National Catholic Collegiate Conference

to be held November 17 - 19th 2011

Indianapolis, IN

(Simultaneously with the National Catholic Youth Conference)

For More Information check out the website:

http://www.ntlccc.org/

Find them on Face Book!

A Prayer for the Week..

Image by Michael 1952 via FlickrLike the five thousand people you fed,
we run to your holy mountain,
relishing your rich gifts
filling up our
starving
souls,

You, the infinitely-more-than-enough,
just like the left-over baskets.

You tell us,
feed the hungry, end war, stop injustice,
accept ourselves
the way we
are.

With your food
we can.

Borrowed from The Center for Liturgy at http://liturgy.slu.edu/18OrdA073111/main.html

Reaching out to God's Abundant Gifts

Image via Wikipedia

Reaching out seems to be the theme of my days lately. Being that I am pretty independent (probably to a fault) God is helping me to realize that I really do need others, not only in my home life or my work life but also in my spiritual life. I long for moments when I am able to share, both talking about, and listening to others talk about, God's great work in their life. Lately I have been meeting so many people who have shared their stories with me and I am so grateful. Every day, I hear God saying to me, "Reach Out".

In the readings for this week, we continue to hear about Jesus' public ministry, and how this crowd always seems to be around Him. What struck me this week, is the fact that the disciples were concerned about the crowd being hungry, and ask Jesus to dismiss them so they can go themselves something to eat. Jesus very nicely tells the disciples that they don't need to send them to get food for themselves, that they are, in a sense, responsible to feed them. Something all of us could learn. For me, it reminded me that in ministry, we feed people, and sometimes, maybe even most times, we are not convinced that we have enough to feed all the people that are around us. I often get anxious, and think, "What do I have to say?" or "How can I help people see God in their everyday life, enough for them to be inspired to dedicate themselves in the continual building of the kingdom?" Most days, I just don't feel like I am enough. But then I remember that God did make me enough, if I only believe in his greatness, and that God wouldn't ask me to do something that He didn't prepare me for or in which He is not ready to give me everything I need to be successful. (Last weeks readings tell us that.) The question is, do I have enough faith to believe it? Do I have enough faith to believe in the words I hear in Romans this week:

What will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?
No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly
through him who loved us.

Not even my own fears can separate me from the love of my Father in Heaven! God waits for me patiently, gently loving me until I can get over myself and get going on the work at hand. Always loving me perfectly. Today I heard a quote from Meister Eckhart that went something like...”I pray to God to get rid of "God". That is … to get rid of the God that lives in my head - that is comprehensible by my human brain which is so limited (and at times keeps me from the real God that is incomprehensible)doesn't really allow me to experience the immense Love that God is pouring to me. It is like the loaves and the fishes in the gospel this week, we think that there is not enough, I am not enough, the Church is not enough, the love I have in my life is not enough, and somehow, when our lives can be offered to our Father, we find that we have had more than we needed to be satisfied. Faith that all things work for good for those who love God.

I am thirsty, and each day is a step closer to the well and the life abundant that God has in store for me.

Take the Treasure or Buy the Field?

Image by quadrapop via Flickr

In the reading for the upcoming Sunday, Jesus tells more parables.  Jesus tells the disciples that:  “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure that is buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” I think that it is really important for the young church to hear these words from Jesus. I think that we walk around this world thinking that things are going to come easy. Or we at least hope that they will. But Jesus is very clear, that the person who found the buried treasure didn’t just take it on the sly and run with it. He or she actually reburied it and went and sold all that he/she had and bought the field. This really makes the buried treasure rightfully his or hers.  Finding God or a Church that becomes a sacrament of Jesus for us, is really something that we have to sell all we have for. We have to give up all the things that we thought our life would hold, and have trust in this faith of ours that God will break us open and make us new, and better than we ever thought we could be and our life could be and in turn a better world than we could ever imagine. Letting go of all our planning and scheming for our own life is scary, and it is so anti-cultural since our world tells us that we are the designers of our own destiny. Without that ultimate letting go we cannot become the person that God sees in us. God’s mind is so much wider and deeper than we can ever imagine.

I think that the question for us to ask ourselves, as the young people of our church is– what are we prepared to pay for that field that holds the kingdom of God? What are we willing to give our church so that it can be a reflection of God’s kingdom here on earth? As I said in other blog entries, we are not meant to do this religion thing alone, we are meant to reach out to those around us, and to give who we are so that in turn we can be the best of who we are.

Are we trying to sneak off with the buried treasure without buying the field?

Watch the movie, Of God and Men, totally worth living through the subtitles ... great example of men who bought the field!

Good and Bad all around us!

We have to remember that we were born into this world, into the world of today, with both the good and the bad. Recently I was watching a show on the History channel and they were talking about the Pony Express, and how a letter would take 2 weeks to move from St. Louis to California. Can you imagine all the changes that would have taken place from the time your letter left your hands to the hands of the person that you wanted to inform? Today, it takes just a minute to send off an email to tell our friends what is happening in our lives. Our advancements do have some good points. But we all know that some of the advancements we have made in the world also cause us to be further from what God intended us to be. How do we coincide with all this world has to offer and still live out Jesus message?

In our parishes, we are all intertwined, the good and the bad. I think that sometimes people say that they do not attend mass or participate in church life because they don’t want to BE a hypocrite or they do not want to join the hypocrites. People quit the church because it is not perfect. Remember in the parable this week, the enemy came and scattered the weed seeds while no one was looking, and until it was time to harvest and finally separate, they would grow and be close to the wheat. Sound like your parish life?

We are all called to remember who we were born to be, and one of the aspects in which we were born of this world is of community. After all, the word “catholic” means universal. Can you imagine being a part of a parish, community, town, family in which its members ask themselves what is the good for all of those here, even if that means life is a bit harder for me? It sounds so simple, but it is seldom lived out.  

Let us ask ourselves this week, what can I give to my parish? What is it that they need from me, in order to bring the face of the living God into our community? And then, follow through on it. Consistently. We all have the power to make or break our parishes. Be the first one to live like this – I promise it will be contagious.

The Wheat and the Weeds or Life is Like Dodge Ball

 

This week we continue to hear Jesus speak in parables. More seeds! In the reading for this upcoming Sunday, it really makes me think of how close evil and sinfulness is. All around us we are intertwined with sin, so much so that it is difficult to distinguish between that which is good and that which is bad. A good way to bring this into reality for us is “reality TV” – have you found yourself watching the Cassie Anthony trial, at first you watch because you are curious, and then you begin to find yourself a part of something that just doesn’t seem right. Should these people, those on trial or in reality shows, ever get the recognition for the actions that they engage in? And yet we so easily can become part of the problem.

When you begin to the think of the Devil, or Satan or Evil, whatever you want to refer to him by, life becomes a Dodge Ball game, and you can’t really, as in a dodge ball game, take your eyes off of the person who is trying to wack you with the ball. I remember this game in grade school, and when you had the ball, the first thing you did was look for the person who really wasn’t paying too much attention to the game. And then you thought, ahhh easy out.  

I think that Jesus really puts the question to us in this parable, of how are you going to live your life despite all the obstacles. Notice in the reading that the master doesn’t tell them to take the weeds out right away, but tells them to separate them at the time of the harvest. I don’t know much about growing wheat, but doesn’t it seem that it would be easier to separate them before they grow and wouldn’t it be better for the wheat, so that the good soil wouldn’t be used up by the weeds too. Couldn’t the master just make it easier on the wheat?! Do you ever find yourself asking this about life; couldn’t God make it a bit easier for us Christians? We want to do the right thing, live in the right way, take care of God’s creation, and then we have decisions to make . . . like Wal-Mart! Wal-Mart makes it so easy, don’t they, offering everything from lettuce to engine oil all in one convenient location at the cheapest prices and yet we have all read how Wal-Mart can offer items at these prices. And for some, Wal-Mart is now the only game in town because smaller local stores could not compete. 
 

Everywhere we look we are intertwined with sin. One almost wants to give up and go their own way, to a comfortable life. We sometimes don’t want to hear of all the bad stuff we are intertwined with, when really we are trying to do the best we can. But then we have to ask ourselves, are we doing the best we can? I think that the most important thing to realize is that it is totally impossible to do this alone. We so need a community to remind us and to help us and to encourage us to do the right thing. 

Jesus goes on to say that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, the smallest seed there is! But on this one small seed, a strong large tree grows and there birds find rest and safety. Are not our parishes like that here in the North Country. Havens for us to find rest and support, and it all starts with those who have faith like a mustard seed, just knowing that God will change us, and maybe it is not even about “changing” us. The seeds that were wheat, were wheat seeds, and they really never could be anything else, of course they could be choked by the weeds, but they wouldn’t become weeds, they would just become dead wheat. We have to remember, that when we were born we were exactly what God wanted us to be, and perhaps this parable reminds us of that, that we were born a child of God and to our death we must remain that . . . until we see our Father once again.