Early in the summer of 1994, my college football team spent two weeks in Sweden playing exhibition football games.  In preparing for our first game at Olympic Stadium in Stockholm, half of the team got the great pleasure of getting to stay.....45 miles outside of Stockholm in what looked like a bombed out industrial park.  Remarkably, there was a hotel there and after I had taken a very immature picture of the offensive line mooning the camera to protest the accomodations; we settled in our rooms for a lazy Swedish Wednesday Afternoon.

And that's when it dawned on me.  It was Wednesday evening and tomorrow was Ascension Thursday and a Holy Day of obligation for us Catholics!  Luckily, I attended a Catholic College, most of the coaches were Catholic, and most of the players were Catholic.  And so, being the team leader that I was, I launched a phone call to our Head Coach to find out what the plan was for getting the team to Mass in the morning?

The response was an uncomfortable silence followed by my Coach's explanation that there was not any plans to go to Church tomorrow as we already had a very busy day ahead of us.  He didn't seem to appreciate my help when I reminded him that it was a Holy Day of Obligation for he and I and that we were a Catholic School.  And he was clearly a bit irritated as he told me that the bus would be leaving from Stockholm at 9:30am sharp and that I was expected to be on it.

So here was the challenge.  I had to figure out some way of finding a Catholic Church in this almost completely Lutheran country.  I had to travel to this Church and then figure out a way to get to my Coach's hotel in Stockholm before the tour bus was leaving at 9:30 am.  Wow, an adventure.  I felt like the Blues Brothers, I was on a mission from God and though I was lacking the half a pack of cigarettes and cop engine, I felt equally cool.

I found one guy, Luke, who would join me in the adventure and together we worked with the hotel clerk to find ourselves a Catholic Mass.  This itself was an accomplishment but by later that night, we had formulated our plan.

So Luke and I woke up very early and walked 30 minutes from our hotel to the train station.  We then took a 45 minute train ride into Stockholm.  We then walked another 20 minutes until we found the building where the Mass was supposed to be.  And there it was, right off of a very busy Stockholm street was a dark basement stairway leading towards what could easily have been a tucked away tavern.

But Luke and I had made it and I'm not sure what we expected but after arguing with our head coach, and traveling what felt like a day to get to Mass, we still weren't quite prepared when we got into the small basement church and realized that though we were in the middle of Sweden, on this morning we were in the company of......Italians.

The Mass was in Italian. Seriously?  Not Swedish, not English and not even Latin.  It was in Italian.   It made Luke and I laugh....and smile...because the Mass experience that day, was incredible.  Though I didn't know their spoken language, I absolutely knew this people's sacramental language. It was my language! And so, Luke and I fit in just swell.  We had traveled all of the way from Kansas to Sweden and right here below a busy street in Stockholm we had found ourselves......home.

Ascension Thursday celebrates the event whereby Jesus'  Visible Body seemed to disappear from his Disciples' presence.  And yet Jesus used the occasion to promise his friends that he would continue to be present to these apostles through his very Holy Spirit.  Jesus was in a sense, going home to be with his Father.  And he promised that the Holy Spirit would be working in the life of the Church in a very special way.  And one day, God would call all of his beloved home to Jesus.

Though Luke and I were in a strange nation, listening to a strange language, and dealing with a strange coach.... on that beautiful Ascension Thursday in Sweden, we could not have felt more at home...in the arms of Jesus...amidst a basement full of Italians!