No complaining. This is a pilgrimage.

Every day here is a new story. Right now there’s a line of pilgrims a city block long outside my hotel room window waiting for food from a local restaurant. Things can be tough when on pilgrimage, so the pilgrims have been given voucher cards that are good with any restaurant in the city that has a red ball sign on it, so we foreigners have one less thing to worry about. Naturally, just about every restaurant with a red ball sign has at least a 20 minute line.   I'm not sure the businesses knew what they signed up for when they agreed to be a WYD designated restaurant.

Yesterday we went up Corcovado to visit the Christ the Redeemer Statue. It was a very cloudy day, and we were in fact in the middle of a cloud for most of the time we were on the mountain; but we still went and made the best of it. For brief moments, the clouds drifted away and we had a much clearer view of the statue and the city lying several hundred meters below. The clouds may have disappointed some of us, but for me they made the short-lived clear views of the statue and city all the more precious. Perhaps if we came on a clear day, we would have been overwhelmed by the view at first, then we would have stood there taking it all in, taking pictures at this and that angle, with this and that friend and foreigner; then once our excitement wore off, we would have left Corcovado believing we had taken in all the beauty that the wonder has to offer. But since we came on a cloudy day, for us the full splendor of the place is still shrouded in mystery.

Last night we were supposed to go to the opening Mass of World Youth Day celebrated by Archbishop Orani João Tempesta of Rio de Janeiro, but we got down from Corcovado too late. By the time we got to the site of the Mass, there was no room, so once again we decided to make the best of the situation. 

We came back to the hotel and had Mass on the rooftop at the same exact time of the opening Mass with Archbishop Tempesta ( the roof has a large sitting area). The celebrant was Father Joseph Espaillat, youth ministry director of the Archdiocese of New York, and he brought with him a small group of pilgrims from his archdiocese and Brooklyn Diocese. Also celebrating with our group of 23 pilgrims from New Jersey were pilgrims from the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, who happen to be staying in Rio’s Presidente Hotel as well.  We called it our own Mass of divine providence, because how else would we have had the chance to celebrate the Eucharist with other U.S. pilgrims in such an extraordinary, intimate setting, on such short notice? 

Much more has happened today, but I had a short window of time so I took it to catch up on the recent happenings here at World Youth Day. If the night isn’t too crazy, I will bring this blog up to speed with the most recent events, especially the USA gathering at the Vivo Rio that I must find my way to right now. Viva Cristo!