[This is a guest post from my daughter Aisa, just back from her time at Ecclesia.]
Ask yourself this question, and answer it honestly: If you were stuck in a group of fifty people for five weeks, by the end of five weeks, would you be friends with everyone? Would you love all of them?
Unless you’re an extremely extroverted person with serious people skills, your honest answer is probably No. You would probably latch on to one or two, maybe form a clique of three to ten at best, and by this time next year, probably wouldn’t recognize 70% of the group if you ran into any one of them in the grocery store.
But somehow, there’s this five-week program called the Ecclesia Institute, and through the Ecclesia Institute, I now have forty-six new friends. When I say, “friend,” I mean that I can tell you about at least one conversation that I had with each person that was more than small talk, I can tell you what gifts I saw them bring to that five-week experience, what I admired most about them, and the impact that they had on my life – because I learned something significant from each and every single one of those forty-six persons. I declare with confidence that for as many years as I attempt to host and/or attend Ecclesia 2015 reunions, I will remember all their names, recognize them immediately upon seeing them, greet each one of them with a hug from the bottom of my heart, and confidently ask them how they have been since the last time that we saw each other, with as much ease as if that last meeting had been but 24 hours prior. Ecclesia is not magic. Ecclesia is Real.
The Ecclesia Institute is run by Eagle Eye Ministries, and is hosted at the University of Mary in Bismarck, ND. Some of the extracurricular activities offered during this year’s Ecclesia included various sports, choir, debate nights, Marian Consecration preparation, and a theatre group that put on an excellent production of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. Our weekend excursions included community service, a tour of the Custer House in Ft. Abraham State Park, and a Marian pilgrimage. We had two to four hours of classes a day, studying the Philosophy of Culture, and the New Evangelization. Our texts included Ad Gentes, Gaudium et Spes, Evangelii Nuntiandi, and excerpts from Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics. But for me – and I would venture to say, for the majority of participants – the three major things that turned our Ecclesia 2015 group into a family were the three-night/four-day camping and hiking trip in the Badlands, the three-day silent retreat, and roughly 150 hours spent together in the chapel(s) in silent prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours, daily Mass, and a daily Holy Hour.
Rather than allowing us to settle into little cliques and attempting to break up bubbles halfway through the program, intentional family-forming started on day one. Spending four sixteen-ish-hour days together, without showers or makeup, sporting multiple layers of sweat and grime and sunscreen and bug spray, is a great way to get to know each other. Having each other’s backs as we handed each other off over ditches, guided each other down steep cliff faces, took turns carrying enough water for each person to have a gallon per eight-hour hike, and working hard to smile and laugh and sing and cheer each other on in spite of our perpetual breathlessness, proved to be effective methods of breaking down barriers, forcing us to choose to serve and to love each other. By the time we were piled back into twelve-passenger vans and off to UMary, we were quite chummy, each capable of putting names to at least twenty other faces, and not hesitating to use each other’s shoulders as pillows for much-needed naps on the ride. Although, napping was only attempted; it proved to be quite impossible amid peals of laughter and the belting out of many Disney songs.
Eagle Eye Ministries believes that the New Evangelization calls for contemplative evangelizers, persons who thirst for silence, and set aside time on a daily basis to find that silence in the Presence of Our Lord in His Word and in the Blessed Sacrament.
Dear Young Adults, go to Ecclesia. Go to Ecclesia to be healed of your many wounds, to cultivate trust and inner peace, to be renewed in hope, and commit to choosing joy. Go to Ecclesia to form friendships that you’ll have for the rest of your life, with people who will forever be committed to getting you to heaven. Go to Ecclesia to encounter Our Lord. Go to Ecclesia to learn to choose Love.
And then, go back into the world, a new person, confident and committed to setting the world on fire.
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