PLAY Pac-Man on google…

It is the 30th anniversary of the famous arcade game PAC-MAN.

check out www.google.com and you will find that you can play PAC-MAN through  Google’s logo. Once you are there, just give it a few moment. You can even play 2 players!

Mark Hart (Executive Vice President of Life Teen) had this to say about Pac-Man:

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” – John 6:51

SITUATION EXPLAINED
Do you remember Pac-Man? I think Pac-Man was a Catholic.

SOLUTION OFFERED
I loved video games growing up so much so that my older brothers used to call me “the vidiot”. Nice, huh? At any rate, my favorite game growing up was not “Pong” or “Galaga” or “Asteroids” or “Space Invaders” or even “Donkey Kong” (remember all of those?) it was “Pac-Man”.

Pac-Man was as close to “stress” as an eight-year old could get. One maze, one (pac) man, three ghosts and all of those little pellets to eat. As the rounds progressed, the evil ghosts would get faster and faster, and it became increasingly difficult to make it through the maze without dying.

That’s where the special, super “energy vitamin” thing became so important.
When Pac-man ate the energy vitamin, he became invincible. The evil ghosts could no longer harm him. Armed with that “vitamin” Pac-man would go right through any evil that got in his path.

I realized recently while reading scripture one morning that not only do I love Pac-man, but that I AM Pac-Man, every time I go to Mass every time I receive the Eucharist.

This world is a maze, filled with work to do, and dangers to avoid. If I have any hope of not only “surviving” the world, but “excelling through it” and “staying alive”, I need Christ’s energy vitamin the true flesh that brings me everlasting LIFE, just as He promises in this verse from St. John’s Gospel, today.

When we don’t acknowledge the evil spirits in the maze of this world around us, the devil has already won. When we don’t actively pursue THE source of life, Christ, that “energy vitamin” that keeps us going, we are cheating ourselves. The grace-filled, Eucharistic “vitamin” of everlasting life is available everyday, if we want it.

Life IS a game, a game where we have only ONE life we need to make it count.

SALVATION GIVEN
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” – John 6:51

To be a leader of His PAC, I need to be a MAN willing to get in the maze, eat the “vitamin” and duke it out with some evil. Game on.

-Mark Hart