List of Students Attending Kairos 24
The Kairos Retreat
What does Kairos mean?
The ancient Greek language has two words for time: kairos and chronos. Chronos refers to chronological time – minutes, hours, days, years. The word kairos, however, refers to the “right or opportune moment” and in the New Testament it is used to mean “the appointed time in the purpose of God;” a time when God acts. Therefore, kairos is literally “God’s time”. It is a period of time when God is present among us, when He can speak to us through the words of others and when our thoughts are focused on God and upon our relationship with Him.
History of the Kairos Retreat
In the late 1940s, a retreat program called Cursillo was developed by a priest in Spain. The program, which is a three day retreat based around fifteen talks, meditations and the celebration of the sacraments, was instantly popular and came to the United States a few years later, when the first Cursillo was held in Texas. As Cursillo spread throughout the U.S., people began to wish that there was a version of the retreat that would be appropriate for teens and young adults, so in 1965 Fr. Doug Brown of the Brooklyn Diocese developed the “Christian Awakening” retreat. This retreat was immediately succesful, spreading throughout the country to high schools in Connecticut, California, Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Texas, Virginia, Kentucky and Washington, D.C. within three years.
“Christian Awakening” first came to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in 1970 when a team from Xavier High School in Cincinnati went to Brooklyn to attend a retreat there. Within five years, nearly all the Catholic high schools and parishes in the Archdiocese were holding “Christian Awakening” retreats. A few years later the Christian Awakening Retreat was developed further and became "Kairos". This retreat was developed by the Jesuits and incorporated strong elements of St. Ignatius Loyola's spirituality as found in his book The Spiritual Exercises. Bishop Fenwick in Middletown was one of the first local schools to incorporate the Kairos retreat into its retreat program, beginning in the early 1980s.
Kairos at Catholic Central
In the Fall of 1995, two Catholic Central teachers and the principal attended a Kairos retreat with Middletown Fenwick High School. They were greatly impressed by what they saw, and so that Spring two more teachers and twelve members of the class of 1997 attended a retreat. In the Fall of 1996, CCHS students attended their first Kairos Retreat. Since then, Kairos has become an integral part of the Senior Year for most students. Students almost unanimously say that their Kairos retreat brought them closer to their classmates, to the Adult Team members and to God.
Students attending Kairos 24 (November 18 - 20, 2008):
Emily Bonn
Jessica Cooper
Stephanie D’Arrigo
David Franzen
Lauren Furman
Laura Gannon
Rachelle King
Michael Koehler
Denise Kolassa
Tori Krogg
Tyler Lacy
Christi Maharani
Theo Monnin
Allison Murphy
Casey O’Brien
Chloe Palmer
Anna Jean Petroff
C. J. Rhodes
Liz Samuelson
Phil Shouvlin
Paige Smith
Maggie Strozdas
Danielle Wilber
Michael Yontz