The Awesome Wonder of God

By Joe Sullivan, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

The beginning of this past November marked another Challenge Youth Weekend Reunion. Ten of our youth evangelized up and down Roosevelt Street in Phoenix the evening of the first Friday of the month. As usual, rosaries, miraculous medals, crosses, crucifixes, and Catholic information were distributed among the people out for the night looking for a good time at the monthly Phoenix Art Walk. 

It was a weekend of sacrificial challenges because, after a long night of evangelizing, we took a one-and-a-half-hour drive to Our Lady of Solitude Monastery in Tonopah, AZ, in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. The Poor Claire Sisters (the Desert Nuns) hosted our youth and provided them with a cottage for the night, close to the monastery. The next morning all fifteen of us squeezed into a small 8 x 12 ft chapel, knelt on a hard cement floor, and had Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Morning Prayers, Rosary, Litany to Our Lady, Litany of the Saints, Deliverance Prayers, Prayers of Petition, and the Apostles’ Prayer. We were on our knees for over an hour. As the youth exited the very small chapel, I acknowledged them by exclaiming, “THAT IS HOW IT IS DONE, MEN!” 

After that, we geared up and climbed the Tonopah Volcano (yes, it’s a dormant volcano). Scaling the black, volcanic rocks and boulders, it took about an hour to reach the top where we began building an altar with the stones on the summit, overlooking the vast Sonoran Desert Valley. Fr. Cahill heard confessions and said Holy Mass for us there. As he raised Our Lord’s Body in the Consecrated Host and the Chalice of His Precious Blood, we were all on our knees. A sense of true awe and the majesty of Christ swept through the group at this moment. There were no words. All were struck with a sense of peace and awesome wonder at being in such a place with Our Lord in such a special way.