I once taught a history course in my former school entitled Traveling the World with the Apostles, in which we learned about the various and diverse cultures of the world through the perspective of the first Christian apostle to those cultures. While a lot has changed at the school since I taught there almost a decade ago, there is still a strong sense in the curriculum of the universality of the Christian faith and how Christ calls the whole world to new life in Him. In this season of the resurrection, the Church celebrates this universality by chanting the paschal (Easter) hymn in as many different languages as our local choirs can muster. Here is just a sample of that diversity:

Today St. Herman of Alaska Christian School hosted another of its multicultural celebrations, The World’s Fair, in which students each adopted a country for a semester and learned all that they could about their country’s culture, government, natural resources, customs, stories, etc. Then at the fair, they presented to a group of their parents and peers the sights, sounds, and even tastes of their adopted land.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

What resulted was simply a marvelous display of not only the world’s diversity but the capacity among these young students to fall in love with a country and culture so different from their own. I can only conclude that such a love comes from the Savior’s own love for the world for whom he created all things, suffered, died, and rose from the dead.