A Week in Łódź (this title works better if you pronounce it Woodge) (World Youth Day Part II)

One day I will get better at posting on here more regularly.  Today is not that day...
I've been slightly distracted by getting back into the swing of work, and then running off again to spend more time in a field with Jesus (Youth2000 retreat in Walsingham.  Another post will be coming on that later...)

So anyway... back to Poland.  We spent the first week in a lovely little city called Łódź, which has a fascinating history. St. Faustina grew up near Łódź and moved there when she was 16.  3 years later she saw a vision of a suffering Jesus, who instructed her to go to Warsaw to join a convent.  St Maximilian Kolbe was another nearby resident.  On the more secular side of history, Łódź had the largest and longest lasting Jewish ghetto in Nazi occupied Europe.

We were there to take part in Paradise in the City.  A festival organised by the Chemin Neuf community.  Whilst nothing compared to Krakow the following week, there were attendees from 79 countries, and over 5000 people.  For pilgrims who hadn't been to a world youth day before, it was a nice little opening to how hectic Krakow might be.

(photo from WYM facebook page)

The programme was pretty busy, ranging from talks and workshops to praise and worship concerts and adoration.  One thing I particularly enjoyed was how the length of adoration increased throughout the week, presumably as people became more accustomed to sitting in silence with the Lord. Talks were given by a wide variety of people ranging from the Archbishop of Canterbury to a Catholic sexologist. Although I didn't attend the former's talk, I've been assured it was excellent, whilst the latter gave a fascinating talk reminding us that the Church wants body, heart and soul to be in one accord, and that we need to remember to always see each other as people and not as things or labels or categories.

Despite the busyness there was still plenty of time for friendship and fun.  Some of the afternoons were for free time, with sports being available for those so inclined.  I am very definitely not a sports person, so instead with a couple of friends, we decided to head up to the ghetto, but on the two occasions we tried, we realised that we wouldn't have time to get up there and back in time for the next event!  So instead we did the obvious thing of going and finding a rather beautiful bar instead...

Given that it was a 20-30 minute walk away from where we were based, that still counts as exercise, right?

During this week we were blessed to have the opportunities such as have Mass in the cathedral in Łódź and a reconciliation service in front of the Blessed Sacrament in the beautiful Church of Our Lady of Victory:

(photo WYM)

Don't bother trying to find me in this group photo though, I managed to miss it whilst distracted elsewhere!

Continuing the theme of it being like a mini world youth day, the final event of the week was a huge Mass at a local sports arena.  What would a pilgrimage be without a short walk or two?  With this in mind, and as preparation for the much longer walk ahead of us in a week's time, we headed off for our hour long walk.

(photo WYM)

Having been to a few of these types of things, I'm fairly used to there being huge numbers of priests around now and then.  I was still taken by surprise at just how many priests were there saying Mass!

(photo WYM)

All those people standing  on the floor there?  Priests.  They go further back too, but I don't have a good photo to show just how far back.  We completely filled the huge arena though!

So that's a short summation of what we got up to in Łódź, coming up next, Częstochowa and Krakow!

So what now...? (World Youth Day Part I)

If you've been paying attention, you'll have spotted that one of the newly ticked off items on my 30 before 30 was World Youth Day.

If you're looking at this blog, I guess it's likely that you know what World Youth Day is, but in case anyone's glancing this way without that knowledge, the basic gist is this.  World youth day is a huge gathering of Catholic young people (which for the Church is 18-35), which has been held every 2-3 years since 1987. You get people attending from all over the world. Part of the draw of the whole thing is that the Pope goes and leads the final Mass. Now when I say this is a huge gathering, I really do mean it! At the final vigil/Mass with Papa Frankie, an estimated 1.5-2 million people attended. To put that into some kind of context, Glastonbury tends to have around 150,000 - 200,000 people.

Yep, that's right.

I'll just let that number of people sink in for a minute.

Given how well the media reports on the event, particularly in the UK, you'd be forgiven for not realising what a big deal it is. Being at home during the previous one, held in Rio in 2013, I found it really interesting how the media would report on some of the things Papa Frankie was up to, without actually mentioning the reason for him being there, and from what I can see, the same thing happened with Kraków.  One fantastic example of this was this article, reporting on the tragic martyrdom of Fr Jaques Hamel where the quote from the Bishop of Rouen was taken while he was at "a Catholic gathering in Poland". To be fair to the BBC though, they did also publish some video diaries from a few of our pilgrims.

Being surrounded by that number of young people who all have the same passion for God that you do can be incredibly intoxicating. Right around now, all over the world, young pilgrims will be feeling the WYD come down. This is the key moment for them. For a large number of those 2 million people, this will be a life changing experience. Some will have found their vocations - whether to religious life, the priesthood, or marriage. Others will still be searching, but will have discovered what their next step should be. There will have been some there who have been struggling with their faith, for whom this will have been a call back into the embrace of the church. Some pilgrims will have been to confession for the first time in years, some will have found a new devotion to a particular Saint or saints, and for some this may have been their first experience of the universal nature of the Church.  There will be others for whom this will not feel like a massively life-changing event, but simply another step on their faith journey.

No one can attend a World Youth Day and return unchanged. The important thing now is to keep hold of that change.  It is so easy to love your God, your faith and your Church when you're in that high place. Now is the time to bring that love and joy back and share it with the rest of the world.

As Papa Frankie said in his final homily, what Jesus desires is for us, like Zaccheus, to "Come down, for I must stay at your house today" (Luke 19:5). (If you've not read his homily, go do it. It's challenging and comforting in equal parts, as all good homilies should be! It can be found here.

In today's world, we have a terrible tendency to be Sunday Catholics. We compartmentalise. We say "God, I'm all yours.

...On a Sunday... During Mass."

And  then ignore Him the rest of the time. This is always the danger when it comes to events like World Yourh Day, that's these all consuming, super intense events will be just another Sunday, and we'll go back to our everyday life just as before. Zaccheus was forever changed by his encounter with Jesus, and so too must we be.

I'll write another post soon with more content on what we actually got up to at world youth day, but for now, I'd like to recommend a temporary fix for the WYD comedown... Youth2000 do fantastic retreats, and the big one is coming up - in Walsingham over the bank holiday weekend.

More details can be found at Youth2000's website

30 before 30 updates

Here's August 2016's update!

1. Create this list.  (This totally counts, right?)
2. Pray the Divine Office every day for a month (or at least morning and evening pray). - I think Lent would be a wonderful time to try and do this, so I'll give it a go then.
3. Go on a silent retreat.
4. Attend a Papal Mass - achieved 31st July 2016 as part of the below.
5. Attend (another) World Youth Day. - Kraków 2016! I'll do a bigger blog post (or two) about this later.

 

6. Attempt couch to 5k - I think I can cross this one off.  I did attempt it, and completed the first week, but my knees don't like it.  I might give it another go one day, but for now I think it may have to be it.
7. Visit Auchswitz - I'm hoping to return to Poland in the next year or so to actually do some sightseeing in Łódź and Kraków, and a visit here will definitely be involved in this.
8. Go on a road trip
9. Spend New Years in Times Square a foreign country
10. Pilgrimage to Rome - I've visited Rome a few times, but always just as a tourist.  I think going mainly for the religious side of it would be wonderful.

11. Read 100 new books - I think I should start a new page and keep track of what I've read to see if I can succeed with this! And now I need to try and remember what I've read since I wrote this...
12. Sell something I've made - Done Christmas 2014. I sold two pairs of fingerless mittens.

Right, now for some new ones...

13. Visit Assisi.
14. Get my honours degree
15. Go to Disney (World, land, Paris, I don't care, I just want to be a princess!) I've been to Disneyland Paris twice in the past year. Hooray for being a princess!
16. Find a job I actually want to do/have
17. Figure out my vocation (as if it's going to be that easy...)
18. Read every book CS Lewis has written Just looked at his bibliography.  Yeah... That's not happening.  Editing it to: Reading all of his signature classics.
19. Walk the Camino (or at least the last section)
20. Go to work with an Ash Wednesday cross on my forehead.Done this year. I kept getting odd looks and forgetting why...
21. Make enough items of clothing for myself to be able to wear a different outfit every day for a week.
21. Make a full costume for myself and attend MCM comic con wearing it. (Currently thinking either Ariel or Anna)
22. Dye my hair proper full on Ariel pillar box red. done in the summer of 2015! Although I had purple ends. I've gone a slightly less bright colour now, but have kept the ends as I quite like it!

23. Figure out my diet/what makes me ill
24. Attend Goodwood Revival
25. Do a short course at London College of Fashion - I'm thinking Millinary
26. Dance on stage at Wembley Arena (for the second time) - doing on the 7th March at Flame 2 (previous time was at Flame), although I cannot divulge any more until then as I have been sworn to secrecy! Done!


27. Sing during Mass at Jasna Góra I don't even care if it's cheating to add in something you've already done. If I had known this was something there'd be any chance of me doing, it would have been up here! I was blessed enough to have the chance to sing the psalm for our Mass here on 25th July when we spent a day here on our journey between Łódź and Kraków.

28.
29.
30. Keep this blog going - well this has slightly failed, but I can keep trying!

So there we go. An updated version.
I thought I'd ticked off quite a few, but it turns out I've only done 9... So I'm guess at least I'm almost a third of the way through! Just another 21 to do in the next 26 months... Which is just under 1 a month, so maybe it's doable!

Oops...

Well, as you can see I've done phenomenally well at keeping this blog up to date having not posted at all since starting my new job...

So let's see. In the past year I've ticked off quite a lot of my list, ranging from dying my hair bright red to attending World Youth Day! There are still a lot of items left on the list, but I have a few plans in place for some of them. Others I'm not sure I'm going to manage, but I can still hope and try!

It's been really interesting looking back over the list when I thought I should check where I was up to. There are things on there that I'd completely forgotten about, and other things that if I were to do the list now I'm not sure I'd put on there. I also still need to find something for 27, and start thinking about what number 28 is going to be!

So this is just a quick update from me. I'm going to try and write some longer posts later, including some about the last couple of weeks in Poland! For now though, this blog isn't quite dead yet, it's just been resting...

Placing my job in the care of Mama Mary

So way back in February, I mentioned that I'd been invited to an assessment day...

Turned out I was successful, and got invited back for an interview for a specific job. I had a choice of two days, one of which was Wednesday later that week, the other a week later.  Since I'd started doing some hours at the local Tourist Information Centre, and had already agreed to work that Wednesday, I thought I'd better go for the second of the two options, so replied saying I'd like to come in on the 25th March please.

Come the morning of the 25th, I had a realisation.  25th March is the Feast of the Annunciation!  One of Mama Mary's big days.
Right then, I'd better place it all in her hands.  I decided that I'd give it all over to her, and trust that if I was supposed to get the job I would, and if I didn't, it was because there was something better around the corner for me.

To be honest, I wasn't convinced it had gone great.  The interviewers asked the same question worded in different ways a few times, I wasn't sure I'd given the right answers, etc etc etc...
So I asked when I'd hear, and was told that I should hear by the end of the week.

Okay, right, not too long to wait then. So away I went, still trying to be trusting.

Come the end of the week?  Nope, nothing, Come the end of the following week and Easter? Still nothing. Assumption made by me that I was unsuccessful. That's okay, I had Celebrate to distract me.

I had an odd feeling at the beginning of the week that by the end something would have happened with regards to a job.  What it would be I did not know.  Maybe someone would suggest a job that I should apply for, maybe I'd be offered an interview somewhere else. Who knows.

Turned out what it was to be was that I would hear that I was successful with this job!

So here I am, about to start a new job on Monday (which coincidentally is my mummy's birthday). Starting a job during the month specially dedicated to Mama Mary, when the interview for the specific job was on one of her big feast days? Definitely feels a little bit special.

On top of that, there is a church with 8am Mass about 5 minutes walk away from my new place of work, and I'm hoping to make sure I set aside time during my commuting for saying morning and evening prayer.

So yay for being able to justify spending more time in London and going to things that happen in the evening like Pure in Heart.

Any suggestions for Catholic stuff in London I could/should look into?

And 2 months later...

So umm...

Oops?

I have clearly been fantastic at remembering to post here. So much for my posting at least twice a month plan from the beginning of the year...

Well then, what have I been up to over the past two months?

A few highlights are:

• Spent a week and a bit enjoying meeting more Catholic people at Celebrate (a huge Charismatic conference). including this years super lovely SPEC team
• Been working quite a lot - I've been loving getting to spend time working at the Tourist Information Centre. You get some very strange questions and queries, but it's been really interesting and I'm going to miss it. (Miss it? Why? What are you up to? Well, dear reader, keep reading and I'll explain in a few points time)
• Painted my room(!) - I finally, 7 years later, get my room back. Now I just need to actually finish emptying the upstairs room and throw out a lot of junk and old stuff that I do not need and should not be keeping.  Hoarder? Me? Surely not... *looks innocent* When I get my wardrobe, and whenever I finally get the room finished, I will post some photos to share.
• Been to the Youth 2000 retreat I mentioned in the last post I actually remembered to type... (Where I met people who know my brother, spent a whole weekend near him, and didn't actually manage to see him.  Mild fail)
• Got a new job.  Yes! That's right. A real grown up job.  Admittedly it's only contracted until February, but exactly what that means I do not yet know. I begin on Monday 11th, so am currently spending my time getting excited about working in London and trying to make sure I've worked out what a Smart Casual dress code really means. (Seriously, any ideas?  It's about as vague as you can get!)

I will type more at another point, but for now I'm going to love you and leave you since I should really be asleep right now and not sitting awake tapping away on my computer.

Oh, and since I haven't said it yet on account of having last posted back during Lent, and since it is still the Easter season for another couple of weeks...

Happy Easter.  I hope you are having/have been having/will continue to have a very blessed time.

xx

How I spent Valentines...

You know what I really love? How tiny the Catholic world is.  Any time I go anywhere, it is pretty much guaranteed that I will bump into someone I know.  Last Saturday at Flame 2 being a prime example.  I managed to see so many people that I've not seen for a while, and more that I have seen recently.  I've met more new lovely new people, especially through being involved in the big secret project of the opening dance and flashmob.  I still half can't believe that I got to dance up on stage at Wembley Arena twice in one day (which makes it 3 times in total, having been involved in the original Flame).

I will do a bigger better brighter post at some point in the near future on Flame 2, but this post is actually a catch up from last month... 

So... Leeds Youth 2000 retreat.  Yes.

Now, I'd been to the big summer Youth 2000 retreat in Walsingham a couple of times before, but this was the first time I'd made it to a weekend one.  Apart from the whole sleeping on a classroom floor thing, it was pretty much everything I'd hoped it would be.  I got to spend some amazing quality time with Jesus, hear some interesting talks, and met some lovely new people.

Something that I really really love about Youth 2000 is how it's totally centred around the Eucharist - around Jesus.  From the end of the opening Mass to just before closing Mass, there is perpetual adoration.  Jesus is out, physically present for the whole weekend.  The talks are given with Him in the room, the praise and worship takes place around Him.  If you wake up at, say, 3am, you can go and sit with Him.

During the summer I made a pact that I almost totally failed at.  I said that if God wanted me to wake up in the middle of the night and go sit with him, I would do.  Sure enough, first night, I woke up at around 3am.  So I put on even more layers (because it was ridiculously cold) and went and sat in the big tent for a bit.  The next night I woke up and... turned over and went back to sleep.  As I did the next night or two.  Oops.

So this time I was determined to be better.  I put my name down for 3am to go and sit with Jesus for an hour.  By making that commitment I knew I was going to have to stick to it, and I did, and it was amazing.  So amazing. The second hour that was forced upon me by the next person not turning up was slightly less amazing, given that I really wanted some sleep, but it was still pretty fantastic. And okay, the second night I went to sit with him at 6am instead, but I know that I needed the sleep.

That ability to just go and sit with Jesus is something that I never really appreciated when I was at SPEC.  They are so blessed there to have a chapel with a tabernacle in it, meaning that Jesus is physically there.  Yes, I know He's always everywhere, but somehow there's something special about knowing he's actually there.  I guess it's like talking to someone in person vs talking to them on messenger or by text or even by letter.  That's probably the best I can describe it.

As I've said in a previous post, I went with two friends.  Although I know quite a few people involved in Y2K on account of having been to Walsingham a couple of times, I'm still the type of person who likes to know that there's someone I know there that I can talk to.  So when I realised that neither of them would be in my small group because I'm too old to be in theirs, I did have a mild moment of "uh-oh...". I really shouldn't have though, because Him up there never does anything unintentionally, and all the people in my small group were fabby.  I'm not sure we had much sensible conversation the first evening, as we spent most of the time giggling, but y'know what, that was exactly what I needed right then.

As for the talks?  There's always an element of "I've heard all of this before" whenever I go to these things.  Having spent a year at SPEC and being very involved in the Catholic society at Durham before that, and having been to several of these types of things, there's always going to be things said that you've heard before.  But sometimes that's because you need to hear it again. Sometimes it's stuff that needs to be repeated several times before it'll go in, sometimes you'll get something different out of hearing the same thing.

Essentially, it was a weekend of feeling like I was exactly where I was meant to be. Anyone thinking of maybe going to a Youth 2000 retreat (or any kind of retreat) should definitely do it.

Next one is in Cardiff from the 24th - 26th April.

So how about you? Will I see you in Cardiff?

Have you been to a retreat?  What was your experience?

Are you thinking about going to one?

Let me know in the comments below!