f Spring - Chaminade High School

Ticket out of Class or Invitation to Salvation?
Prayer Service Tackles Religious Apathy
To many a Chaminade student, a
prayer service is less a vehicle of
spiritual renewal than it is a free
ticket out of class. “Oh, good, I’ll miss Latin
class with Fr. Garrett,” confided Bryan
Mosher ’08 to his classmates. “That class is
so boring it could put an insomniac
to sleep!”
Bryan and his friends were
referring to schedule adjustments
routinely made to accommodate
each of three
prayer services held throughout
the school year. When
students attend a prayer service,
they do so during one of
their regularly scheduled
classes; so, in effect, they miss
that class for one day.
Actually, the conversation
between Bryan and his friends
was not only about this year’s
prayer service, staged during
three separate class periods on
Thursday and Friday, May 12
and 13; it was actually part of
this year’s Easter Prayer Service.
By means of songs, skits,
and film footage, the Easter
Prayer Service contrasted religious fervor
with spiritual indifference. As prayer service
actor Sean McGonigle ’07 later explained,
“We tried to tackle head-on the unfortunate
reality that many of us are either skeptical
about religion or fairly apathetic towards it.”
From the start, those who scripted and performed
this prayer service wanted to make
sure that not a single second of the approximately
twenty-five minute program would
leave audiences cold. For example, musicians
Sean Paulsen ’06, John Abrusci ’06, and Keith
Walpole ’07 began the prayer service by bang-
8
by Ramil Ibrahim ‘06
THEATRICS
ing out some tunes from the popular, hardrocking
Red Hot Chili Peppers as students
filed into the auditorium. Once the students
had been seated, juniors Ramil Ibrahim and
Rory Tolan switched musical gears completely,
playing Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”
on flute and piano, respectively.
After the musicians had finished, the
curtain opened to reveal a scene full of
lockers – a typical Chaminade hallway.
Getting ready for a day of school, actors
Bryan Mosher, Sean McGonigle, and Ryan
O’Brien ’07 relate their skepticism about
the prayer service they would be attending
later that day. However, their dialogue
is interrupted by a blind beggar, who turns
out to be none other than Bartimaeus (Tom
Carman ’06), whose sight Jesus restored.
The conversation among the three
Chaminade students is interrupted a sec-
Flyers Give Bizet an “A”
Music Club Travels to Manhattan to See Bizet’s Carmen
by Robert Pergament ‘06
In her freshman music classes,
Mrs. Sally Zehnter teaches
Georges Bizet’s Carmen by
sketching stick figures of the various characters
on the chalkboard to lead the students
through the opera’s many scenes and
plot twists. On Sunday, April 17, members
of the Music Club traveled to the Amato
Opera House on 319 Bowery in New York
City, as junior Rory Tolan quipped, “to see
those stick figures come to life.”
Some twenty students gathered at the
Darby Auditorium steps at noon, walked to
(l.-r.) Bryan Mosher ‘08, Ryan O’Brien ‘07, and Sean
McGonigle ‘07 reenact typical student reponses to the
school’s three yearly prayer services.
the Mineola train station, and rode the railroad
into Penn Station. From there, they took the subway
to the Bowery, where the theater is located.
“We felt the theater’s intimate nature as soon as
we walked in,” recalled Joe Ross ’08. “The stage
was only about one fourth the size of the one in
Darby Auditorium, and there were only around
one-hundred seats in the entire place.”
The stage itself may have been small, but the
performance was “tremendous,” said Joe
Caciola ’06. According to senior Chris
Calderone, “The acting was fantastic, and we
were able to understand what was going on,
even though the entire opera was in French.”
ond time by a Samaritan leper (Mike
Costagliola ’06) who is healed both physically
and spiritually by the Lord Jesus
Christ. Both Biblical figures provide striking
examples of men whose lives have
been touched by Jesus, who are clearly
passionate about their faith because they
have been healed by the
Lord. Their fervor contrasts
sharply with the apathy and
indifference of the three
Chaminade students gathered
around their lockers.
A third interruption comes
in the form of a brief film,
chronicling the story of two
brothers whose lives are
changed after they view Mel
Gibson’s The Passion of the
Christ. Moved to tears by
the suffering of Jesus, these
two brothers decide to forgive
and ask forgiveness of
someone whom they had
once both hated with every
fiber of their being. Once
again, the prayer service emphasized,
as CHS chaplain
and prayer-service organizer
Fr. Garrett Long explained,
that “real religious experiences can never
leave us cold; they affect us profoundly
and change our lives.”
With a skit that drew its inspiration from
the daily routine of students’ lives, this
year’s Easter Prayer Service tried to convey
that true religious experience is anything
but routine. “Our faith,” said Fr.
Garrett, “centers around the death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. This was and is
an earth-shattering experience. From us,
it merits nothing less than conversion, conviction,
and passion.”
During the three intermissions of the
four-act show, students had an opportunity
to buy raffle tickets for a chance to
win an Amato OperaT-shirt. Sophomore
Vinny Stracquadanio was one of only
two lucky winners. His shirt displayed
the motto of the Amato Opera House:
“Small, but oh so grand.”
“That motto certainly summed up our experience
at the Amato Opera House,” commented
Music Club moderator Mrs. Zehnter.
“At that small theater, we had nothing short
of a grand time. I only wish my stick figures
could put on such a performance.”
Tarmac • July 2005