A Peek into Kairos: Results of God's Friendship

by Dan Masterton

All across the country, Catholic high schools, parishes, and even some colleges and universities undertake retreats based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, and most places call this retreat Kairos. These retreats are typically four days, though they sometimes are adapted to three days for Cristo Rey schools or college students cramming it into a long weekend. This retreat's thematic coherence, intensiveness in length and depth, and unique combination of talks, discussion, prayer, and ritual together create a retreat that is often looked back on as a seminal experience for young people.

Between my high school retreats and six years working in high school campus ministry, I've been a part of 13 Kairos retreats, the 13th of which I'm currently directing. Without giving away the context for it (there's no secrets on Kairos, only surprises, for there's nothing secretive about God's love), I thought I'd share the talk I gave on this retreat: Results of God's Friendship. The talk titles and topics are similar across the country, but the stories and insights with which the speakers animate them are what bring the retreat to life and make each iteration unique. Here's my words from a big moment on night two of the retreat, which hopefully brings some warm and fuzzies to the hearts of Kairos alumni out there who can remember that evening...

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Before we even get into write-down write-downs, I want you to just write these letters, without spaces, in this order, on the page that you have open for this talk: G-O-D-I-S-N-O-W-H-E-R-E

Now look at those letters, and break them into the words they’d have formed if you spaced it out like usual. How many of you did that and read “God is nowhere”? How many of you did that and read “God is now here”?

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For whatever reasons, we pack our lives full of stuff that bombards us with information and commands our attention. We prioritize those things that enable us to control information, to manipulate what’s available to us, and to enjoy it in the exact way and at the exact time we want to – we can open our snaps and stories on command; we can choose our streaming shows and kick back on autoplay; we can issue commands through our cable box’s voice remote or via Alexa or Siri; we can curate streaming radio stations to play the exact songs we want.

That all seems great, but then it becomes quite hard for us to be open and attentive, especially to things that we don’t command but are nonetheless important – we can’t force nature to deliver a beautiful sunset or a sunny, clear day; we can’t make our teachers deliver knowledge and wisdom just the way we want; and we can’t insist that God reveal Himself in the way we’d design. God is not a Netflix queue set to autoplay. God is not a snap story with a funny joke that disappears after we get our quick chuckle. God is not an app to bark commands at. And our temptation is to think that God must then be inferior to these convenient, pleasurable things – that if God doesn’t function like our favorite technology, then He must not be that great. Or, worse, we’re tempted to think that God then must not exist if He doesn’t appear just as we’d like.

But the tricky thing is that sometimes God is like that one friend who you add on Snapchat out of obligation but then realize is really funny. God can be like that one show that your friends keep telling you watch, but you don’t want to watch, but then you watch it, and you’re like dang, this is actually really good. God can be like that one band or song that you find really annoying because you hear it all the time but then realize after a few listens that you actually kind of secretly like it.

God is always here, looking for us, seeking us, loving us. One of the greatest things we can do is to let God save us from ourselves, so that we might realize the presence of God’s love and the results of God’s loving friendship. He doesn’t ever disappear or stop or take a break. So, the challenge for us as humans isn’t so much trying to prove God exists; rather, our challenge is making space in our awareness and consciousness to see God, who is already present. Rather than be lazy or deferent or apathetic, we have to open our eyes and ears and hearts to the love of God moving around us and toward us. So how do we find this God? Who is He? How do we know when we’ve encountered Him? St. John writes in his First Letter:

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only Son into the world,
so that we might have life through him. (1 John 4:7-9)

We must look for love, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. God is already present here, if we only make space in our crowded selves to acknowledge Him. We must be aware of the love being given to us, and we must strive to give that love back to others in turn. God is love. I think is important, and I’d like you to write it down: God is love. God is love. God is love.

Sometimes this love can be hard to find in the moment, but when we take the time to reflect on and process our memories – whether looking back at a day when we go to bed at night, or thinking back on fond memories from months and years past – they become rich experiences in which our God who is Love is so potently present. And in these experiences, we see how our very selves are the results of God’s friendship, results of the love our family and friends pour out to us. So, tonight, I want to take you back to July 18, 2015, and bring you to the power of God’s Love on my wedding day.

My wife’s name is Katherine. We met in 2009 while we were both in college at the University of Notre Dame, and we sang together in the Notre Dame Folk Choir. We started dating in 2011. In February 2014, on a chilly Friday night down on the Chicago riverwalk, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. We scheduled our wedding for July 18, 2015, and a flurry of planning ensued.

Wedding planning is obnoxious. People are often just being nice when they ask about how things are going, but they inevitably are most interested in the superficial stuff, which is all so largely about money – the reception venue, the wedding dress, the flowers and colors, etc. What should be most important, and what we fought to make our priority, was to prepare for a marriage, not just a wedding. And when possible, we tried to shape our wedding plans to reflect the important values of us as a couple and of our families, to help emphasize the families we came from and the new family we’d start together.

One wrinkle in all of this is that my mom, Karen, passed away in March 2013. While, thankfully, she had met Katherine and gotten to know her, my mom wouldn’t be there at my wedding to walk down the aisle with me and celebrate in person. So as we prepared the wedding, it was important to me to honor her love in a celebratory, joyful way, and to avoid being morose or sad. While the love between Katherine and me would be on full display, there were three major moments during which I could feel my mom’s love potently present in this day full of celebration and love, and looking back on these moments powerfully reminds me how my mom, my family, and my life are the result of God’s friendship.

First, I had to decide how to handle walking down the aisle. Traditionally, the bride and groom have their parents, and sometimes even their grandparents, too, join them in processing in at the beginning of the wedding Mass. While I could excitedly imagine the joy of my dad and I each offering an arm to my mom to walk her down the aisle, I had to be differently imaginative. My thoughts raced toward three very important women in my family.

Tim with Auntie Di.

Mike with Aunt Lynn.

As long as I can remember, my mom had two long-time best friends – Lynn and Linda. She’d known them longer than I’d been alive, and they were around for all the big moments in our family’s life. Lynn’s husband, Jeff, is my brother Mike’s godfather, and Linda is my godmother. In addition to these two ladies, since my mom’s mother, my grandma, died when I was four, my great Auntie Di, who is my grandma’s sister and my mom’s godmother, sort of stepped forward as a grandmother figure to my brothers and me. These three women were at the core of my mom’s life, and so, too, my family’s life, so, to step into the place where mom would have walked, I asked them to each walk down the aisle with us. My younger brother, Mike, first walked my Aunt Lynn down the aisle. Then, my older brother, Tim, walked my Auntie Di down the aisle. Finally, with my dad on one arm and me on her other, my Aunt Linda walked down the aisle in the place where my mom would have walked.

My dad and I with Aunt Linda.

While the ideal thing would have been to walk down the aisle with my mom, this was the next most perfect way, and I felt the fullness of my heart as the three of us walked down the aisle. After I hugged my dad and godmother, they sat down, and I walked to the side of the altar by myself to watch the wedding party of all our groomsmen and bridesmaid enter two-by-two and wait for my bride. As I looked toward these three amazing women seated with my father, I felt proud that I understood and shared their love, both in the relationships they had with my mom and in the way they love our family. In those last moments before Katherine appeared for her walk down the aisle, escorted by her dad in her wedding dress, I was overcome with emotion. Looking beyond these amazing women toward the doors where Katherine would enter, I could feel my mom’s love so powerfully. In that moment, I simply wanted my mommy. She was and is part of the joy-filled love of my marriage and family. My mom’s love, here present and shown through her godmother and two best friends, is a result of God’s friendship.

Our wedding Mass was full of amazing moments that highlighted the love of our families, which we’d seal in our new family through marriage. The readings, the homily, the music – all of it unfolded beautifully to give praise to God for the gift of this Sacrament. A favorite moment for my mom would have no doubt been the recitation of The Lord’s Prayer. So often, it’s a prayer we say monotonously, without feeling; however, praying the Our Father happens differently at Notre Dame. Our choir director, Steve, decades ago arranged the prayer to music, and at Notre Dame, we don’t just ramble through the Our Father; we sing the Our Father.

When my parents would visit me at Notre Dame, they loved to come for Mass, to pray with our community and our choir in our amazing basilica. And for my mom, she always found the sung Our Father to be so beautiful; it was her clear favorite. No matter how many times she heard it, it always brought her to tears. We had a good laugh one week. Because the Mass we sang at was always broadcast online, cameras were stationed throughout the church to record to Mass. That week, during the Our Father, the cameras were panning the crowd and settled on my mom, who, with cinematically great timing, released my dad’s hand to gently wipe tears from her eyes while singing the Our Father.

At our Wedding Mass, the choir did its usual excellent work leading the congregation in song. And then as the introductory notes of the Our Father invited us into prayer, the congregation joined hands. At that moment, my dad, from his place on the aisle in the front row, did something wonderful. Now, my dad is a very low-key fellow, who rarely, if ever, does anything loudly or demonstratively, so it’s unlikely he thought much of what he did, but his silent gesture spoke volumes on the love that my mom poured into him. Dad stepped out of his pew, pulling my family toward the aisle with him, and reached across the aisle for my now-father-in-law’s hand. He echoed the gesture and pulled his family with him to grab my dad’s hand. As we sang my mom’s favorite song, her favorite prayer, my dad literally and physically reached out to my wife’s family and connected himself with them.

My dad, right, and my father-in-law, left, connecting our families across the aisle.

Much is said on a wedding day about two families becoming one through the new family started by the newlyweds. In that moment, my dad and Katherine’s dad enfleshed that bond in a gesture of unity. Our families already had connected so well, and my mom would have only further fueled that had she been there. In this beautiful moment, my dad’s reach manifested the tearful, joyous love that mom would have been praying had she been physically standing next to him. And those linked hands are the result of that love and transcendence that is God’s friendship.

Needless to say, the Mass was great. After Mass ended, we enjoyed our time with our bridal party, going around campus taking our wedding pictures and then heading back to the hotel to enjoy our cocktail hour and start the wedding reception. After some lovely toasts by Katherine’s parents and our best man and maids of honor, it was time for the first dances. Katherine and I had one of our best friends play our song on guitar and sing it live for us, and then I yielded the dance floor to Katherine’s dad for his dance with her. After their dance, it was my turn, as typically the groom dances with his mother for one of these three opening dances. This was another moment in which I had to be imaginative and creative to try to honor my mom’s legacy of love in the best way I could.

After talking with my brothers and friends, I stepped away from advice and ideas to do the last bit of thinking myself. Mom was always so proud of us and loved having all sons (though she and my dad would have been great parents to girls, too). And coincidentally, most of our family and family friends had both boys and girls or all boys. So as a result, there were a lot of sons at our wedding who were there with their mothers. I decided the best way to celebrate that love from my mother, at this moment when we would have shared our dance, would be to get all the sons at my wedding to take their mothers’ hands and bring them out to the dance floor together. I pre-arranged with my brothers and myself to dance with the ladies we walked down the aisle, and then I called out several of my friends and cousins whose mothers were at the wedding. By name, I shamed slash invited them to take their mothers’ hands and bring them out to the dance floor in honor of my mom.

As I went to get my godmother, an army of young men chivalrously moved into action. In a matter of seconds, the dance floor was flooded with lovely couples. At least two dozen of my friends and cousins had – surprise, surprise – “twisted their moms’ arms” into coming out for a dance. As I danced with my godmother, it was special for me to be with her, too, as she had lot her son in a motorcycle accident when he was just in his 20s; so together, we sort of stood in for each of our loved ones as we celebrated on this night together.

Meanwhile, it was such a sight to look around and see so many happy moms. If you take a moment to imagine what it’s like when you make your mom happy, I don’t have to tell you it’s a great feeling. Even if you fight it a little, deep down you want to make your parents happy and proud. In that moment, all around me on a ballroom dance floor, I saw a bunch of dressed-up-to-the-nines moms who were happy and proud of their sons, reveling in this fanciful moment of love. And I knew that my mom, though she was not there to dance with me, was proud – proud of me, proud of all those boys who are sons to their mothers, and proud of the love she taught us all. The love that danced around that reception between so many mothers and sons is the result of God’s friendship.

A nice sampling of some sons and mothers :)

I’m a momma’s boy. It was always true, but as I grew and matured, I knew more and more that when my mother was happy, everyone was happy. And that all I had to do to accomplish that was to be myself the way God made me to be and the way my parents raised me to be. I think in these big moments of my wedding day, what I wanted and needed Jesus to do for me was to show me my mom’s love and presence. Sure enough then, throughout the whole day, and throughout my whole life, highlighted in these three luminous wedding moments, there she was – there the God who is Love was – beyond a doubt, showing us the results of God’s friendship.

* * *

Let me tell you a simple story. There once was a man whose town was being flooded by a great storm. He prayed to God, saying, “God! Come to my assistance and save me!” Just then, he heard on the radio that the flood was getting severe, and everyone in town needed to evacuate. The man dismissed the radio report and said, “No, no, God will come to help me.” A few minutes later, a man in a rowboat came by his home and called out to the man to jump into the rowboat. The man dismissed the rower and said, “No, no, God will come to help me.” Shortly after, a helicopter flew down over his house, lowered a ladder, and called out to him to climb into the helicopter. The man dismissed the pilot and said, “No, no, God will come to help me.” The flood overtook the town, and the man died. When he met His Maker, he said to God, “Lord, I prayed for your help, and you abandoned me in my time of need!” God paused and replied, “I sent you a radio report, a rowboat, and a helicopter. Why didn’t you take my help?”

Sometimes, we want to box God in. We want to turn him into some sort of divine butler, who waits far away and leaves us alone but then hurries in to answer our call when we are in need, who will serve and help us at our prompting but otherwise is uninvolved. However, that’s not quite right; our God is more than that. Our God is the God who made us in His image, out of love, with free will. Our God is the God who became human, who walked among us, who died for us all. Our God is the one who gave us the Holy Spirit to inspire and guide us, who gathered us as a Church in communion with Christ and one another, and who calls us to be the hands and feet of Christ to love one another.

Look at your sheets. I only have one write-down for you tonight, because it’s the singular thing I want you to focus on here: God is love.

Relationship is all about the giving and receiving of love. So when you connect to another person, when you reach out to love them, when you open your heart to allow them to love you, you are experiencing the results of God’s friendship. Our God who is Love flows through the relationships we share. We see this most potently in our family and in our closest friends. While we can be frustrated or annoyed by them, these closest people manifest the results of God’s friendship for us. And when we are aware of this love, when we receive it with open hearts and share it with others in turn, this love in action is the Result of God’s Friendship.