A reflection by Elisabeth Waelkens, a third year English Literature student at KULeuven

Let’s face it: Belgium is not a place where young Christians can easily meet fellow believers. Going to a Catholic school, participating in religion classes, or going to church every Sunday morning will generally not guarantee that you will meet many young people actively practicing their faith.

I grew up in a Christian family, but outside my home life I had few people with whom I could speak or learn about faith. By the time I started studying in Leuven, I was very eager to meet people my age who were active Christians.  It was because of this that I started attending Pharos meetings.   Those prayer meetings opened a new world to me, showing me how other Christian people lived their faith and teaching me a lot.  Over the next two years I started accepting for myself some of the basics that seem so self-evident to my parents, but that I had been wondering about for a long time.      But after my second year of university, I was still somewhat unsatisfied. I had learned more about Christianity and through Pharos I had gained a lot of friends who supported me in my faith, but  I still, however, did not have an unconditional faith and trust that there really is a God looking out for us, leading us through life, who gave us his own Son because of His love for us. The Adelante Conference and World Youth Day in Madrid changed that. I, along with a group from Pharos, joined about 400 other young Christians for ‘Adelante’, an ecumenical conference in Vitoria, before going down to Madrid. On Saturday evening, we had a large prayer meeting with all 400 of us, and with the possibility of receiving prayer. There I asked two other women to help me pray for the gift of surrender, to find that trust in God that I had been longing for. However, I left Vitoria still unsatisfied and was starting to resign myself to the idea that I never would get that complete trust for which I hoped, and that I would just have to take my life as it was. I didn’t really need perfect trust to believe in God and to try to follow His path. It would just have been nice if I never had to doubt.

I spent the next week in Madrid in that same mindset, and when I returned home, I thought  that it was still my mindset. Looking back now, though, I can see that during those six days, the Lord was working in me.

The highlight of it all was the Saturday evening, when those millions of pilgrims all gathered on one large field, and spent the night in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament with the pope. The mass of people there was such a sharp contrast with those moments I had had when I was younger, when I couldn’t quite find anyone my own age who believed, that those past feelings of loneliness became completely ridiculous in my own mind. And later, when the whole two million of us, preparing to spent the night under the starry sky, were surprised by an enormous thunderstorm and we started singing, I remember thinking ‘good God, this is the most amazing night of my life.’

It wasn’t until I was back home that I fully realized that my doubts were gone. Though I hadn’t noticed, the Lord had been working in my heart through receiving prayer and being with other young Christians.  If God can bring that many people together to praise his name under the thunder and lightning, who am I to be afraid?