To a person who has decided to wear the world view glasses of Christian, and in particular Catholic faith, they end up having the ability of seeing the hand of God throughout all his creation. Some believers in a transcendent God don’t feel they have to just isolate themselves in a monastery being silent and humming Gregorian Chant. They take their faith and they bring it with them out into the larger world of human customs and culture, and become creative within God’s creation.

They bring God into their Fun

God is with us in our worship and in our pain. But why not invite Him into our everyday life as well.  Take popular Youtube youngin priest Fr. Casey Cole for example. He has stepped away from his usual routine of priesthood and taken to the road with his fellow Franciscan brother, Father Roberto “Tito” Serrano and have started a summer-long  quest of visiting  all 30 Major League Baseball ballparks in America.

Why?

Shouldn’t Fr. Casey and Tito just be praying, distributing the sacraments and passing out food to the homeless? Why focus on a something fun? Well they actually brought God into their fun.

“Years ago, we were told by one of the friars that [St. Francis of Assissi] didn’t necessarily go to churches to preach, he went to city streets; he went to where people were and preached the language that they could understand. People don’t necessarily gather in the city streets anymore; so, being baseball fans, I thought it’d be great to go to stadiums to meet in the other cathedral, the other place of worship in some ways, this summer.”-Fr. Casey Cole in ‘Bleacher Brothers’ hit the road to evangelize in MLB ballparks | Crux (cruxnow.com)

Two men in Franciscan habits signify that God is out and among his people he created in something the average person finds fun and exhilarating.

Fr. Casey and Fr. Tito are known as

The Bleacher Brothers

Other professed religious people find ordinary life worth living as well and realize that God is part of it. Take the new world taekwondo champion for example.  A 110 pound petite and small-framed 67 year old

NUN?

How does taekwondo help spread the message of Christ?

Now you might be wondering if there is not a conflict between practicing a martial art and dedicating your life to God as a religious sister. However, Sr. Linda shares that, for her, “Poomsae (a sequence of movements in taekwondo) is an art form and to me, it is like a dance. It is not violent and the (world authority) World Taekwondo’s motto is ‘peace is more precious than triumph.’”

Interestingly, she draws on the saint who inspired her order to explain: “… St Francis said the prayer ‘Make me a channel of your peace.’ Taekwondo enables me to reach out to people in a non-church language.” (While the famous “peace prayer” is often incorrectly attributed to St. Francis, members of the Order of Friars Minor often lean on the prayer.)

Meet the new world taekwondo champion who’s a 67-year-old nun (aleteia.org)

We have seen how regular catholic folks can bring the message of God to ordinary everyday life.

Ok the examples I used were both religious.

And they were both Franciscan.

Here is an example of a lay person using his warehouse of a brain to bring his love of science and the science fictional aspect of time travel out of ordinary geek culture and into Catholic spirituality and practice. Here is…

Real Time Travel

Each week super Catholic apologist and nerd Jimmy Akin and his sidekick Dom venture into the mysterious universe that God has created and explore it from the twin perspectives of faith and reason. This particular episode talked about big theological topics such as eternity, God, and retroactive prayer. It blows my mind when Jimmy talks about God. This episode gave me hope and some challenges. His knowledge and love of nerdy type things has given him the opportunity to bring others into a deeper and hopeful understanding of God and communicating with him.

Dear God, May you help me to write a great article with an interesting topic.

I’m not sure what to write about. I do want it to be fun though.

Could you give me an idea please.

Thanks.

The Bleacher Brothers, the taekwondo nun, and the Mysterious duo don’t just love the fun things they do as just a way to tell others about Jesus. They love God and bring Him into the creation God has created that they love. The love of God just spills over into their fun.

A  fundamental truth of Christianity is that creation is good, so that love of created things is also good. Not only is enjoyment of these goods right in itself but any other attitude betrays ingratitude. It follows that enjoying things for the sake of God does not mean that we cannot enjoy anything properly unless we are externally preoccupied with its relationship to God. A simple interior joy in God’s gifts, at least partly because they are God’s gifts, is actually worth far more. Christians, Culture and Recreation | Catholic Culture