For many of us, summer is the high point of the year. Our youth, young (and not so young) adults, and clergy, are (and have been, for the last several weeks) attending our Archdiocesan summer camps around the country, and as far away as Greece. It’s a yearly program that lifts the spirits of countless people across the Church. Our camps offer something increasingly rare: an experience with God, and with the Church, for all in attendance.

We, as a team of summer camp leaders and workers, put a lot of effort into making this happen. A lot of preparing, planning, and praying culminate in a week of love, peace, and joy. Each year, our camps strive to take their programs to a new level, to introduce more kids to Christ than last year and to allow them to hear His word, or to hear His word more clearly. It’s a difficult process, and at times it may seem daunting, but by the end of the summer it seems that all of the hard work that goes into summer camps is worth it.

But why? What makes summer camp so special? As Christians, the answer shouldn’t surprise us: it’s Christ Himself. Our summer camps are places where the Lord is indeed “present in all places and filling all things.” He is present in obvious ways, during services and prayers. Yet He’s also present in mundane activities, like sports and swimming. Because, in truth, there is no dividing line between “sacred” and “secular.” There are no places where God is not. Our summer camps, in other words, are fantastic embodiments of what life in the Church is supposed to be: full, to the point of overflowing, of the loving presence of God.

And then, as quickly as summer camps begin, they end. It is an abrupt ending, there’s no denying that. Yet our job, as Christians and Church workers, is to assure that these experiences last beyond the few weeks of summer camp. Those few weeks can’t be the only time our youth and young adults experience real ministry. We must take those lessons into our homes and parishes. Camp is not a retreat from the real world; it is a glimpse of the real world, as God created it to be. It is a glimpse into the Kingdom, the powerful manifestation of God in our midst. God does not simply belong in a box to be opened only on Sunday mornings. He doesn’t simply dwell in limited sacred spaced, to be kept separate from our “real” lives. We are called to cultivate a real, lived experience of Christ in the lives of our young people, at all times and in all places. And in our own lives as well. Because the Kingdom of Heaven really is at hand.