Gaming: Finding God through Laughter and Joy

Each semester Franciscan University's Study Abroad program hosts nearly 160 American students to study and travel abroad all over Europe.  Sometimes they travel as a whole group, and other times in smaller groups.  When they are all together, its quite a sight: blue jeans, heals, makeup, shorts, flip flots, and yes backpacks galore.  Yes, at times they can be loud and yes even obnoxious.  But, there are also times when love and laughter and joy seem to be predominant. 

Fr. Ron Mohnickey, T.O.R., Director of the Study Abroad Program, recently recounted to the student body that while in Rome,  a man who had abandoned his faith approached him after following the students for some time.  He told Fr. Ron that he returned to the faith after witnessing the love, laughter,  joy, and lively faith of the students.  He was converted that day in Rome, without any  direct evangelization. 

In the end, Gaming is a powerful reminder to the students and staff that Christianity reduced to a lifestyle choice is empty of its power.  They are reminded that the Catholic world has a lot more to it than churches and that the human comedy and drama is ultimately, in the deepest sense, a divine comedy.  

But why?  While the students more often than not can not explain the reasons systematically, more importantly they often experience them in the most profound way during their study abroad experience. 

The students come to see the world with a sacramental imagination: the understanding that God saves and sanctifies the world through the materials of the world, that the ordinary stuff of the world is the material God uses to bring us into communion with the truly extraordinary -- with God himself. 

G.K. Chesterton, couldn't agree more: "Catholicism is about thick steaks, cigars, pubs, and laughter.  Catholicism is more than than of course.  But to miss that is to miss something crucial in the Catholic world.  In fact, its a world in which these pleasures can be fully enjoyed because they're understood for what they are -- anticipations of the joy that await us in the kingdom of God."  (From Weigel's book, Letters to a Young Catholic.)

Thus, students come to Gaming primarily to study, but they also end up finding God not only in the chapel, but also in the daily joys and laughter of life, whether it be traveling, smoking, or drinking at the pub.  They come to the realization that Joseph Pierce (Hiliare Belloc's biographer) did: "love and laughter are linked in a mystical unity" because "beyond the mere love of laughter is to be found the laughter of love."