Gearing Up

A few pics of our group getting ready for last night's session. Please keep us in your prayers.

Animal or Object

Circumstance had it that I had to pass through a group of high school boys several times on Saturday night.  I actually passed through them a few times because they are teens, and thus good at congregating near doorways and stairs in such an immovable fashion that the only way to get to where one wishes is to go right on through them.

Usually when I find myself passing through a conversation it is either about something ridiculous (and therefore, amusing) or the conversation stops completely and I am forced to awkwardly pass in silence.

Saturday was different.

The boys kept up their lively conversation which centered entirely upon various sexual acts with the opposite gender.

In situations like this one, I wish I had that impeccable gift of quick-  coupled with pastoral concern.  Usually I have one and not the other (or neither, as was the case that night) and I say nothing at all in the moment.

So, I will say it now:

Are we animals who have no constraint over our sexual organs, therefore making all forms of "sexual messing around" an accepted norm (even in conversation at very public events), or, the opposite gender is purely an object for use and selfish gratification. 

Based upon what I heard the other night, it is one option or the other for these youngsters.  Either way, personhood is reduced to nothing.

Let us continue to pray for the conversion of our own hearts in the midst of a society willing to reduce the human person to material as its norm.  And let us pray for an increase in purity and understanding of the body within the Catholic Church.

Senior Testimonies - 5/20/2012

Here is the audio from the End-of-the-Year Party (Annie Mitchell and I had a miscommunication and missed Anna's talk - sorry Anna!):

Check it out!

This is good stuff...

St. Gertrude Goodbye - by Emma

Thinking back, I realized that it has been a year and a half since I proposed to you all at Fall Retreat in 2010.  Back then , my love and gratefulness for you was enough for me to "propose," and my love for you has continued to grow.  But, I'm ready to accept the fact that God's vocation for all of us is probably not to get married.  So out of this sacrificial love I now write to you to say one last thank you and goodbye.

                 

God has made all of you so incredibly beautiful-even the gentlemen-and I'm even more incredibly blessed that He has opened my eyes to see the unique gifts you all have.  There's just something about being here with all of you even if I barely know you or sometimes forget your name or call you Beth when your name is Hannah.  God has really created this community to be light in the darkness especially the darkness of my own life.

               

I don't know, but I think that without this community, I would have been exhausted trying to follow Jesus a long time ago, but it is here that I am best reminded of the beauty and universality of our Church.  It is here with you all that I am reminded of my need for Christ and constant conversion.  It is here that I am reminded of the source of my joy and my heart grows in its desire to do nothing but proclaim this crazy intense Truth to every soul I encounter.  Okay, so I can't say I crazily proclaim the intense Truth of Jesus to every soul I encounter, but I desire to, so pray that I one day can!

                 

Boys, as much as I in all my pride, am uncomfortable to admit this.  You guys are literally awesome, and I even must admit as a girl I've been a bit jealous about the bond you have together.  Truly men after St. Joseph's heart.  Because you rejoice so much in your identity as men of God, you have led us as daughters of the righteous king to understand our beauty, worth and mission as women that has been so distorted in our culture.  I guess I can't speak for all the girls, but I know personally that you Tobias men have helped restore my knowledge of self-worth and gently led me into Mama Mary's heart.  This is a good place to be as God gently leads me to my vocation-whatever it may be-so thank you.

                 

For the girls, I am most grateful for the joy you've all brought me.  Finding true, solid, edifying friendships in high school is difficult, but I think that's because in the confusing time of growing up it is easy to only focus on oneself.  Being here in a place where all you girls rejoice in your compassionate and nurturing femininity and care totally and selflessly about others, friendship has been easy to find, and now very hard to move from.  I don't know if I could tell you how much you all have inspired me.  Your care for me, all the crazy things we have done together, accepting my vegetarian Westside differences, and witnessing to me about how Jesus is kindling the fire of His love in your hearts are all things that I will keep in my heart as I wait to meet the beautiful women Jesus puts in my life next.  Know I am still here for you too so all that little pointless pop song goes-just call me maybe!?

               

I think I will end with something I learned at the Matt Maher concert:  Jesus needs me.  I think this alone is why I'm semi-ok with leaving you all and moving on.  He needs me for the world, for the darkness. He may have created me just to bring one soul to heaven, and if I don't follow I may miss out on my crazy beautiful call to take part in the salvation of the world.  What is even more beautiful is that you all have this call to, and it has been you all, and core team, and Brad and Fr. Albert who have inspired me to know, love and serve for this call.   You all are the ones who help remind me of my vocation to greatness.  You all are the ones that have brought the words of Pope Benedict to life showing me that my call to greatness is not an ethical choice or a lofty idea but an encounter with the person Jesus Christ.  Our call to greatness is a call to a person-Jesus-and I thank Him for being able to learn more about Him through you.  Before I go I would like to pass on a family heirloom to Maggie Drew.  This antique has been a prized possession of mine after winning opposite war the fall retreat I got engaged.  Do not worry, for unlike Greco, he promotes the complementarity of men and women, but must be protected from little children desperate for sugar.  Treasure him and pass him on to a well deserving freshman like yourself when you're a senior.

Know I am praying for all of you that you may receive your Creator with a wide open heart and with His help fight the lies of the flesh, the world and the evil one that tell you that you are unfixable and unworthy.  I challenge you to continue to pursue Jesus who is the greatness you are being called to.   And with one last week of Easter-Alleluia!  

Pope Benedict on Prayer

Here is an excerpt from a recent audience...good stuff:

A first element that the Apostle wants us to understand is that prayer should not be seen merely as a good work that we carry out for God, an action of ours. First and foremost, it is a gift, the fruit of the living, vivifying presence of the Father of Jesus Christ in us. In the Letter to the Romans he writes: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (8:26). And we know how true the Apostle’s saying is: “We do not know how to pray as we ought”. We want to pray, but God is far off, we do not have the words, the language, to speak with God, nor even the thought to do so. We can only open ourselves, place our time at God’s disposition, wait for Him to help us to enter into true dialogue. The Apostle says: this very lack of words, this absence of words, yet this desire to enter into contact with God, is prayer that the Holy Spirit not only understands, but brings and interprets before God. This very weakness of ours becomes -- through the Holy Spirit -- true prayer, true contact with God. The Holy Spirit is, as it were, the interpreter who makes us, and God, understand what it is we wish to say.

In prayer we experience -- more than in other aspects of life -- our weakness, our poverty, our being creatures, for we are placed before the omnipotence and transcendence of God. And the more we advance in listening and in dialogue with God, so that prayer becomes the daily breath of our souls, the more we also perceive the measure of our limitations, not only in the face of the concrete situations of everyday life, but also in our relationship with the Lord. The need to trust, to rely increasingly upon Him then grows in us; we come to understand that “we do not know … how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8:26).

And it is the Holy Spirit who helps our inability, who enlightens our minds and warms our hearts, guiding us as we turn to God. For St. Paul, prayer is above all the work of the Holy Spirit in our humanity, to take our weakness and to transform us from men bound to material realities into spiritual men. In the First Letter to the Corinthians he says: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths in spiritual terms” (2:12-13). By means of His abiding in our fragile humanity, the Holy Spirit changes us; He intercedes for us; He leads us toward the heights of God (cf. Romans 8:26).

Comments from the Archbishop

Archbishop Schnurr’s Seven Observations Regarding Ministry to Youth

Notes by Brad Bursa

Presentation given on May 2, 2012

The following notes are both observations and directives from Archbishop Schnurr regarding Youth Ministry in the Archdiocese.  Here, we are speaking not only about Youth Ministry (as we may commonly think of it), but all religious education that happens on our campus for adolescents and young adults.

1.  Aim of Youth Ministry – turns us back to the Baltimore Catechism.  The first question in the Catechism is “who created you?”  The second is “Who is God?”  And, the third – “Why did God make us?”  Archbishop sees this third question is the launching point for Youth Ministry.  God creates for a purpose, which leads into vocation (in the broad sense – call to holiness – priesthood, consecrated life, marriage, chaste single life).  An answer to the question “why did God make me?” provides for a fullness of life.  (We were created with a purpose – a heavenly purpose – beatitude, eternal happiness). 

2.  We cannot underestimate our young people.  Need to challenge them, and encourage them to be not afraid.  Young people want to hear everything the Church has to say, and they will make the decision themselves.  Young people don't want to hear that they are not ready for certain content.  

3.  Youth Ministry cannot be endless fun and games, and Religious Education cannot be endless classroom teaching.

4.  It is important on occasion to have bigger events, because young people need to know and appreciate that they are part of something larger than the parish/school.

5.  Need to balance big events with a need for silence - retreat experience.  Archbishop recommends that the youth spend quiet time in prayer, especially before the Blessed Sacrament.  They need to first meet Jesus – encounter the Person of Christ.  Then, they will be more inclined to want to know/learn about Who they just met.

6. Need to involve young people in the life of the parish.  The youth have something to offer the Church right now.  

7.      Ministry needs to involve the youth themselves - need opportunities for peer ministry.  

Of few of my own comments:

• An increase in parental support – Parents are the primary educators of their children – especially with regard to the faith.  Not only would I hope that parents encourage their children to attend our programs at the parish, but that parents continue to learn more about the faith, and draw deeper into conversion, so as to teach their children about Jesus and the Church.  Our programs exist to supplement what is happening in the home.
• Urgency.  As we have become increasingly aware of - especially since January - the faith is not something that we can simply take for granted.  We are challenged to freely assent to Christ and to his teaching, and to work for virtue and conversion in our lives.  This necessarily means that our priorities are straight, and constantly re-straightened.  The busyness of families nowadays often pushes faith formation, prayer, family meals, etc. to the back burner.  The Church needs strong, faith-filled families, because the world needs the witness of these families.  The issues the Church is facing cannot be played out only on the judicial level – these issues demand that each Catholic re-examines his/her own life and accounts for his/her faith – which means saying “yes” to Christ once again, and re-establishing priorities accordingly. 

The Pope's Birthday Homily

Pope's Homily at Birthday Mass

I know "his light is stronger than any darkness; that God's goodness is stronger than any evil"

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 17, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the homily Benedict XVI gave Monday at a Mass marking his 85th birthday and baptism anniversary.
* * *
Lord Cardinals,
Dear Brothers in the Episcopate and the Priesthood,
Dear Brothers and Sisters!

On the day of my birthday and Baptism, April 16, the liturgy of the Church points to threewhich indicate to me where the road leads and which help me to find it. In the first place, there is the memoria of Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the visionary of Lourdes; then, there is one of the more particular Saints of the history of the Church, Benedict Joseph Labre; and then, above all, is the fact that this day is always immersed in the Paschal Mystery, in the Mystery of the Cross and of the Resurrection, and in the year of my birth it was expressed in a particular way: it was Holy Saturday, the day of God’s silence, of the apparent absence, of the death of God, but also the day in which the Resurrection was proclaimed.

Bernadette Soubirous. The simple girl of the South, of the Pyrenees – we all know and love her. Bernadette in the France of the Enlightenment of the 19th century, in a poverty difficult to imagine. The prison, which was abandoned because it was too unhealthy, became, in the end – after some hesitations -- the family’s dwelling, in which she spent her childhood. There was no possibility of school formation, only some catechism in preparation for her First Communion. But precisely this simple girl, who was pure and genuine in heart, who had a heart that sees, was able to see the Lord’s Mother and, in her, the reflection of the beauty and goodness of God. Mary was able to show herself to this girl and through her to speak to the century and beyond the century itself. Bernadette was able to see with a pure and genuine heart. And Mary indicated to her the source: she was able to discover the source, the living water, pure and uncontaminated; water that is life, water that gives purity and health. And through the centuries, now, this living water is a sign on Mary’s part, a sign that indicates where the sources of life are, where we can be purified, where we find what is uncontaminated. In this our time, in which we see the world in so much anxiety, and in which the need of water bursts out, of pure water, this sign is that much greater. From Mary, from the Mother of the Lord, from a pure heart, pure, genuine water also comes which gives life, the water than in this century – and in the centuries that might come – purifies and heals us.

I think we can consider this water as an image of the truth that comes to us in faith: truth not simulated but uncontaminated. In fact, to be able to live, to be able to become pure, we are in need of having in us the nostalgia of the pure life, of the truth that is not distorted, of what is not contaminated by corruption, of being men without stain. See how this day, this little Saint has always been for me a sign that has indicated where the living water comes from of which we are in need – the water that purifies us and gives us life -- and a sign of how we should be: with all the knowledge and all the capacities, which also are necessary, we must not lose the simple heart, the simple look of the heart, capable of seeing the essential, and we must always pray to the Lord that we preserve in us the humility that enables the heart to be clear-sighted – to see what is simple and essential, the beauty and goodness of God – and thus find the source from which the water comes that gives life and purifies.

Then there is Benedict Joseph Labre, the pious mendicant pilgrim of the 18th century who, after several useless attempts, finally found his vocation of pilgrim as mendicant – without anything, without any support and not keeping for himself anything of what he received except that of which he had absolute need – pilgrimaging through the whole of Europe, to all the shrines of Europe, from Spain to Poland and from Germany to Sicily: a truly European Saint! We can also say: a somewhat particular Saint who, begging, wandered from one shrine to another and wished to do nothing other than pray and with this give witness to what matters in this life: God. He certainly does not represent an example to emulate, but he is a, a finger pointing to the essential. He shows us that God alone suffices, that beyond all thatin this world, beyond our needs and capacities, what counts, the essential is to know God. He alone suffices. And this “God alone” he indicates to us in a dramatic way. And at the same time, this really European life that, from shrine to shrine embraces the whole European continent makes evident that he who opens himself to God is no stranger to the world or to men, rather he finds brothers, because on God’s side, borders fall, God alone can eliminate borders because thanks to Him we are all only brothers, we are part of one another; it renders present that the oneness of God means, at the same time, the brotherhood and reconciliation of men, the demolishing of borders that unites and heals us. Thus he is a Saint of peace precisely in as much as he is a Saint without any exigency, who is poor of everything yet blessed with everything.

And then, finally, the Paschal Mystery. On the same day I was born, thanks to the care of my parents, I was also reborn by water and the Spirit, as we just heard in the Gospel. In the first place, there is the gift of life that my parents gave me in very difficult times, and for which I owe them my gratitude. However, it is not taken for granted that man’s life is in itself a gift. Can it really be a beautiful gift? Do we know what is incumbent on man in the dark times he is facing – also in those more luminous ones that might come? Can we foresee to what anxieties, to what terrible events he might be exposed? Is it right to give life thus, simply? Is it responsible or is it too uncertain? It is a problematic gift if it remains independent. Biological life of itself is a gift, and yet it is surrounded by a great question. It becomes a real gift only if, together with it, one can make a promise that is stronger than any misfortune that can threaten one, if it is immersed in a force that guarantees that it is good to be man, that for this person it is a good no matter what the future might bring. Thus, associated to birth is rebirth, the certainty that, in truth, it is good for us to be, because the promise is stronger than the threats.

This is the meaning of rebirth from water and the Spirit: to be immersed in the promise that God alone can make: it is good that you are, and it is true regardless of what happens. From this certainty,  I have been able to live, reborn by water and the Spirit. Nicodemus asks the Lord: “Can an old man be born again?” Now, rebirth is given to us in Baptism, but we must grow continually in it, we must always let ourselves me immersed in God’s promise, to be truly reborn in the great, new family of God which is stronger than all the weaknesses and all the negative powers that threaten us. This is why this is a day of great thanksgiving.
The day on which I was baptized, as I said, was Holy Saturday. Then it was usual to anticipate the Easter Vigil in the morning, which would have been followed again by the darkness of Holy Saturday, without the Alleluia. It seems to me that this singular paradox, this singular anticipation of the light in a dark day, could be almost an image of the history of our days. On one hand, there is still the silence of God and his absence, but in the Resurrection of Christ there is already the anticipation of the “yes” of God, and on the basis of this anticipation we live and, through the silence of God, we hear his speaking, and through the darkness of his absence we perceive his light. The anticipation of the Resurrection in the midst of a history that evolves is the force that indicates the road to us and that helps us to go forward.

We thank the good God for this light he has given us and we pray that it will always be with us. And on this day I have reason to thank Him and all those who have always made me perceive the Lord’s presence, who have accompanied me so that I would not lose the light.

I am facing the last lap of the course of my life and I do not know what awaits me. I know, however, that the light  of God is, that He is risen, that his light is stronger than any darkness; that God’s goodness is stronger than any evil of this world. And this helps me to go forward with confidence. This helps us to go forward and in his hour I give my heartfelt thanks to all those who continually make me perceive the “yes” of God through their faith.

Finally, Cardinal Dean, my cordial gratitude for your words of fraternal friendship, for all the collaboration in all these years. And a big thank you to all the collaborators of the 30 years in which I have been in Rome, who helped me bear the weight of my responsibility. Thank you. Amen.