What to expect of Rio, what should Rio expect of us?

What comes to mind when I think Rio? There’s the Christ the Redeemer statue, the laid back beaches hugged by mountains and high rises, and the controversial shanty towns in the foothills. There’s the recent riots against bus fares, the 6.3 million citizens, and Portuguese (which I told myself months ago to learn, but still haven’t).  Then there’s the FIFA World Cup next year and the Summer Olympics of 2016.

With the exception of Mexico, I’ve never been to another country where English wasn’t a common language.  In fact, with the exception of Mexico, Canada and Ireland, I’ve never been to another country, period. Ironically, with the exception of Canada, I’ve never been to another country for anything other than missionary purposes– unless you count that one time I crossed over to Nogales just to get a real Mexican poncho, or the time I accidentally took the San Diego rail line into Tijuana. The trip to Ireland was with my college rugby team, but even then my team, the Franciscan University Barons, saw sports as an opportunity to evangelize the teams we played and their fans.

Remembering that mission to evangelize adds to the adventure of this journey to Rio. It is a strange way to be a missionary though, I must admit. Usually you think of missionaries serving in hospitals, feeding the poor, or building new homes for the homeless in ‘mission territory’ where there really aren’t many other Christians. But we’ll be attending concerts, drama skits and inspirational speeches with about 2 million other Catholics in a city that is at least half Catholic and at least three quarters Christian. Yes, we will be about 2 million strong, and we still won’t outnumber the local Catholic population of Rio.

The media is expecting World Youth Day to boost the economy of the city. That’s really the core element of missionary power here…  our presence, the sheer magnitude, the communal power, of so many young Catholics being there. Even if you are Christian, it is possible to be re-evangelized by such an extraordinary witness. And that’s what WYD really is: so out of the ordinary. Even the cultural Catholic could be pleasantly surprised and inspired by this eccentric representation of the Church. We see an aging congregation at Mass on Sunday, the lack of young faces among the clergy, and we walk up to the locked churches all around the country, and we think the Catholic Church’s future is dismal.

Then we see the missionaries of World Youth Day. Many of the events in Rio from July 23 to 28 will be entertaining in nature because this is a truly joyful generation of Christians. They bring not only hope but life. Many Catholics are discouraged by the lack of religious vocations in my generation, but let’s get to the real issue here. My generation has been disconnected from the rich Catholic culture that our elders knew so well. We need to rebuild first. We need to raise true Catholic families before we can get a good influx of religious vocations, because the vocations will come from those families  -- and the families will come from those inspired by John Paul the Great’s great idea, World Youth Day.