C h r i s’ J o u r n a l 

In 1938, Clement Frischauf OSB, a monk of St. John’s Abbey, painted the apse of the Great Hall in a renovation of the Abbey’s worship space (picture).  It wasn’t until 1961 that the monks moved over to the Abbey Church with dominates post cards of St. John’s with its impressive bell town and honeycomb stained glass.  If you have never visited St. John’s I recommend spending time in the Abbey Church, but it wasn’t this powerfully simple worship space that alerted me to God’s presence on Thursday night, it was Clement’s painting in the Great Hall.

The Great Hall is now used as a banquet hall and general meeting area at SJU.  There is an information desk and a door that leads to the admissions office.  Thursday night I was at a banquet for friends who were graduating form the School of Theology at St. Johns.  We were seated at round tables, and the podium for various speeches, back patting and presentations was placed at the top of what used to be the sanctuary steps facing out to the crowd, which meant we were facing this tremendous image of Christ raising a hand in a Triune Blessing holding a book inscribed with the Latin for, “I am the way the truth and the life.”  Angles with 6 wings as described in the book of Revelation were painted above Christ, as well as white shrouded, faceless angels were painted below.  Lamps were placed between these faceless angels giving the whole painting a mystical feel.

All of these images were fascinating, but it was the smallest creature on the wall that my eye kept returning to.  In the center, under the large figure of Christ, stood a small lamb.  Out of the lamb rivers of blue water flowed out to the edges of the apse.  While a flock of other sheep bowed in respect to the central lamb.  Why was this lamb calling my attention?  I didn’t know the answer, but this morning when I went to Mass, I found out.

After the consecration we say or sing the words, “Lamb of God you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.  Lamb of God you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.  Lamb of God you take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.”  We say it each week, most of us without thinking too much about it.  We just know it is time to kneel after we are done.  But thinking about the lamb of God represented on this wall at St. John’s, I was struck by the presence of God in this small barnyard animal.  Sometimes it is easy to describe God as being BIG.  God is big, and with that sometimes we think God is too big to think or care about us.  He has more important things to do.  Right?  It is also easy to think about God as human.  I have been told that all my life.  God was a pretty amazing human, but human.  Got it.  But our faith holds that God is lamb.  Jesus is the sacrificial lamb whose death has won us life.  That God could be so small and gentle and close makes me uncomfortable.  But it’s true.

God wants to be close to you.  God wants to show you and me mercy and grant us peace.  And whether we mean it or not, we pray it each time we go to Mass.  This next Sunday (or whenever), you attend Mass with the rest of us, and it comes time to say or sing the “Lamb of God,”  let’s pray it.  I mean really pray that God comes close, becoming small and gentle and most of all near to each and everyone of us.  Let’s pray this simple prayer because we need God’s mercy, our world needs God’s peace.  Thanks for reading.  Keep it real.  God Bless.

I finished 6^th overall in my NCAA pool. Not very good. I had UNC and UCLA in the final with UCLA winning the whole thing. I was very, very wrong. The NCAA Men’s Basketball Champion Game was one of the best in recent memory. It was thrilling. Kansas’ last minute shot to tie it; their domination in OT. Great game. But the next day it was over. I actually tried to find my bracket online and couldn’t. It took some fancy magical interweb maneuvering to find the standings of my NCAA pool. It was only the next day, and I can imagine a great number of people were still trying to see where they ended up. Yet, CBS had already moved on, instead promoting their TV shows coming back after the writer’s strike.

Luckily Baseball season is in full swing. Here, standing at the beginning of the longest season in major pro sports, it seems like it will never end. But sure enough in Nov. there won’t be another pro baseball game on TV or the radio for almost 4 months. The NHL and NBA are about to hit the playoffs and in a couple months (why so long?) their seasons will be over too. By the time you read this, the Master’s will be over and someone will be wearing the green jacket. (I’ve been watching ESPN a lot while working out.)

Even in the Church we celebrate certain seasons for only a set piece of time. The Easter Season is 50 days long. Yes, it’s still Easter! We should still be celebrating Mass and our salvation with fervor and enthusiasm. But soon Pentecost will come and will we slide into ordinary time. Summer events are coming for HNOJ Life Teen: CHRISTPOWER, the Steubenville Youth Conference, YTM, and the Mexico Mission trip will make for a summer full of discipleship, laughs, and God’s kingdom (PS – you can still sign up for Christpower and Steubenville! www.hnoj.org/lifeteen.com/html.). The thing is the opening days of the 08-09 school year will signify the end of summer 08. I know what you are thinking, “I get the idea Chris, get to your point.”

Thinking about all this as I searched for my NCAA bracket made me reflect on how most of the things I spend my time doing or thinking about are temporary. By temporary I mean two things. First, these seasons and events only last for a short period of time and then they will be over. Secondly, they are bound to time. They will happen on particular days and it is only at those times that I can experience them. I can’t experience the NCAA Championship game any day, but the day it was played (ESPN Classic isn’t the same thing).

The only thing in my human experience that doesn’t fit this category is the unconditional, unending love of God. God’s love for you and me, never started; it always was. And it will never end. There has never and never will be a time that God doesn’t love you and me. I think we say these words and maybe even believe them on some level, but I am not sure we really “know” what they mean. By “know,” I mean that just to understand these words cause us to live differently. There are lots of things that we know that affect how we live, but truly seeking to understand in some small part God’s unconditional love will fundamentally and radically alter our entire perspective and how we choose to live. The thing is God’s love isn’t completely understandable. God’s love is mysterious. Yet seeking to understand it will change us in ways we can’t begin to imagine.

And so, while most of our lives are filled with things that start and end, things that are temporary, we have the opportunity to know something that lasts forever: God’s unending, unconditional love. Thanks for reading. Keep it real. God Bless.

Besides all the Life Teen stuff I do here at HNOJ, I also run the 1 day confirmation retreats.  Barb Gerdes, the director of Confirmation, and I run these together.  I actually really like doing these retreats.  Most people who sign up are convinced the day is going to be boring and churchy and a waste of their time, and 99 out of 100 people who attend this retreat end up leaving pretty happy about the day.  They learn something valuable about the Sacrament, we do a good job trying to make the content of the day relevant and useful, and we end up having more fun than even I expect (Team Foursquare).

Without giving too much away, the last thing we do is hold a reasonably intense prayer experience in which we watch a 4 minute clip of the crucifixion from Jesus of Nazareth.  All the main characters represented in the gospels are there, but in addition there is a huge crowd lining the streets and surrounding the crucifixion.  People are shouting for Jesus’ crucifixion.  The camera work is shaky.  The guards are cruel.  All the things you and I would expect from a movie version the crucifixion of Jesus.  Every time I watch it two questions haunt me: 1) Would there really have been a crowd?  2) What would it have been like to be just a “regular guy” witnessing this event?

I read through all 4 gospel accounts to see what scripture said about crowds.  Mark, probably the earliest written gospel, mentions 5 different groups during descriptions of the way of the cross and the crucifixion.  Mark mentions people “passing by,” chief priests and scribes, some bystanders, roman guards, and women watching at a distance.  Not exactly an unruly mob as portrayed in the film.  Matthew’s gospel is practically identical except that the priests and scribes directly mocked Jesus whereas in Mark they mocked him “amongst themselves.”  Luke writes that a large crowd followed Jesus on his way of the cross, but doesn’t mention them again at the crucifixion, though it leads the reader to believe they were still there.  John says that many Jews read the inscription hung on Jesus’ cross because the place he was crucified was near the city.  So, crowd?  Luke seems to think so, but based on what the other 3 gospel writers said, I think it is more like there is just a large group of people passing by.  These people were on their way to do other things.  Maybe they were running errands or going to the temple or just on their way home.  They notice Jesus and mocked him for the sign hung above his head, not for who he really was.

This answers the second question for me.  Not counting Roman guards, the priests and scribes, the women watching from afar, most people who witnessed this pivotal moment of human and salvation history were just passing by, barely noticing what they were seeing.  Unfortunately, I think this is still the case today.  Jesus death is memorialized at each and every Mass.  His suffering is shared by every human being who suffers.  And yet most of us just walk by.  We rarely stop to honor or recognize exactly what is happening.  A majority of us don’t attend Mass on Sunday, completely ignoring the celebration that is taking place.  Those of us who do attend, many of us “check out”, stop paying attention, and ignore the miracle and the memorial taking place before us.  In the Mass, heaven touches earth and most of us are looking out into space thinking about something else or talking with someone in our pew.  We don’t just ignore God on Sunday morning.  We acknowledge with our words, but deny with our lives that there are people starving to death, people being murdered because of their last name, people suffering because of the very way that we live.  This suffering that we ignore is as real as Jesus’ suffering on the cross and as deserving of our attention.

So the questions I have to ask myself and all of you my friends are; Are you just a passerby?  Are you walking by the cross each day while Jesus is being offered at Mass?  Are you ignoring the suffering of the world that is joined with Jesus’ suffering on the Cross?  If you are just passing by, stop this week at Mass and pay Jesus, present in the readings, the Eucharist, the priest and each other, the attention and love that Jesus deserves.  And we walk by Jesus crucified in the streets of Minneapolis or the halls of your high school, let us stop also to love Jesus’ presence there.  Thanks for reading.  Keep it real.  God Bless.

Bearing in mind that I am easily entertained, I was blown away by the Lunar eclipse the other night.  If you missed it, a couple Wednesdays ago our big blue marble passed between the sun and the moon and those on our end of the Earth were lucky enough to watch a shadow creep across the surface of the moon and in the end turn our lone natural satellite a deep shade of red.  I honestly thought, no wonder people worshiped the moon and sun, this celestial stuff is nearly unfathomable.  I was awestruck.  I was in awe of the effect of our planet, the sun and the moon.

For as amazed as I was by this extraterrestrial phenomenon, I was 100 times more awestruck at this year’s Luke 18 retreat.  For those who don’t know what this is, Luke 18 is a weekend retreat for 7^th and 8^th graders that is nearly entirely run by high school students.  Juniors and Seniors (Disciples) give the talks, lead the small groups, and stay at the sleep houses.  Freshmen and Sophomores (Cori Team) work behind the scenes doing dishes, cleaning up, setting up small groups, and much more.  This year over 140 Jr. High and High School teens participated in Luke 18, our largest yet.

The central theme of the weekend is the love of God. It is simple and yet so powerful that really breaking it open is tremendously profound.  Plus we have just gobs of fun.  DJ Bill Lage did a killer dance party.  We played team four-square.  We laughed, ate too many cookies, and high fived each other like it was our job.  The Disciples gave talks that shared their experiences of God in their real everyday lives.  They also led small groups that broke down the topics in serious (and sometime less serious) discussions.

I got the pleasure of working with the Freshmen and Sophomores.  The Cori Team does all the behinds the scenes work, making the food (along side our awesome adult kitchen crew!), moping, setting tables, setting up small group rooms, vacuuming, making gifts, and most importantly praying in the adoration chapel.  We had our fair share of fun in the youth lounge and goofing around in general.  What was interesting though was that probably the most fun had on the whole weekend was doing dishes, or rolling silverware.  The guys who vacuumed with the backpack vacuums were laughing it up.  I heard numerous people say, “I never thought that cleaning up after someone else could be so fun.”  I would totally agree with that statement, but I would add one more thing.  I would say that I can’t believe that cleaning up after someone can be such a powerful God moment.

This is how powerful God is, he can love us and change us and bring us closer to him in the midst of dust pans and bacon grease, team four-square and funny stories.  God literally works in these moments.  That’s not to say we don’t need reconciliation, profound talks, and intense liturgies.  Rather, if those are the only places we are looking for God, then we are selling him short.  I asked the Cori team before the weekend started, to name their most intense God moment.  Many named Steubenville, Rockyvine, Spring Retreat, Christpower, and Passion Play, but one person’s answer really stood out.  They said that their most intense God moment is when one of her friends laughs.  This really struck me.  So the rest of the weekend I would try to get this one girl to laugh, and every time she did, whoever was standing there would shout out, “God Moment!”  And they were right.  It was a God moment.  The whole weekend we were looking for God moments and they came upon us like a flood.  These moments were every day, normal things, but because we experienced them together and were looking for God, we found him.

As unworldly as the Lunar eclipse was, I have to say it wasn’t all that spiritual an experience for me.  Luke 18, on the other hand, full of all its ordinary experiences awakened me to God’s presence in my life and his unending desire to be close to me.  Don’t wait until 2010 when the next lunar eclipse is set to occur.  Look for God now, in the evening dishes, time when nothing is planned, and the loud laughter of a friend.  Thanks for reading.  Keep it real.  God Bless.