DnD with Jesus

Father Andrew Kleine is Parochial Vicar at St. Thomas More Parish, Kansas City, and has served as Chaplain at St. Michael the Archangel High School and Vocation Promoter.

My friends and I play Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) with Jesus. We get together on Monday nights over Discord to play. I serve as the game master, and my friends are the adventuring party seeking to stop an evil vampire lord's nefarious plot. We've been playing DnD since high school, and it's served as a fun medium by which we friends stay in touch on a regular basis.

Before each game session begins, we open the night with prayer. We thank our Lord for the opportunity for leisure and fun. We thank Him for each other and our lasting friendships. We invite Him to join us, so that by His inclusion, our leisure may be made holy. We ask Him to continue to grow the love between us, and our love for Him. We ask Him to be the central part of the night, every night we play.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church’s last section is focused on prayer. It opens by stating thatthe mystery of faith “requires the faithful to believe in it, that they celebrate it, and that they live from it in a vital and personal relationship.” It then clarifies that this vital and personal relationship “is prayer.” (CCC 2258)

This is the heart of our Faith and the daily invitation of our Lord. We aren’t His mindless machines programmed for mission and dispassionate militant order. We’re His children. When the Son instructs us how to pray, He teaches us the Our Father. (Mt 6:5-15) Therefore, every prayer and interaction with our Lord is ALWAYS meant to be rooted in and flowing from our relationship with God as Father. A relationship is simply spending time with another. It is the sharing of my heart with them, as they do with me. Therefore, anything I do where I’m spending time with God and sharing my heart with Him IS prayer.

The beauty of all the Faith’s doctrines, rituals and rote prayers is they help us to better receive and respond to the relational love of God. The most perfect prayer, the Mass, is a wedding banquet, where we exchange our matrimonial gift of self to our Lord, as He pours out Himself as a loving gift to us in the Word and the Eucharist. Just as the rote words “I love you” help us to form and express our charity towards others, so too do the words and actions of the rituals and rites of the Church. But just like “I love you,” if they're done mechanically rather than from the heart, they can become empty and hollow.

Our invitation is to approach our Lord, His Church and our Faith as we would a relationship with one we cherish. Whether it be the ritual prayers or our daily activities, all can be sanctified by His inclusion. We can gather with others, growing in relationship with God together through leisure, work, or hardship. We can talk to God as we would our closest friend, whether about a cross or our hopes for the Chiefs. We can give Him time to talk in turn as we listen. Faith is not an obligation to complete, but personal time to spend with the Lord who loves us.

Our God IS love. We’re not a Yu-gi-oh card that He’s wanting to collect and shelve. We are His beloved children. He wants to be in a perfect loving relationship with us for all eternity.

May we live out our “Amen” to this love by treating our Faith as an intimate relationship with God.

And invite our Lord to play Dungeons and Dragons.