Yesterday, we held Catholic Punk Revival 2.0 at the Mary, Help of Christians festival. Our band, as well as Paperjam from Cincinnati, played a bunch of punk and emo music as people hung out and did normal parish festival stuff. It was an awesome time. For us, it was our first show since last summer's parish festivals. It feels amazing to play music live again. Recording some simple demos was fun, and a good project, but it doesn't feel like that connects to the real world. That music just goes off into the digital aether, and a couple comments here and there are all that comes back. Playing in front of a live audience is real music, and it's amazing.

I named this event the “Catholic Punk Revival” when we did it the first time last year, without really thinking about the Eucharistic Revival which the bishops in the United States are running. However, it ended up that the National Eucharistic Congress as the pinnacle of that Eucharistic Revival, with 50,000 people worshiping Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in Indianapolis, was the same day as our little Catholic Punk Revival with 50 people jamming out at a parish festival. Obviously unplanned on my part, but God does nothing on accident.

I used the word “Revival” as a reference to a Good Charlotte album, “Good Morning, Revival”. I couldn't tell you why they named their album that, but to me, I think there's a real connection between religious revivals in American history, with preachers in tents and thousands being baptized, and punk rock music. That probably sounds ridiculous, and it is, but I think it makes sense.

The desire for revival comes from the sense that our life is functionally dead, and needs to be brought back to life. This is a powerful theme through the New Testament - that we were dead in sin, and needed the Resurrection of Jesus Christ to bring us new life - ultimately, eternal life. Christians are “born again” in baptism to a new kind of life, set free from the death of this world, to live forever with Jesus. There's an emotional component to this at a Revival event - the fiery preaching swells up the listener's heart with desire for new life in Christ, leading one to dramatically reject sin and promise to live different. This goes deeper than emotions when, after the event is done and the tents are pulled down, the believer actually lives differently. New life in Jesus begins when the graces of the Sacraments work in us to change our lives. When we forgive as we've been forgiven, when we love as Christ first loved us, when we lay down our lives in love for others - then we know we've been brought back to life. Then the love of Jesus Christ brings new life to every action. The smallest favor done for a friend is an expression of new life and the love of God flowing through our hearts. What felt empty now feels full of the Spirit.

I think punk rock and emo as genres also start with a dissatisfaction with life in the world. I've always said that Ohio is emo's natural habitat, because the stultifying environment of suburbia drains life from the soul. We have all the material comfort we could want, but only on loan from a bank, and we're still miserable. It leaves us with shallow relationships and shallow hearts that can only take shallow pleasure in the passing delights of consumer culture. It's empty, and dead, and in need of revival. Emo music cries from the heart with a scream, because I don't want to be living death anymore. You hear this in so many choruses: “Wake me up inside." “Tell me I'm alive, and bring me back to life.” “I'm tired of being tired and alone.”

So I think it's totally appropriate that we had a punk revival the same time as a Eucharistic one. Ultimately, the pain and hunger expressed in punk and emo are exactly the wounds and longing which Jesus Christ wants to heal and nourish in the Blessed Sacrament. I don't know if every punk band realizes this, of course, but we try to. We're here, in this band, precisely because the real depths of human woundedness are exactly what Jesus wants to heal and revive. Catholicism is the only religion metal enough to actually grapple with those wounds, with that death, and to trust Jesus to bring us back to life through it all.

So we're back to life as a band. We've got one more show planned at the St. Brigid Festival on Friday, August 9th, at 7pm. If you're in the area, come listen, and come back to life.