Well, given that my 12 Months Later review of my social media exodus was read as more of a 2023 Review (which it was, to be fair) I might as well do another re-view for 2024 😅

2024 was kicked off by going out with some fellow World Youth Day pilgrims to the Westpac OpenAir Cinema on the Fleet Steps overlooking Farm Cove and the rest of Sydney Harbour. The film we’d arranged to see was One Life (2023), a biographical film about humanitarian Nicholas Winton and more broadly about the Kindertransport of Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia to Britain at the beginning of World War II. This is hardly a film for the faint of heart and as if to accentuate this point we sat, in provided ponchos, for about the last two-thirds of the film under wave after wave of rain pouring over Sydney Harbour.

Watching a film outdoors on Sydney Harbour in rolling rain running off my poncho-covered head is an experience I won’t soon forget.

 
Speaking of World Youth Day Lisbon, much of 2024 was spent finishing off a 12-month voucher for photo printing by having a selection of my photos from 2023 physically printed and then arranged by me in a photo album.
To mark the 1-year anniversary of the WYD Pilgrimage in July, I organized two get-together lunches for the Over 18s Pilgrim (Italy and Portugal) cohort which many appreciated.
​
I cannot comment about my fellow pilgrims’ experiences. But for me, a year-and-a-half on from Lisbon I’m only just coming to grips with, and processing through, what we all went through over those 22 hectic days of pilgrimage across Mediterranean Europe. But I can say that, for having done it once, I at least have more of an idea of what to expect a second time around and how to manage things and myself better than I did the first time, please God.

​In comparison to 2023: 2024 was an exponential increase of train trips, train festivals and rail heritage excursions with my father. Our travels took us north to the Hunter Region around Newcastle and as far south as Goulburn and the Southern Highlands. Indeed, there were many long days with very-early morning starts. But we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless, yet we were very tired by the end of those same days.

​
September saw me travelling by airplane up to Brisbane for the IGNITE Conference 2024 organized by Emmanuel Community and its Ignite Youth ministry team.
This was the real curveball of 2024 and it was my first ever experience of IGNITE.

​All the talks by various speakers that I went to were good and informative on different parts of the Catholic faith life. A special stand out was the Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge’s talk on Encountering the Scriptures where he discussed how the bible “goes to the heart of hopelessness to find a hope that cannot be destroyed.”
He truly enkindled in his audience a greater appreciation of “the black fire on white fire” as the Rabbis describe the Holy Scriptures.

The rallies at IGNITE were experiences. There was much good in them, but by the end of the three-and-a-bit days I was ready to run back to my bunk-hole at home and not have another thousand decibels going right through my body.
​
After attending IGNITE and commuting across Brisbane each morning and evening, it has confirmed to me that what’s needed is smaller and quieter events where good conversation can take place. There’s a place for the big events, as long as they are not the only option available.

​On a less frazzled note, that same month I also started shooting 35mm film with a re-loadable plastic point-and-shoot camera. It has been a nice change of pace from taking photos with my smartphone.

 
I don’t really know or have even an idea of what 2025 will bring, apart for the Jubilee Year of Hope that has just begun. Dear God, may this new year see an outpouring of Your love and of experiences of hopes and dreams fulfilled.
 
​
Let’s see if there’ll be a 2025 Review, eh?

 
Vincent Cavanagh
3 Jan 2025

I will endeavour in this personal, reflective piece not to repeat things that I have already written much about before.

​LISBON World Youth Day Week started on a Tuesday, 1 August 2023, which makes keeping track of events personally in one’s mind rather difficult. Later on, at times one could be forgiven for the honest mistake of losing, or even gaining, a day on your internal calendar.

This whole hectic schedule of events was due to a conflicting parish event after the youth night and the lateness of the St Joseph’s Day Eve party at Joseph House being on at a prohibitively late time for me to attend.

In the end the picture was printed (Thank God!) and present to the housemates, and it should now be hanging somewhere inside Joseph House.


Vincent Cavanagh
​19 Mar 2024

Now, as for an update on my previous update about working on writing down my experiences of WYD Lisbon, that’s no longer moving forward. I’m not joking when I write that it was a commandment from on high. And given how much I was reliving certain emotions to an unhealthy amount, I’m more than alright with just letting it drop and focusing on what God actually wants me to be focused on instead. 

Ask God before you leap into things whether you should be leaping into them at all.

​

P.S. Also, the writing was the reason that I only had a single day left to paint Joseph and Jesus. (Face palm) Oi vey!

*midst | as in: ‘in the midst of him’; not a synonym for ‘middle’​.

19 Mar 2024
For any update about the writing, you'll find it at the bottom of the next blog post.

In another of the many firsts in 2023, myself and few other Catholic youths went last night (15 Dec 2023) to see the St Mary's Cathedral 'Christmas at the Cathedral' Lightshow in Sydney after having dinner at Ichi-ban Boshi beforehand.

Until next blog post, a holy Advent to you all!

​
Vincent Cavanagh
16 Dec 2023

Just a brief update to let you all know that, yes, I am still alive.

I am currently in the middle of a 6-week course on “Theology of Body” by Pope John Paul II which is taking up nearly all of my mental and physical energy and leaving myself with not much left in tank for anything.

This is in addition to my general lack of focus and purpose in the wake of World Youth Day Lisbon 2023 and finishing my 2024 Calendar.

Currently, I find myself living (read: surviving) from one ex-WYD pilgrim social event/get-together to the next, which are so far averaging about a month apart. Post-World Youth Day Blues? Perhaps.

I know that I shouldn’t complain, because before WYD I had never had any social life what is filling up my calendar now. But I am aware of how fickle sudden-social-relationships can dissipate in the blink of an eye unless they are tended to and (hopefully) cultivated into last friendships.

Please kindly keep myself and all my fellow “Theology of the Body” course participants in your prayers.
Thank you.


Vincent Cavanagh
22 Oct 2023

Unfortunately, he was left at somewhat of a disadvantage by the semi-regular speaker Fr Samuel French (who sent his regards for that night) who had already covered every possible topic about vocations under the sun prior to World Youth Day Lisbon.

So, what could Fr Marek possibly talk about to a dining table of two dozen or so Catholic youth? He chose simplicity and talked from his own experience.

Fr Marek was 7 years old, back in Poland, when he first knew his vocation in life.

At the time his two older siblings were preparing for their First Holy Communions. He recalled that somehow, he had picked up a prayer book and was reading it. Even looking back, he knew that he could not understand much of what was in it, but he was reading it. Then his mother walked into the room where the little Marek was and said: “Ah, Marek, I see that you are going to become a priest.” Not wanting to upset his mother, he said, “Okay.”

Later on in his life he was thinking about it. When all his classmates from school were worrying about which high school to go to, Marek was not worried. He knew that he was going to be a priest. It was very convenient to know it from that time, there was no uncertainty for him to deal with.

In seminary, around Year 2 or the beginning of Year 3 you are investured with the black cassock of a priest, and (in Poland) you are to no longer wear secular/common clothing. This is a very important threshold within a seminarian’s journey to becoming a priest. A visible sign that you are truly serious about answering God’s call to this holy vocation. No former seminarian would wish to be remembered amongst his community for going through with his investiture only to then say that the priesthood is not his true calling.

It is far better for you to resign before this moment happens, Fr Marek told us.

So, it was at this important threshold in his own journey of discernment that seminarian Marek had his first seed of doubt: Am I being truly called or am I just doing this for my mother? Dear God, please tell me, is this just me wanting to be a priest to make my mother happy or are You truly calling me to this?

Two weeks before he was to receive the cassock Marek was visiting his family, still wondering whether his calling was real or not. For some reason his mother began recounting stories from his childhood, he had heard most of them before. But then she told a story that he had not heard before.

Marek’s mother told of when as a child up until the age of 2 he had suffered through twelve bouts of pneumonia, one soon after the other. During one of these periods of illness, when she had taken him back to the hospital to be examined again, the doctor said to her, “If I were you, I would prepare.” Prepare for his death.

Not at all content with the doctor’s advice, Marek’s mother took him to their local church and prayed before the altar of Our Lady. She made a deal with Mary, “You heal him, you can take him.”
A while after, Marek recovered and the details of these events began to fade from his mother’s memory, until God called them back to the front of her mind when Marek most needed to hear them. It was late in Marek’s vocation, but it was still the right time — God’s time — for him to hear this story. Here was the confirmation that he was on the right path; God the Father was calling him to be a priest.

Fr Marek knew at the time, ‘This is not about me.’ God speaks to each of us in different ways.  HE knows which ways to speak to us that we can understand, individually. Listening to some details of your life, you will see clearly where God is calling you. God can speak through other people. Pay attention to things that are repeated: phrases, events, conversations, and so on. It is not always some big message or big trumpet blast; God speaks to us simply, in the ways that He alone knows that we can understand.

For example, Fr Marek’s Vocation to be a Missionary.
​
When he was walking through a high school as a Year 9 student, out of the corner of his eye he noticed a poster for the Geographic Department and that was a small photo showing somewhere in Oceania, he couldn’t recall where exactly. And in that moment, it came to him, “Okay, I am going to be a missionary.”

God used something I would understand, he said. Something as simple as that photo.

Later, it came to his heart that he was to go to Papua New Guinea. There was no warning, he had no prior ideas about it, this was God calling him again to where he should go.

Priests that Marek knew, and his own fellow seminarians, told him that becoming a missionary would not be so easy. Their bishop was not one to let go of freshly ordained seminarians, Marek may have to wait a year or two before the bishop would be willing to let him go on mission work. Marek was not fazed; he knew that he was going to be a missionary.

Every time that the bishop came to visit and talk with the seminarians during their years of formation, Marek would say to the bishop, Bishop, “I am going to Papua New Guinea to be a missionary.”

Later on, Marek thought to himself, ‘Hmm, it might not be a bad idea to have some experience before becoming a missionary.’ So, he decided to stay for a year, or two, in Poland as a priest in a parish before becoming a missionary. He ended up staying 6 years for placement in his local diocese.

Then the bishop came on one of his parish visits. When he saw Fr Marek, he said, “Okay, here is the man who said he would be a missionary.” This statement left Fr Marek thinking again about his vocation and precipitated his second struggle with doubt. “Am I being called to be a missionary? Is this of me or not?”

In his parish as a newly ordained priest, Fr Marek met and became friends with a former missionary who was also living there. They would often go out for lunch together and the missionary would share stories about being a missionary, not knowing that the young priest before him was called by God to be a missionary as well.

Fr Marek knew that God was calling him to minister in Papua New Guinea, but all the missionaries from his diocese in Poland went to serve in communities in Africa and South America. There was no one who had been to, or was in, Papua New Guinea that he could ask about being a missionary there. He felt being called specifically to Papua New Guinea, however there was no one to contact to find out whether they were indeed in need of missionaries in that part of the world.
Fr Marek knew that if he was to be a missionary, he would need help in discerning the call.

“Okay, God if I am to be a missionary, I need a sign or a contact in Papua New Guinea to know that you want me to go there.”

What then followed for Fr Marek was a long period of prayer and questioning, by himself and others. This was God’s good way of purifying his call to missionary work. Marek wasn’t doing this because he liked the idea of Papua New Guinea, no, he wanted to go there because that was where God Himself was calling Marek to be.

After this period of purification there was still no sign or contact from Papua New Guinea. Then Fr Marek thought to himself, ‘Okay, Marek, if God calls you to be a missionary, what does it matter which country He sends you to?’

Only after this did Fr Marek then find out that one of his priest friends was actually going to be a missionary in Papua New Guinea. However, as clear a sign as this was, it was still not enough for Fr Marek to take this as a sign from God. He need confirmation that he wasn’t taking this turn of events to his human advantage — he had already given his, “Yes,” to God to go to Africa.

So, Fr Marek went to talk with the Director of the Mission Training Centre where he was studying, and asked the director, “Where should I go to be a missionary: Africa or Papua New Guinea?”

The director answered him, “They have more than enough missionary priests in Africa already, go to Papua New Guinea.”

And so that is how Fr Marek came to be a missionary in Papua New Guinea, but that was not the end of his story.

In his time ministering in Papua New Guinea, Fr Marek was called again by God with a thought, a thought that the missionary had never had before, that came to his mind: Australia.

Australia! Why Australia?

It took Fr Marek a while to understand this call. Talking with those around him and his fellow missionaries, he could come up with many Human Reasons to go to Australia:

• If he stayed for too long in Papua New Guinea, he would get old and then get health problems, and become a problem for Papua New Guinea.
• It would be easier for him to travel back home to his parents if one of them got sick.

But none of those reasons or any others could just as easily be resolved by going back to Poland.

In the end none of this Human Reasoning finally mattered, only God’s Reasoning mattered.

When Fr Marek received his call to Australia, it was so clear. Normally people have motives for moving. He had none. He was trying, as all humans do, to make up reasons for something that cannot be answered by human reasoning. For God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are above our ways.

The only reason Marek had to go to Australia was that it is THE Call — God’s call — and that was enough reason for him.

Now that Fr Marek is in Australia, he feels deep within himself that he is in the right place. The place where God wants him to be. His past 2 years in Australia have been of great spiritual growth to him and his life as a priest. That spiritual growth was never a motivation for him to come here, he has only received it because he followed God’s call.

For Fr Marek, the best way in life is to follow God’s call. He cannot truly express in words how happy and fulfilled he is for following the many calls that God made in his life so far.

In closing, Fr Marek advised us to be attentive, to discern, and aware of the things that we may not even think of as God’s call in our lives - may just be the God of Infinite Surprises knocking at our heart’s door.
He was glad to see so many young people gathered for the Vocations Night, “It is good that you are actually putting your ear to what God is calling you to. Thank you.”

Fr Marek Woldan has been an ordained priest for 23 years.

He was born and raised in Częstochowa, considered to be the Spiritual Capital of Poland.

In January 2008 he arrived in Papua New Guinea and was sent as a parish priest to one of the parishes in the Diocese of Mendi.

​From the end of 2021, Fr Marek has been an assistant priest at Our Lady of Dolours Parish, Chatswood, Sydney, helping with pastoral work in the Diocese of Broken Bay.*


Vincent Cavanagh
(Revised Version) 4 October 2023

* Details taken from Our Lady of Dolours Catholic Parish Chatswood Facebook post welcoming Fr Marek to the parish.

Just a brief post to say that my 2024 Calendar containing a selection of my photographs from my WYD Lisbon 2023 pilgrimage are now available to order for the new year.

— Cost for the 2024 Calendars is $30 AUD, plus postage (within Australia).
— For International postal orders we will arrange Air Mail costs appropriately, on an order by order basis.

You can place your order through the form found under the Contact page or by messaging me via Facebook, or via LinkedIn (though I am hardly ever on that, at all).


Vincent Cavanagh
29 Sept 2023

Just before 7am Madrid time, we were checking our luggage in at Madrid-Barajas Airport. Qatar Airways was taking us on both the Madrid to Doha, and the Doha to Sydney flights. For our Madrid to Doha flight, we were in a Boeing 777.

You might remember that when we landed in Milan for the beginning of our pilgrimage, a flight attendant gave this neck pillow into my keeping since it obviously belonged to an Australian pilgrim. Despite sending up flares on social media, and making other enquiries, its ownership was still unknown. I had hoped that someone would have claimed it at the Australian gathering in Lisbon, but no. Yet waiting in the lounge at Madrid airport the connection was made.

This pilgrim was a helper with the White bus; and had elected to do his European sight-seeing before meeting up with the White bus pilgrims in Lisbon. Since he had already ordered an exact replacement of his missing neck pillow, he graciously bestowed it on me. You can’t make these things up!

Going through the indoor tropical garden at Doha airport to find food. I ended up choosing sweet and sour fish with rice. Despite longingly looking up at the elevated driver-less people-mover monorail both times we were at Doha airport, my fellow pilgrims elected to do the 15-minute walk between where we landed and where the second flight was departing from.

Yay! Thanks be to God. Just before 5pm on 12 Aug we were back home on ‘terra firma’, at Sydney International Airport, Mascot. We landed 10 minutes after the pilgrim flights from Paris. The pilgrims who flew home from Lisbon arrived in Sydney on 11 Aug.

From a straw poll of pilgrims, the average length of sleep that first night home was 14 hours. All of us are slowly recovering from jetlag and exhaustion. We’ve been told to expect it to take two weeks to get back into normal sleep rhythms again.
​
Please pray that all the seeds of grace placed by God in pilgrim hearts over these three-and-a-bit weeks will, in His timing, yield an abundant harvest. Amen.
 
 
Vincent Cavanagh
#bbwyd #wydlisbon #wyd2023 #lisboa2023
15 Aug 2023, 9.32pm Sydney

After travelling all day from Fatima to a hotel close to Madrid airport we thought that Mass was out of the question. But God had a surprise for us. Our most resourceful seminarian just happened to know the dean of Madrid cathedral: and learned that in the months of July and August there is an 8pm Mass on weekdays. So off we went.

We approached the Cathedral by this side entrance, which is quite small compared with the rest of the Cathedral. While the need for this Cathedral in Madrid was known for centuries it has only comparatively recently been built. Taking 110 years to build, it was consecrated on 15 Jun 1993 by Pope St John Paul II.

The cathedral has one main nave, with two side naves; and three transepts off the main nave to give it the form of a Latin Cross. Our Mass was in the right-hand side nave dedicated to Our Lady of Almundena, or as we would call it, Our Lady of the Citadel. Under this title Mary, Mother of Jesus, is best known and loved by the Spanish people because the original statue has stories of miracles attached to it.
​
The Christians of 8th century Madrid had deep devotion to Mary, Mother of God, and when the area was invaded by the moors, this statue was hidden to prevent its destruction. It lay hidden for some 300 years before a Christian king came along and demanded it be found.

​Although the secret location had been passed down from family to family, by the time this Christian king came on the scene the holder of the secret had just died without telling her young daughter where it was. After much prayer a miracle happened, part of the castle wall crumbled to reveal the statue.

The patterns in this roof are very colourful and look a lot like palm fronds to me.

Behind the priest with the white shirt is a reliquary box encased in glass. Inside the reliquary box are the remains of St Isidore the Farmer, patron of Madrid, who died on 15 May 1130. Although sometimes he is called St Isidore the Labourer.

He and his wife St Maria belong to that rare breed of married Saints. They had a son who died in his youth. Not that holiness is limited to consecrated life, nor to martyrs; and not that holiness in married life is uncommon; but it is a lot easier for religious orders to keep a cause for canonization going through several lifetimes of postulators.

What makes St Isidore the farmer so special? He put God and prayer first. He would go to Mass each morning before work. At least once when his fellow workers complained that he wasn’t working, they found him deep in prayer, and an angel ploughing the fields in his stead.

St Isidore is also known for his kindness towards animals, and for the hospitality of his home. Frequently St Isidore would bring hungry people home, and his holy wife always had a pot of stew on the fire waiting for them, and once when St Isidore brought home far more hungry people than usual God multiplied the food for them.
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On the far left-hand side is the statue of St Isidore the Farmer, and on the far right-hand side is the statue of his wife St Maria.

The painted panel on the left-hand side is an icon of Pentecost. The painted panel on the right-hand side is an icon of the Baptism of Jesus.

The golden statue underneath the carved crucifixion scene is the 16th century copy of the original statue. From the book of Revelation are the details taken; a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon at her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars, whose son was to rule all the nations.
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In the other painted panels around the Virgin of Almundena are scenes from the life of Jesus and the life of Mary.

This tomb belongs to Queen Maria of Spain, a.k.a. Mercedes of Orleans, 1860-1878. In her brief 6 months as Queen before her death she became a co-initiator of the building of this cathedral.
​
Because the cathedral is a short distance away from the royal palace, the cathedral is the Spanish equivalent of Westminster Abbey for major royal weddings and funerals.

On pilgrimage the meals we had to locate for ourselves became known as either adventure lunches or adventure dinners because we had no idea where we were going, nor any idea what kind of food we would find. Thankfully it was easier to find gelato.

What better way to end the evening than gelato? This time I chose two scoops of gelato, one Coconut and the other Bailey’s Coffee Flavour.
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Since we had to be ready for breakfast at 5.30am the next morning, and a 6am departure for the airport, after the gelato we made our way back to the hotel.
 

Vincent Cavanagh
#bbwyd #wydlisbon #wyd2023 #lisboa2023
11 Aug 2023, 12.30am Spain | 11 Aug 2023, 8.30am Sydney