Anyone who thinks of World Youth Day as just a “Catholic Woodstock,” should read this inspiring account from the site of the next WYD, Australia:

It was eight years ago in a crowded park on the outskirts of the Vatican that Melissa Dwyer arrived abruptly at the crossroads of her life. One path offered to take this promising Australian javelin thrower and Olympic aspirant to Athens, the other to missionary life as a Catholic nun.

Dwyer joined more than 2 million young Catholics who had gathered for World Youth Day, dubbed Catholicism’s Woodstock, to attend Mass in the presence of Pope John Paul II.

The pop star Pope had invoked Catherine of Sienna’s exhortation to personal good: “If you are all that you should be you can set the whole world ablaze.”

“I still remember those words. They have stayed with me,” Dwyer says. “They challenged me to respond and from there I had an opportunity to put into practice that inspiration with a month’s missionary work in Africa and that concreted my desire to be with the poorest, to be in service for God.”

Six months later she entered the first stage of formation for religious life with the Canossian Daughters of Charity in Brisbane and ended all dreams of Olympic glory.

“In Rome there was such an overwhelming sense of community. I could look around and see it, feel it,” she says. “The church was more than just me, there were a lot of young people who were passionate about their faith. In Australia our faith is so hidden but in Rome it was so contagious.

“I was training for the Olympics, it was my dream since I was five and I tossed that all on its head. I went to World Youth Day in October and by February I had entered the order. I’d come to realise that I hadn’t stopped loving the sport but I loved God more.

“God is very much alive in my life, God is someone I can talk to and feel the presence of, my God is a god of love and acceptance and inclusion.

“I’m sure that World Youth Day helped me to stop and listen to that voice.”

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