For Those Who’ve Just Returned From World Youth Day…

[Note: While this blog post is directed towards those who had attended World Youth Day–an international Catholic youth/young adult event–its concepts can apply to anybody who has attended a powerful conference, seminar, or retreat, and wish to ensure that the information received will be remembered long after the event itself.]

Welcome Back!

Right now, you must be exhausted.  You just had a whirlwind of experience–powerful memories, amazing worship, stimulating talks, and new friends.  While I wasn’t there to be at World Youth Day in person, I was there in spirit, praying for you and the safety of Pope Francis.

There is one concern I have, though.  All of the talks, all of the homilies, all of the prayers, what they come down to is this very theme: “Go and make disciples of all nations.”  My question is, one year from now, how much closer would you expect to be in this journey towards being comfortable with sharing your faith?

One year from now, how much more of a witness would you be in knowing why you believe, and your openness to engaging your friends, your neighbors, even your family, in sharing the profoundness of Who Christ is, the great sacrifice He has accomplished for us, and the new life he wishes all of us to partake in, by the power of the Holy Spirit?  One year from now, will you have built your faith upon a foundation that will stand, and would you have helped lifted others into the newness of faith and joy that we, as baptized Christians, are inheriting, or, will it be back to the same old, same old?  No changes, no risks, no growth, but lots of time allocated to video games and internet surfing?

You won’t need a DeLorean to talk to your future self.

Talking to Your Future Self

If you were to have a time machine, and go into the future, one year from now, and shake up your future self, the self that you’re not wanting to return to, to remind him or her of the great life-changing power of what you have learned this weekend, would you do it?  What would you say?  How can you keep this fire aflame?

I’ve got news for you.  You can do this.  You can go into the future, throughout the entirety of the next year, and remind yourself of the great lessons learned from this event.  And you do not need a time machine.

The solution is to create a document that you will have your attention one year from now, and viscerally remind you of the important, life-changing messages and memories that you have grown in from this past week.

I am speaking of creating a custom wall calendar, for the very next year. Starting next month.

Making a Custom Commemorative Event Wall Calendar

As a personal aside, I’ve tried this myself, and it has worked wonders for me.  I had read multiple books in the previous year, and I would often forget their contents weeks after I had read them.  This past year, I decided enough was enough; I opted to summarize the contents of twelve books, cram the best parts into single pages, and use this as the basis of a wall calendar, which is at my desk, reminding me of what I had learned.  In doing this, I do afar better job internalizing and retaining what I had learned, months/years after the fact.

You too, can do the same, using the messages of World Youth Day (or any other event, or even twelve books).

Just follow these steps:

1) Go through the transcripts of Pope Francis’ talks, and summarize, for yourself, twelve tidbits of information that best impacted you.  These could be twelve of the most important lessons that you have learned, from the transcripts, from your own notes, from your memories.  Feel free to craft outlines of whole speeches, if you wish.  The point is that these are those “aha” moments for you, those words that you will want to remember, or grow from, the most.

2) Write these out on 12 letter-size pages, in any size font as you wish.  The one caveat–make sure this is in LANDSCAPE mode, and that the fullness of the lesson is on a single page, in its entireity.

[*]For a little extra motivation, commit to reading twelve full books in the next year, all dealing with growing in some manner.  For those who attended World Youth Day, these books can be about evangelism, or about learning your faith, or about growing in holiness.  Let there be a few biogrophies in there of noted Saints or famous evangelists in the past, to get a sense of who they are, how they shared the faith, and what made them tick. On each of these twelve letter sized-pages, write out in one place the titles of those books, one per page.

3) Furthermore, if you took photos of World Youth Day, or if you have access to photos online, feel free to collect twelve of your very best pictures of the event.  Again, one per page.  Perhaps you can have these be the background pictures of the page, with the text in the foreground being in a readable color (white, perhaps?). Or, you can have them situated on the side.

4) You will need to save these individual pages, all twelve of them, into individual graphic files (e.g. jpg files), one jpg per page.

5) Lastly, go to shutterfly.com (not an affiliate link), and create your own custom 12-month wall calendar, using these twelve pages.  With shutterfly, you can start the very next month.

Their service is quite easy to use, and should be easier to implement as you go on.  Once completed, order your own personal World Youth Day – Rio rememberance calendar.

Concluding Thoughts

Once you have received this wall calendar, put it in a place where you can look at it every morning.  You will be reminded over the powerful lessons learned from this event.  You will also be motivated to learn more about evangelizing, by committing to read twelve books in the next year.  And the memories about World Youth Day will be as vivid as ever.