This is Going to be Messy

This summer I will be spending a week at our Catholic Youth Camp at Camp DeSales in Brooklyn, MI.  These camps are faith-building retreats for parish and school groups. Their goal is to enhance relationships, primarily with Jesus Christ, but also between high school teens and adult ministers from their parishes and schools.  It is a powerful program with deep prayer, liturgies, and sacraments.

Fr. Geoff Rose, OSFS and Sr. Rose Marie, RSM

There is beauty in the schedule for these camps.  Because teens are coming to camp from different cities, parishes, and schools, camp begins with an activity meant to remove all pretenses and posturing. We begin camp with “messy games.”  During messy games, campers and adult ministers get slimed, ride down a slip-n-slide, fall into a mud pit, and have chalk dust spattered on their heads. When everyone is finished, they look like a mess. Following these games, campers are better able to share with one another their hearts, faith, and relationships with God. Getting messy together somehow works. It is both humbling and freeing.  Most importantly, they go before their God throughout the week with that same humility and freedom. 

I like beginning the camps with messy games. I once thought they were a bit over the top until I had a baptism following a Catholic Youth Camp. As a minister of the sacrament of baptism, I can tell you it is messy. Just think of two of the primary sacramental signs - water and oil. If you ever get a chance to look at the liturgical book for baptism at a parish, you will find pages crinkled from holy water and others transparent from oil. Somehow, my alb always smells like chrism for a few days following a baptism. Water and oil get everywhere, and isn’t that beautiful, humble, and freeing.              

May God be Praised!

Fr. Joe Newman, OSFS
Provincial
Toledo-Detroit Province