Well, I am back home for a brief Thanksgiving break, and since I don't really feel like working on a philosophy paper, I figured I might as well work on some blogging that I am behind on. After typing up the first day of NCYC, I decided to split the event into a few posts (because, as always, I'm being long-winded and one post with everything would be daunting to read).
So, as I previously have briefly mentioned, NCYC (the National Catholic Youth Conference) was here in Indianapolis on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I was looking forward to this event ever since I heard it would be happening this semester. Usually, to be quite honest, I'm more of an introvert. However, upon entering seminary I have found the courage (let's be honest, it's grace) to be a bit more open, outgoing, and willing to talk with people. Anyway, I was greatly looking forward to the opportunity to hang out with 25,000 (!) young Catholics. I remember how great of a time I had just a few years back when I got to hang out with other young Catholics (though not nearly as many) and seminarians - it was awesome! Thus, though I am now on the other "side" of the exchange, I figured it would be pretty cool.
Thursday was the first day of the conference, and the kids started showing up at the conference center mid-afternoon. The Springfield and Knoxville seminarians, because groups from our dioceses hadn't shown up yet, were assigned to serve Mass for the Jefferson City, MO diocesan group at 2PM. We showed up at the convention center (which, by the way is enormous - like probably 1/2 a mile long) somewhere around noon, got registered with the volunteer people, and picked up our name-tags (enormous and kind of gaudy, but everybody wore one so it wasn't weird I guess) and t-shirts (which had "SEMINARIAN" printed on the back, so we were very obvious). We got to the room that this particular Mass was happening in (other dioceses had their own Masses going on throughout the afternoon), and waited, and waited... The group apparently was delayed because while their priests showed up on time the rest of the folks didn't trickle in until after 3. We, meanwhile, had walked a few blocks over to the mall to get something to eat. It was starting to get busy over there as everybody was starting to show up and I felt really conspicuous in my SEMINARIAN garb, but it was pretty cool to see everybody (and chat with a few people). I didn't get anything for lunch because I wasn't very hungry (and I'm cheap), so we eventually wondered back and waited a bit more.
I guess Mass was my first disappointment - not that Mass itself is bad - but we were squashed into the front row, the altar was just a table on a stage, the music was too "enthusiastic" for my tastes, we didn't [get to] kneel for the Consecration (which ended up absolutely destroying whatever remnant of concentration I had left) - I don't know, it just wasn't a fantastic experience... There were some bits that were really good: I had a moment after receiving Communion of deep prayer (love it when that happens) and the priests concelebrating Mass were reverent. Mass itself was great, but the craziness of the environment didn't lend itself to concentration, so I didn't pray as well as I was hoping.
After Mass we wondered back around to the volunteer station. I believe we then wondered through the thematic park, which wasn't open yet (we snuck through a door that someone left open) but was basically a huge open room with tons of booths from different places (religions orders, schools, companies, musicians, etc.). After checking things out we headed over to the mall again to get some dinner (by now I was hungry, those snacks in the volunteer zone were wearing off). However, by now the mall was absolutely full of people. I mean, every food-producing-vendor was absolutely swamped. So, we gave up on getting something substantial and slammed down a few more peanut butter crackers and granola bars.
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| lots of people! |
At this point we were told to report over to Lucas Oil Stadium for assignments, and upon wondering over there I found that I was (along with most of the other guys) assigned to manning the sidewalks and getting people to their buses after the event. I managed to evade being called on to carry around a phone and be in charge of things (remember, I'm an introvert) and was told to report to my yellow zone by 9:15. The event had already semi-started at 6 or 7 with different bands and stuff (it was now almost 8 PM), but the program seemed to indicate that the real start would be around 8 with some sort of key-note speech thing. I was pretty enthusiastic about getting in there and seeing all the excitement and what-not, so I found a spot near the entrance (so I could make an exit later) along with a bunch of other sem.'s and settled in for the event. Basically, I was disappointed to find that there wasn't ever much of a talk. Don't get me wrong, the loud, upbeat music was great, but I got tired pretty quickly of jumping out and hollering out the next refrain to whatever motion was supposed to happen for this song. It was fun to begin with, but after an hour or so I was tired and really just wanted to sit there and listen to a enthusiastic, passion-filled speech. Music is fine and dandy, but I wanted some meat to chew on and get excited about. The faith is so much more than music! Anyway, I was disappointed. Apparently, this evening was primarily all about getting people hyped up and excited for the next few days. Anyway, it wasn't working for me (though most everybody else seemed to be having a blast.
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| crazy lights! |
Shortly after 9 I headed down to my spot near the buses and caught up with Jeff who was in charge of that zone. He had figured out which buses went where - Youngstown, New York, Lexington, Louisville, etc... - so I tried to remember the order while waiting for the even to finish up and everybody start poring out. A bit after 10 the first people started leaving and over the next 20 minutes or so people began to flow pretty constantly out and head for their buses. Unfortunately (for us), they all seemed to know where they were going, so our job of directing traffic turned out pretty pointless. Anyway, our zone ended pretty quickly (most people must have headed out of other doors), so we walked down to another zone to see if they were done. Unfortunately, they weren't. So we hung out with the group that was stranded (their bus was late), trying (unsuccessfully) to stay warm amid the slow drizzle of 35 degree rain... I actually enjoyed this part a bit because I got to talk with a few of the young people. I had spent the entire day surrounded by crowds of people, but I hadn't really had a chance to interact. All the kids that I talked with were really cool - they had really strong faith, were discerning where God wanted them to be, and were a lot of fun to spend 10 minutes or so chatting with. It was great!
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| Lucas Oil Stadium - Tons of Young Catholics! |
Well, the rain wasn't so great, but eventually the bus did show up. After that group was on there way pretty much everything was done - we hiked back over to the car, drove back to Brute, I ate some eggs/sausage shortly before midnight, and then crashed. It was a long day, lots of fun, very crazy, incredibly exhausting - in other words pretty good I suppose...
Below is a video of some clips that I took at the event Thursday evening - it was pretty amazing to be there!
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