Australia - Sydney Cathedral

Another cold morning in Bankstown. A significant number of folks have gotten ill. Nothing serious, just colds and the like, but just the effects of being in a climate that is very different from their accustomed one at this time of the year. And being in classrooms where the air the shared is probably not helping matters much. But there are few options in terms of accommodations, so those who need it are sleeping a lot more while the chaperones and Brothers are looking after the others as best they can. Eric rejoined the group today from his recovery time in the Travelodge, but he’s taking it easy.

Today was the first day for catechetical input. It started at 9 AM, so we couldn’t have our “normal” morning prayer. This was a good thing because the Brazilians had taken over the chapel anyway. So we met at the bench, did a short prayer, and got ready for the day.

Most of the morning was spent in the church next to the school. Here we had morning prayer as a group, followed by different catechetical elements – some live interviews of participants, some testimony from students, and some input from a bishop from India. All of that lasted a couple of hours after which there was a group Mass led by the bishop. Like more catechetical experiences, there were some very nice parts and some very boring parts – I won’t pass judgment on which was which. Suffice it to say that those portions that concentrated on the kids were all quite engaging.

Afterwards, lunch was served by volunteers from the church on the yard outside. They had it down to a fine system. We had hot dogs (“sausages”) on a hamburger bun, with fried onions, and chips, a drink, and several kinds of candy. People were in a good mood, the sun had warmed everyone up, and we were now ready to face the rest of the day.

The rest of the day would be our own. As with yesterday, different smaller groups in our US contingent decided to do different things. I joined the other two Brothers, along with Brendan and Ryan, in plans to join up with Paul downtown, see the Cathedral, and from there make our way to the vocation booth in the exhibition hall. The Brothers decided to continue to wear our robes and blacks, as we had this morning for the catechetical session, since we were surrounded by 200,000 felly Catholics. Not only was it a witness value, in line with the WYD theme, but we would be doing our “job” as vocation promoters in this place of high potential, as it were.

Although it felt a bit funny to walk downtown and to get onto the train in my robe, I was soon beyond all that. Along the way, we got a few twisted heads from passersby, but generally the reception was pretty respectful – almost expected. I’m afraid I steered our group wrong when we transferred to another train, and we ended up going away from central Sydney, on an express train no less that bypassed some 8 stations along the way, before figuring out how to get onto the right train into the city and the Town Hall station.

At the station, we phone Paul and he met us, complete with an American flag draped like a superman cape, at one of the corners near his hotel. We proceeded to the rooftop of his hotel where there was an absolutely fabulous view of the cathedral and of all of Sydney. We spent quite a while up there, admiring the view and taking pictures. Then we made our way to the Cathedral and the crowds there. It took a while to figure out how to get into the cathedral for a visit. We had to “sign in” online at a nearby tent. While Br. Peter did that, Br. Rich, Brendan and I went to the shameless commerce division of WYD and shopped to souvenir items. In the middle of our shopping, a man tapped me on the shoulder and told me that a guy outside dressed like I was asked him to tell me that we should hightail it out of the shop because our scheduled visiting time to the cathedral was in five minutes. So we pretty much dropped the stuff we were going to buy and made our way out and to the front of the cathedral. There we encountered a line some 500 or more people waiting to get into several security sections. All in all, it would take at least 90 minutes to get in, even with our “scheduled” time.

Peter used some of his New York savvy, negotiating his way to the volunteers in front of the line, where he explained that we were scheduled to be at the Vocation Hall later, had a “scheduled” time, and so on. The bottom line was that he came back over and said that he’d made a deal with them – smiles all around. He said that he, Rich and I could go in ahead of the line but that the others would have to stay in line – not smiles all around. So the three of us went to the front where one of the volunteers took us past all of the crowds waiting for security to the very front where we had to check in our backpacks (to be picked up later), went through the whole security routine – including security arches, dogs sniffing at your clothes, and the like – and made our way to the cathedral. The others would decide what to do about the line (turns out they didn’t care to wait and made their way back to Paul’s hotel room, from where they went to Bondi Beach).

Inside the cathedral there was some very nice devotional music playing in the background and the smallish crowd moved through the place in an orderly fashion. We admired the various artistic aspects of the place, taking a few discreet pictures now and then. When we were up front, this older man came up to us and introduced himself as the “warden” of the church. His name was Tim Ryan and he had been a Brother until he left in the Scholasticate. Jokingly, I asked if he still had his six-decade rosary. Darned if he didn’t reach into his pocket and pull it out. We chatted for a while, and I tried to see if perhaps he could get us a few tickets to the pope’s Mass here on Saturday. (He had the pull, but he didn’t’ have the tickets.) One of the impressive sections was the grave of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, a young man who lived and died in Turin, Italy, but whose coffin had been brought out to Sydney, since he is a sort of “patron” for WYD. His is a fascinating story of a real person who led a saintly life without being a holy-roller.

We spent a good deal of time in the Cathedral before leaving and finding our way to the big tent where the backpacks were being stored in order to reclaim ours. From there we moved in the direction of Darling Harbor and found the exhibit hall and the vocation booths there. The Brothers had taken two of the booths and were having lots of young people stop by to talk or to pick up literature. Peter and Rich were scheduled to be there for about an hour, and I was scheduled to be there after them, so I wandered around the hall looking at the other booths there. Almost all of them concerned vocations. There was even one for the priesthood in the United States, staffed by young seminarians.

At one end of the vocation hall was a stage that featured continuous “Catholic Rock” of some kind or other. It was a pretty noisy place. But it was also terrific to see so many young people looking seriously at various vocations and how to best pursue them.

When the time came, I returned to the booth and Peter and Rich moved off to wander around themselves and then make their way back to Bankstown. By ten o’clock we closed up shop. Br. Mark McKeon, the Vocation Director, offered to drive Br. Peter and Sr. Patricia and I back to Bankstown, where he was staying as well. We gladly took him up on his offer. It took a while to find the parking garage where he had parked our car. But all went well and we arrived back home around 11 PM. By that time we were all pretty well bushed and went straight to bed.

More pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/gvangrie