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.

​Well, it’s been 12 months since I started my Social Media Exodus and now it’s time to review the year that was.

​Okay, so starting off, 2023 was World Youth Day year for me. You may have seen some posts here and there on the blog and archived on the website, and possibly also on Facebook (sarcasm).

Speaking of the aforementioned social media platform, I think it’s safe to say that (apart from WYD) I haven’t been signed into it any more than strictly necessary. Nowadays it functions, for me personally, as more of an alert-slash-events manager and reference tool for finding people and past events.
​
Since WYD I have been using Messenger far more than I thought I ever would in my whole life.
It’s certainly been a change of pace having a social life.

Twitter is all but officially mothballed, waiting for a reason (if any) to actively post on it again.
​
Even though most Catholic parish Youth Ministries appear to have highly active profiles, I still don’t ever see myself returning to Instagram. Certainly not under my own name in any case.

As for YouTube… oh, dear. Apart from proactively uploading two videos from WYD Lisbon featuring the lead vocals of Fr Samuel French I’ve been passively over-consuming other people’s YouTube videos.

My anxieties over travel, packing, and WYD preparations absolutely did not help cut down on my ‘Watch time’ as I had hoped to rein in 12 months earlier. Being stuck in a maelstrom of choice-paralysis over what small new camera to buy to take over with me to Europe for the pilgrimage didn’t cut down wasted hours either. And in any case, I ended up taking more photos with my smartphone than I did with the camera I bought to stop me over-using said same smartphone. Live and learn, eh? I have bought a Peak Design camera strap that should help aid in using the camera more in future.
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And speaking of the future, I am all too aware of my current (ahem!) “habit” of bookmarking videos and website articles about various different foods, religious sites, and locations of interest across both East and Southeast Asia in the possibility of preparation(!) for 2027 World Youth Day. People are not kidding when they talk about the WYD/Travel "bug".

As an aside, I still don’t think that I’d ever be able to learn, let alone read, Hangul / Hangeul, the Korean alphabet. I’ve accepted that A) I don’t have to know everything and B) that I’m going to be especially reliant on those who can and have persevered to learn Korean.

Returning to YouTube specifically, I did come across the DF Tube Chrome Extension that has been of some great help in cutting down more video-related rabbit holes than I would have without it.
Its main attraction (for me) was the ability to turn off the righthand video suggestion box whilst watching a YouTube video. Admittedly it makes things lopsided visually, but it does mean that I have fewer distractions from the video in front of me. Sadly, DF Tube can’t do anything about my procrastination. That’s all on me.


​So, to sum up. I have been relatively withdrawn from my social media profiles – discounting blogging about the WYD pilgrimage. I have gained a social life that is aided by messaging applications which come with their own problems – the applications, not the social life.

My personal struggles with self-discipline and YouTube over-consumption remain. In part I know that some of this is due to a lack of projects and regular routine. Pray for me.

Putting my focus on posting blogs and standardizing parts of this website has helped me feel less pressured than I would have been if I was still only posting on Facebook or Twitter. As well as not having as much comparison-itis with the edited and project lives of other people on social media. This doesn’t mean that I still don’t struggle with comparison, it’s just not as severe as it has been in the past.


In closing I think that I will continue as I have done so these past 12 months and with God’s help get a better grip over my YouTube-surfing and other self-defeating habits.

Until next time.


Vincent Cavanagh
25 Jan 2024

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

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.
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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.
​
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

On our final afternoon and evening in Fátima we had a group session followed by Mass and then our last group session.

These big group sessions, which contained some small group conversations, were designed to help us begin the internal processing of all that we had received on pilgrimage, before we return to our regular lives at home.

After that all 4 bus groups gathered for a final dinner together. From here on we go in four different directions: some go back to Lisbon and catch homeward bound flights from there; some go by coach to Paris and catch homeward bound flights from there; some go by coach to Madrid and catch homeward bound flights from there; and some adult pilgrims continue to explore Europe with family and friends before coming home.

This lovely statue caught my eye. It stands behind the reception desk at the Consolata Hotel in Fátima.
 
Of course, everyone wanted the evening to last as long as possible before we went our separate ways. So the Green Bus members decided after that final dinner there was a necessity to go looking for gelato.

Thankfully I got to this landmark before the rest of the gelato-seekers arrived.

​Getting a photo of it without pilgrims draped all over it is a bit of a win.

If you look carefully through the pilgrim bodies, you can make out the contours of that landmark.

Because our coach to Madrid wasn’t leaving until 9.30am, there was time for Morning Prayer and some silent prayer in the smaller of the two Consolata Hotel chapels.

After studying maps before leaving home, it looked like we’d be coming into Madrid via Toledo. But to my surprise we actually came into Madrid via Salamanca.

Perhaps the bus and truck fuel and food facilities on that route were better, because they were sure crowded.
​
On the map the red marker is Fatima, the blue circle is our coach about to cross the Portugal-Spain border, and Madrid is like one of those places that all roads lead to. It was a 10-hour journey.


Vincent Cavanagh
#bbwyd #wydlisbon #wyd2023 #lisboa2023
15 Aug 2023, 10.58pm Sydney