2026 ENCOUNTER
IS ANYBODY OUT THERE?
JANUARY 31, 2026 | NATIVITY OF OUR LORD, BROOMFIELD, CO
As we begin 2026, many of us are left asking what has just happened to our world? Tragedy no longer feels distant. Mass shootings, assassinations, the loneliness epidemic, and the constant presence of evil press into daily life, even into places once considered safe, including our churches. Fear has risen, not as panic, but as something we quietly learn to live with.
At the same time, the promises that once sustained us feel thinner. The “American Dream,” long associated with freedom, prosperity, and initiative, now collides with exhaustion, isolation, economic insecurity, and a loss of genuine human connection. Instead of turning toward one another, we often retreat into artificial forms of life like technology, which slowly makes our desire for true belonging feel impossible.
So we ask: Is anyone still able to stand in the face of evil? Is anybody still searching for a belonging that is real? Are we alone in our fear, or is there somebody out there who can bring us home to ourselves, and to one another? Is anybody out there?
SPEAKERS & PERFORMERS
PROCEEDINGS
Being Human (and Christian) in a Post-Shooting World
Fr. Joel Barstad, Fr. Anthony of the Transfiguration, Fr. Julius Lule, and Amy Azzalin
We live in a time when tragedy and violence feel like daily routine. School shootings, assassinations, public outrage, collective fear and numbness. But what happens inside us when fear becomes normal? How does faith survive when the world feels unsafe, fragile, and increasingly unpredictable? Are we left with cliches, politics, and despair… or can we discover again what it means to be human, and Christian, even when fear feels more convincing than hope?
Triumph of the Heart: Companionship in the Darkest Places
Anthony D'Ambrosio, Casey Schaffer, and Haydée Hernández
Experience teaches us that suffering does not automatically ennoble us, but can just as easily hollow us out. One filmmaker, however, chose to confront his own suffering by turning toward one of the darkest places of the 20th century. Through the art of film, Anthony leads us into the depths of Auschwitz, not to soften its horror but to seek how such life, love, and courage could still be present even there through the companionship of Maximilian Kolbe. Is art a needed form of witness today, capable of carrying what history and argument alone cannot? Is art the language necessary to tell such stories without reducing them? And what if the endurance of the human heart is not naïve, but essential?
A conversation on Maximillian Kolbe, who fostered hope and brotherhood among those condemned to die in an Auschwitz starvation bunker. The discussion will also explore how faith can be expressed through Catholic art and creativity.
“… And the pursuit of happiness.” What Happened to the American Dream?
Professor Harold Siegel, Dr. Wayne Ambler and Joseph Ten Eyck
We were promised freedom, fulfillment, and happiness, but delivered anxiety, burnout, and loneliness. Is the “American Dream” broken? Or have we misunderstood what we were actually longing for all along? Have ambition, success, and self-creation slowly become substitutes for meaning and true fulfillment? And why do so many Americans feel disoriented even when they “win”?
“The Inklings”: How the Friendship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien Changed Their Lives During War?
Joseph Pearce
In a time when friendship is thin, transactional, or virtual, how did the unexpected friendship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien amid world war and cultural collapse give birth to Narnia and The Lord of the Rings? Is imagination just an escape from reality, or its illumination? What can their friendship teach us about one of the last places we can still find identity and hope against “the machine”?
The Power of Music
Cameron Franks
In a world that often feels noisy and fragmented, music is a deep expression of remembering what it means to be human. Featuring musician Cameron Franks, a second-year missionary with Christ in the City.
EXHIBITS
The Power and the Glory: La Cristiada
Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory illustrates the power of God to transform even our vices into moments of grace - for the life of the world. The novel follows a nameless "whisky priest" who is a failure in countless ways but still says Yes to his duty and destiny. The novel is rooted in a real historical moment after the Cristero War of 1926-1929 when nearly all Catholic clergy had been exiled, killed or forcibly laicized. This nameless priest on the run grudgingly and inexplicably ministers to those he encounters, convinced that he has failed both God and man. Yet he comes to realize in "the end there was only one thing that counted—to be a saint."
What is School of Community?
This exhibit is meant to show that School of Community is not a class or club, but a method for learning through an encounter with Christ as a present event that changes life. It communicates this by illustrating how people begin from a shared text, compare it seriously with their own experience, and discover that faith can respond concretely to their needs in work, family, and the wider world. Through panels on charism, method, and witness, the exhibit highlights School of Community as a companionship where careful reading, honest sharing, and a leader’s lived synthesis help each person verify what they hear against what they actually live, so that they leave different than they came, with a renewed desire for mission and responsibility in reality.
The American Dream
What once meant the freedom to participate meaningfully in community, had quietly transformed into an ideal where worth is measured almost exclusively by attainment. What you produce is who you are. Everything else fades into irrelevance. I realized I needed a different dream. I found it--not in something new, but in the original American Dream: one rooted in participation, virtue, work as contribution, and belonging to something larger than myself.
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