50th International Eucharistic Congress

So last week I went down to a few days of the Eucharistic Congress taking place in Dublin. The novitiate group had kind of taken shifts in going down and I got booked in for the Thursday but ended up staying for the Friday as well.
I have to admit that initially I did not expect much and didn't want to get too hyped up about it but when I go there, just the atmosphere in the RDS on the Thursday was truly Catholic to say the least. It was one time that being in a habit did prove to be an advantage (I got little special treatments here and there from ppl who thought I was a priest) .
More than that tho, I met up with two Trinis who were visiting for the Congress, namely Denise Scott who I hung out with for most of Thursday and Stephen Jones. It was truly a delight to see them and to see many of the friends and acquaintances I made in Ireland since I've been here.
Although I did not get into any of the talks I planned to go to I still got to some interesting things. There was quite a wide selection of booths in the Exhibition Hall (Dominicans unfortunately didn't have one) then there was the youth space which was jointly run by ppl from Youth 2000, NET Ministries and Elation Ministries. I was also lucky enough to get to go on a tour of a recreation of Capernaum as the Apostles would have seen it.
The high point, however, came on the Sunday when we went back for the Statio Orbis which essentially was the closing mass but with performances before and during the liturgy it was truly a most beautiful and memorable event.