It was not the best day to begin an American road trip. Heavy snow and sleet had begun falling over north-eastern Kansas late Tuesday afternoon and by Wednesday morning our planned departure from Atchison was covered in more than four inches of snow. With naïve resolve, almost oblivious to the facts, twelve GS (Gioventù Studentesca: the high school student experience of Communion and Liberation) kids, a CLU (CL university) kid, Aaron and Emad squeezed into a fifteen-seater van and set out with only one thing in mind: on Friday morning we must be at the Metropolitan Pavilion to meet Br Maximilian and Br Angelus to set up for the New York Encounter.

In his book In Search of a Human Face, Fr. Giussani writes: “The Christian life is the search for a miracle, a miracle that becomes history, an announcement of good for us and for those around us” (79). For us this has been the experience of the birth of GS in Atchison this year and the wild adventure of our New York Encounter.

In the fall of 2024—following the desire of Aaron’s teenagers, Basil and Edith—we decided to propose a GS to the high-schoolers and parents who participate in the local Atchison homeschool co-op. We were helped from our very first meeting by local CLU students, many of whom had themselves graduated out of various GS groups in the country. This accompaniment of CLU students was a decisive gift: they brought games and enthusiasm, taught us songs and showed us by their example and friendship how to do School of Community. And so, Aaron and Br Maximilian watched this little life of the GS grow. From the beginning we witnessed something that was clearly not the product of our adult effort but came rather from somewhere else. It was like a miracle becoming a history.

One day in October we went on a hike. Br Maximilian invited us to walk the first half of our hike in silence. In that silence he proposed that we pay attention, to take note, to notice what we were seeing. When we stopped, he asked what had struck us. Some noticed the sound of the bugs, others a particular bird, some the smell of the trees. Then one of the CLU students said that she had noticed that by watching where others were looking, she was able to see more than she would have had she been walking alone; walking together was a grace that helped her see more. When the hike was over, we had a beautiful School of Community. Afterwards one of the GS students remarked to Aaron: “What Maggie said on the hike—about seeing more by noticing what others were looking at—this is what we do in School of Community! Now I understand why we share our experience of life and what has stuck us personally in the text. When we share this together, we make it possible for all of us to see more!”

Another remarkable moment happened in November. We were having one of our GS meetings and Fr Michael, Fr Matteo, Emad and Fr Isaac Coulter were in town and came to our GS meeting. Fr Michael led a beautiful School of Community for the GS in which he helped us understand more deeply the method and how it has to do with living life more intensely. It was striking and a big gift to see how the students engaged seriously with his questions, reflected on the text and listened to what he had to say about how doing the work of the School of Community clarifies our certainty of Christ. The next week when we met again Br Maximilian asked the GS students what had struck them most about the visit of Fr Michael and the others. One of the GSers said that what struck him most of all was the friendship of the adults. Around this this time, encouraged by the life and readiness we saw happening, we decided to take a risk and see if any of our GS students would be open to considering the possibility of going to the New York Encounter. It was an impractical proposal since most of these kids (apart from Aaron’s) knew nothing of what the New York Encounter was and had only a few months of experience of the Movement. And this not to mention the costs and logistics of the journey, but we didn’t stop to think. We simply proposed the Encounter as an invitation to something we had experienced as beautiful. To our surprise the teenagers were overwhelmingly interested. But what to do now? How could a monk and a dad get all these kids to New York? And how could we cover the costs? And how could we propose this reasonably to the parents? Aaron called Angelo Sala, who had a completely untenable idea. Why not make the trip a real adventure? Why not rent a van and drive? This would make the journey memorable! A deeper experience for the young GS kids. And why not come a day early to New York? Why not get the GS students to volunteer with the Benedictine College CLU to set up the Encounter? They would get the experience of satisfaction of walking into an empty Metropolitan Pavilion at 8:00am on Friday and see it filled with life at the opening of the Encounter that evening! Why not make a three-day trip into an eight-day cross-country road trip?

The only person who initially thought Angelo’s idea was doable and wise was Aaron’s wife, Melissa. She immediately started scheming with Audrey, the responsible of the local CLU, to set up a GoFundMe and plan a Dance-a-thon fundraiser for the CLU and the GS. It worked. We raised some money and offset costs. And we did indeed organize a Dance-a-thon: “The Lights of New York,” held at Benedictine College in January. And so, on a snowy Wednesday in Atchison, Aaron, Emad and Ellie stuffed twelve GS students into a van. At about 8:30 we set out for Columbus, Ohio, where we stopped for the first night. As the van pulled out of the Sacred Heart Thrift Store parking lot we prayed the Angelus and hoped not to be thwarted by the weather, which did not look promising. For stretches we followed snow plows going about 30 miles per hour. In my mind there was a real question as to whether we would have to turn around, but as we got closer to St Louis the roads cleared, and the weather turned in our favor.

After a significant stop in Bethlehem, West Virginia (where we burst out of the car into a parking lot, pulled out a guitar and sang “Take Me Home, Country Roads” as loud as we could), we arrived in NYC on Thursday night. At 9:00pm, before we checked into our hotel, we met the Benedictine CLU to take the Staten Island ferry and see the city. The next morning, we prayed Lauds recto tono in the lobby of the hotel and walked to the Metropolitan Pavilion. It was amazing to see this brand-new GS come alive, and then to see them join with the bigger company of volunteers, joking and conversing with Italians they had never met. They did this all with an ease that betrayed the recognition of the experience of belonging.

Br. Maximilian had the opportunity to attend the meeting of the GS leaders at the New York Encounter with Seve, a GS leader from Italy. There he heard the experience of others attempting to begin leading GS in their own towns and he shared his experience of our Atchison GS. What was most striking to him was the discovery that the things proposed in GS answer a need that, first, is the heart of the adult leaders. Seve shared something that Fr. Giussani used to say about educating young people—young people need just one thing: an adult, “someone who lives this kind of belonging and is always witnessing to an Other.” One moment at the Encounter that was particularly beautiful was the Assembly we held with the GS on Saturday. Towards the end of the day, after having gone to a few presentations and exhibits, we gathered for our Assembly along with some adult friends. The question proposed for the Assembly (along with an encouragement to take the gesture seriously) was: “when was your ‘I’ awakened today? When were you struck by what happened and became present?” The first intervention was from Charlie who connected his experience of learning to play piano with seeing our friend Kuok-Wai Lio play in the concert the previous evening. Charlie was struck by the fact that Kuok-Wai didn’t seem to be just playing music, “it’s like he was the music.” What a remarkable judgement! And what a remarkable evidence of the journey we have been on! We have grown in our capacity to perceive the beauty of reality and affirm it as the center of the “I”.

This is the story of the miracle we found from the birth of our little GS in Atchison in September to the New York Encounter in February. It has been good for us because we have learned to see more and to expect more from reality. The greatest grace is that it is generating a new history.

Aaron and Br. Maximilian, Atchison, KS