I won’t go into real depth in the plan I decided on because it never got implemented. But part of the plan involved disguising myself like a priest. So I planned on meeting with borrowing an outfit from a priest I was a pretty good friend with. I had planned on meeting him one day in the morning, but when the day arrived my car keys disappeared. And my spare set was at my father’s house. I literally spend from around 10 AM in the morning until 6PM in the evening tearing apart my house looking for they keys. At 6, my stepmother was able to run over the spare set, and I immediately dashed over to the church to try to catch my priest friend before he left for the weekend. I arrived too late. There was absolutely no one at the church or rectory. Being rather disappointed I headed back to my car. In the short walk I met a man who was looking for a priest. At first I thought he was drunk, but soon realized he just had a lisp. It seemed this man’s wife had just been rushed to the hospital, and he needed a couple of dollars for bus fair so he could go see he. So I gave him a couple of bucks and started back to my car. The man insisted that he paid me back and inquired what mass I was going to be at this weekend. I told him to forget about it, but he insisted. I explained to him that I was not going to be at mass down here because I was going to be at a sendoff mass for World Youth Day with the Bishop. And he was like “Well la-de-da…” and went into a story about how the pope sometime gives our rings to people who do great things. Then he proceeded, for one reason or another, to tell me his life story. Apparently this man was a Vietnam Vet, and after the war he came back to the states and got into some minor trouble in Florida. While he was in jail, he explained how God appeared to him in his dreams, and what an intense experience it was. He further explained how God wanted him to fight to save some inmates lives that were on death row. And he did. I was not sure what to make of the story. When he was finished with his story he held out his hand. I assumed he wanted to shake hands as a thank-you. However when I reached out my hand he grabbed it, brought it up and kissed it. He then pointed to my ring finger and told me that I was going to get a papal ring. He then said his name, I think it was something Ashe, and told me he was my servant and left.
My experience with Mr. Ashe wierded me out, to say the least. It kind of threw me for a loop, and I was not sure what was going to become of my master plan. But I just rolled with it. After we arrived in Denver we had a welcoming party at one of my priest’s friend’s house. While I was there I was talking with another priest who told me about an opportunity he once had to meet the pope. He said he opted not to because there was just something amazing about being in the presence of such a holy man, that he saw no real need to meet him. Another interesting though I filed away in my brain.
Now my youth group flew out a week early to World Youth Day and spent the time touring Wyoming with two other youth groups. It was an awesome experience exploring God’s creation. We would end each night with a prayer service. One night during the prayer, the Youth Minister from Wyoming read a meditation about riding a bicycle-built-for-two with God. During the first half the person was on the front, and God was in the back and the person was having a pretty good time. But them in the second half of the story the person took the back seat and put God in front, and they just were experiencing so many amazing things and all they had to do was keep on pedaling. I reflected on the story and just said a little prayer to God and gave the rest of the time on my pilgrimage over to him. In other words I decided not to pull any stunts.
So the week went by and it came time for World Youth Day to officially begin. (World Youth Day was actually a five-day celebration.) We went to the welcoming ceremony for the pope and it was absolutely miserable. It was raining and just not very nice out. At one point I even turned to my friend, Mike, and said “I guess God doesn’t like Denver to much.” But the excitement was mounting in Mile High Stadium, and when the Pope’s plain landed and he got off the stadium just went crazy cheering for him. Then, ironically, President Clinton went over to shake his hand and the stadium started booing. I found the crowd’s reaction amusing. But anyway the Pope made his way to the celebration, and rode the popemobile around the perimeter and finally made his way up to address the crowd. Almost instantaneously, and the pope got up to speak, the rain cleared up and a rainbow formed over the entire stadium. It was as if God himself made an appearance and smiled down on what we were doing. It was simple phenomenal.
So the week went on. Most pilgrims were sleeping in church basements or in classrooms. There were so many of us, we were placed wherever they could find room. My dioceses happened to be placed at the Embassy Suites Hotel. One night I had a conversation with a man in the lobby. He said he himself was not religion, but he could feel the great energy that this conference had brought to the entire city of Denver. He then asked me about my story and what I wanted to do with my life. I explained a little about myself and told him I planned on going off to college to major in Mathematics to become an Actuarial Scientist. For those of you who do not know what an Actuarial Scientist does—they figure out how much to charge you on your insurance. It is a virtually stress free job, and the average salary is in the six digits. He then inquired how I could justify having a job in which I tried to figure out how much money I could possibly “milk” from someone to turn the largest profit with my Christian beliefs. I realized I couldn’t, so my dreams of being an Actuary died there.
Anyway back to the pilgrimage. It was the day before the Papal mass, and all of us pilgrims had to walk to final five miles to the spot where mass was being held. I had on about a 45-lb. backpack, which I had been lugging around the whole trip. It addition, tied onto the backpack was a 30-lb. cot. I’m lucky I was in pretty good shape or else I wouldn’t of made it. Many others were struggling with there own stuff, and my group got separated. When we finally made it to the park we found another group from our diocese and set up camp with them. We later found my church and everyone else moved back with them except for me.
I spent the entire night walking around talking to people from all over the world. It was a simple fascinating night. At one point I attempted to go to sleep and made my way back to our camp, but when I arrived there I found a priest in my sleeping bag. He left word for me to wake him when I got back, but I decided not to and went out into the masses again. Then morning came, and I got in about 15 minutes of sleep during the course of the night.
The pope arrived and spoke to the crowds for a couple of hours. I was listening to him on my headphones, and I apparently went into a trance. I do not remember this, but my friend Jen, who was lying next to me was really freaked out. She apparently looked over at me at one point and saw a funny look in my eyes. She asked me if I was all right, and I did not respond. So she asked louder, and still—no response. She started poking me and even shook me, and I was still not responding. She then went over and got a couple of priests. And they tried to wake me up with no success. Then, apparently Jen noticed the earphone in my ear and pulled it out. I snapped out of my trance and was rather surprised to find a group of people surrounding me. One of the priests, Fr. Rich, gave me a canteen full of water and told me to drink. I was a little confused but I was not going to argue with him. (I did not even realize I was in this trance until several months later when Jen told me the story.)
So a little bit later, my friend Trish was felling rather ill. Someone went to get help only to find that the medical tents were absolutely swamped with people and there was not way they could get her up to them or sent someone down to her. So one of the priests said that we were going to carry her up on my cot. Not until this point the cot had been just an extra thirty-pound I had been lugging around for the past two weeks and maybe had used it once. But now we were very grateful we had it because it gave us a means of getting our friend Trish to a place where she could get help. So a group of us carried her up, and when we got there we saw how desperate they were for help. The other guys who helped bring Trish up started helping to care for people. I asked what I could do to help, and they told me, “Not much.” The main problem they were having was getting people up to them.
So I shrugged my shoulders and headed out into the crowd of ¾ a million people to see if there was something I could do. I checked where all my friends were and everyone was fine. Then I just said a little pray. I looked up and said, “God, lead me.” I walked for a little bit, and soon came to girl who appeared rather ill. I offered to carry her up to the medical tents and her chaperone, a woman who appeared to be in her late 30’s, gratefully excepted my offer. Normally it would not have been a difficult task for me, but I was doing it in 95-degree weather on no sleep and it was up-hill most of the way. Somehow I managed to get her up there. I had a little bit of help at a couple points, but it was just me most of the way. As soon as I good here up someone came and examined her. They said she was suffering from severe dehydration and had to be rushed to the hospital immediately. She looked up at me and with a very frail voice said, “Thank you.” Sometime between when the examiner said that the girl needed to be rushed off to the hospital and when she weakly thanked me I realized that I might have just saved her life, which just blew my mind. I headed back into the crowd, and this time got no further that my sleeping bag where I passed out.
Now the theme song from this event was “We Are One Body” as sung by Dana. Whenever I hear that song all the emotions come flooding back to me and I recall what a wonderful experience it was. (This becomes key for a later episode in my life so file that info away for now.)
