray for all who read this that your spiritual journey will begin as well.
Nik Ruiz, a young adult member of Holy Redeemer in Odessa, is in Krakow, Poland, with 10 others from the diocese for WYD.