The World Youth Day Story

The World Youth Day Story

The village of Calla Creek is really more of a conglomeration of ranches located in the same general area than it is an actual village.  It is divided by the Mopan River, the two sides connected by a rustic wooden “hammock” bridge which dances a good deal as one traipses across it.  Our small school on the far side of the river serves about 75 students coming from 35 families.  Half of those are single parent homes.  On August 23, 2008 Deborah Xis and her 5 siblings were added to that group.

The Bridge to Calla Creek - the former thatched roof Church in the background

I had come to know Deborah Xis (pronounced “Sis”) through my visits to the school, particularly for school Masses.  She was a quiet girl but something made her stand out.  Perhaps her unique facial characteristics with her high cheek bones, perhaps her athleticism, perhaps merely the quiet humble nature by which she went about her business drew my attention to her.  She became one of only a handful of students whose name I knew. 

In June 2008, at the age of fifteen, Deborah did what relatively few young people from Calla Creek do: she graduated from primary school.  That was possibly my first real connection with her.  I recall at the simple graduation ceremony for the ten graduates that I was able to communicate somehow my pride in her and also my satisfaction and excitement with her plans to accept a parish scholarship to take her shot at high school.  The choice to attend high school does not seem the prudent one to a Calla Creek mind.  Deborah came from a ranch with no electricity and where chores abound; as a “farmhand” Deborah was far more useful to the family than as a student.  With the added sacrifices on top of it all – the daily 5:30a.m. tackling of a four-mile walk to the highway to catch the bus to school and the same repeated in reverse in the afternoon – high school was a hard sell in Calla Creek.  But God spoke something silently in Deborah; she saw the path and set out.

Graduation Day

Two months after that June graduation, Deborah’s father and oldest brother were shot and killed less than 2 miles from their home, held up by “banditos” presumably from the other side of the border.  Deborah’s younger brother Willie was also in the pickup truck as it was assaulted.  Willie ducked to avoid being shot; his older brother and role model took that bullet which took his life.  Willie ran for his and got away but not without the deep living scar of hearing his father’s last cries and the torturous burden of self-blame for his own brother’s death.

I went out to the “velorio” the next night to pay my respects to the family and to support them in that terrible time.  I remember Deborah walking out from near the house where the whole village had gathered.  It was very dark and she came across the field to greet me.  My heart was breaking for this girl and I already felt the anguish of knowing there was little I would be allowed and able to do to ease her sorrow.  I stretched out my arm to give her the “one-armed-hug” common in the Latino culture and recited the expected phrase: “Lo siento Deborah”.  She gave me the perfunctory one-armed-hug response and said “Si Father”; she was the picture of sorrow and anguish, a tough farm-girl holding in her sadness.  But in an instant, and I would say a moment of grace, she rested her head on my chest in that greeting and that gesture somehow gave her permission to the depths of her person to rest, to relax, to let go.  And she cried.  The silent sobbing lasted for about two minutes, and I, by and in Jesus’ grace – and I believe just like Him – stood and stayed.  When her sobs subsided, she retrieved her arm, stood erect and said “Gracias Padre”.   With that Deborah Xis walked into my heart, found herself a spot, and sat down for keeps.

Sometime in April 2010 I was sitting in the rectory chapel in adoration one afternoon and God said “Take a group to Spain”.  God doesn’t say much to me; I on the other hand do say a lot to me – I therefore rated the likelihood of this phrase being truly from Him as “dubious at best”.   I followed up on this conversation that He had (possibly) begun with a few practicalities, in case the Good Lord had missed from way up there some of the more obvious facts His idea implied: “I’ll go, but I can’t lead it.  I don’t have the time.  You’ll have to send someone to lead it for me.”  I don’t know if the Lord felt insulted, if He went to work on it, or if He felt we had said quite enough that day, but in any event, my sublime dialogue with the Divine ended there…

…until I went downstairs after prayers, walked into the front office, and saw Perla Chablé one of my parishioners who promptly said to me “Father, I’ve come to see you.  We need to take a group to Spain and I’m willing to lead it.”  Bingo.  Something was afoot.

Then He kicked into high gear.  I privately thought of the young people in our parish and school whom I felt would benefit from a trip World Youth Day.  Over the course of the month without fail and without prompting each one approached me independently and asked about the possibility of going.  All except for one.  I didn’t think of Deborah Xis.  He did.  I’ll never forget her coming to me and asking hesitant questions about WYD: what is it, when is it, who goes, and then finally the Holy Spirit’s nudge in me and that wonderful feeling of discovery and thrill and possibility all at once, as I said to her “Deborah, you’re thinking of going aren’t you?” “Yes Father.” “Deborah, you want to go, don’t you?” “Yes Father, I want to go to Spain.”  Revelation.  She was hearing Him again, not even knowing it was He who was prompting her.  Deborah was all in.

For the next 14 months we formed the group and went through the manifold fundraising efforts from selling turkey dinners, to chopping the schoolyard grass, to bake sales after Mass of garnachas and pastels.  Deborah would provide “pepito” – roasted pumpkin seeds – for the sales each week.  She participated in the meetings, staying overnight in the convent afterwards and returning to Calla Creek the following day.  The group progressed and the date approached.  Before we knew it we were flying out of Philip Golson International Airport, Belize City heading for Spain. 

The first big moment of discovery was watching Deborah in the Miami airport as she saw an escalator for the first time.  I couldn’t resist.  I ran up the regular stairs beside her and looked across at her face, fixed in concentration on the moving stairs beneath her.  And I goaded her: “Deborah, I don’t know what you’re doing.  I never use those things.  They’re nuts.  At the top they eat your feet if you’re not careful…”  My torment went on and as it did Deborah lowered into a crouched position and honed in on the approaching threat.  With three steps to go she launched in the air and cleared the top step by two feet soaring gracefully to safety.  The delight of taking a group of 20 of my beloved parishioners on three and a half weeks of entirely new experiences had begun.

The Colosseum, Rome

The majority of new experiences were not comical but sublime.  We hit Rome for four days, Assisi for one and Lourdes for two before reporting to Barcelona for 4 days of “Days in the Diocese”, Madrid for 5 days of the culminating World Youth Day events and ending with 3 days in Gijón, Asturias hosted by an old friend Keko.  No one could merit what I received in those days: the sheer joy – the joy of a dad watching the faces of his children every single day – seeing either what they had only imagined they might one day see, or seeing what they had never imagined before.  The entry to the basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome on Day-One epitomizes that experience.  I went in first just to be there to see them all file in.  Each face, without exception, expressed total astonishment and disbelief as their minds reeled with the delightful incomprehension: How could anything be so magnificent?

After mass at St. Mary Major's, Rome

The mind-boggling experience of new countries, new cultures, new people and friends, new sights and new revelations began with intensity that day and continued for almost a full month.  Whether it was looking over Rome from the great Cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica, or peering at the Apostle’s first century tomb below the Basilica’s floor; taking in the awesomeness of the Coliseum or celebrating Mass in the damp silence of the catacombs with the palpable presence of the Martyrs; straining to absorb the grandeur of the Sistine chapel or soaking in the intimate grace of the Eucharist at Pope John Paul II’s tomb; praying with St. Claire and St. Francis in their city of peace or swimming in the beauty of the Mediterranean; bathing in the miraculous waters of Lourdes or processing with thousands by candlelight at Her shrine; sitting in awe at Mass in Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia or dancing in her subways and streets with joyful pilgrims; singing at concerts in Madrid or contemplating the Stations of the Cross with the Holy Father; adoring in silence before the Eucharist with millions or celebrating joyfully in the Holy Mass with the same . . . in it all the Belizean Youth – my parishioners, my friends, the ones God gave me, my children – were coming alive.  It was the great life, the Catholic life, life to the full.

St. Peter's Basilica, Rome

Mass at Blessed John Paul II's Tomb

Candlelight Procession at Lourdes, France

Mass in the Catacombs, Rome

Meeting Youth from around the world in Barcelona

Deborah and Nery - buddies!

Trevi Fountain, Rome

Deborah soared through it all.  On our pilgrimage Deborah spoke more in a day than I had ever heard her speak in a year.  She was bubbling with life.  She stuck by my side, a constant companion on every bus and train ride.  When I would nap on a trip she’d tell me “Sleep father.  Yo lo cuido (I’ll protect you)”.  Once when I returned late from a visit to friends in Subiaco she paced the house until my return.  She snapped pictures wherever we went, her favourite themes being cows (which she missed seeing from home), motorcycles and shots of her friends dozing (on bus rides).  And she brought us joy.

On the Cupola of St. Peter's, Rome

And thus it went that the largest group ever from Mount Carmel Parish, Benque Viejo del Carmen, “did” a World Youth Day.  We weren’t constantly overwhelmed with powerful experiences of God, but we did live as His family for three and a half weeks.  He brought us together to Him and in Him.  He shared His life and His treasures, His family tree though the centuries and His living body of today.  He took us on a tour to seek, to find, and to journey with Him who is the Way and the Life – and we found that Life to be glorious indeed.  The final event at Cuatro Vientos, where 2 million pilgrims gathered with 14,000 priests and 1,000 bishops to concelebrate the culminating Mass presided over by Pope Benedict XVI, visibly manifested the spiritual magnitude of WYD Madrid 2011.  It astonished us and moved us, was beyond our imagining and comprehension, and in its twilight left within us that peaceful blend of awe and thanks.

Deborah returned to Belize unfolded and in bloom.  She continues to talk a blue streak and to exude an innocent joy from within.  In that I believe He’s showing us His gift in her.  Deborah ran for and won vice-president of student council in this her senior year in high school and is working on ways to continue studies after graduation.

Deborah in Gijón, Spain

Two weeks after our return the group met to study our new YOUCAT – a catechism deigned specifically for youth and a personal gift of the Holy Father to the pilgrims – and sign thank-you cards.  As the members trickled home one-by-one from the parish driveway, Deborah was the last to leave.  We said goodnight and this time she gave me an unexpected untraditional two-armed hug.  She hung on for a little while, and said “You have been a real Father for me”. 

Deborah’s story is unique yet universal.  It is the story of the effect of WYD on a life. And it’s an awesome story.   It encapsulates the strength of grace God poured into each of us in the life-marking experience that WYD was.  To watch these people who, over the years, had become defining people in my life and priesthood, to walk beside them and stand invited into intimate moments of God’s own revealing love to them, to be a part of WYD 2011 and to witness – as a father and as a “dad” – these beloved children grow before my eyes, and to admire the wonder of Christ’s love for them and His love in them, has been quite possibly the greatest, most quiet of personal joys in my priesthood thus far.

I’m humbled that Deborah Xis chose to sit down in my heart. I’m happy she has found a spot to stay. That Christ Jesus has decided to meet her there, that He took her and 19 friends on a whirlwind tour of His grandeur, that He brought 2 million others with the same hopes, same fears, same longings, same joy and put them in one spot that He might gaze upon them and love them … and that He let me do it all with Him: It doesn’t get much better than that.

Arrival in Belize!