Fr. Dan’s Top Ten Dating Tips

Here’s a really useful tip sheet for dating that one of my friend’s priests wrote up. I’ve had it for years but I only realized that it’s so good that I should share it with everyone else!

Spiritual Impact Bootcamp

This past weekend Perla, Mike, and I took 9 students with us all the way up to Vermont to attend a FOCUS Spiritual Impact Bootcamp. It was so amazing to see how much God worked in such a short time. All 9 of those students and even us missionaries were so blessed to experience God’s love and power in new ways. Of course the most amazing parts were seeing students who really had no idea what they were getting into have their lives turned upside down when they encountered God’s mercy and healing through prayer. It seemed like everyone was crying.. even the guys! There’s just so much brokenness that we all try to hide away, but it nags at us and keeps us from living our lives to the fullest. Jesus coming and entering the picture to heal our physical, emotional, and spiritual wounds is a game changer, it frees us to live again! There were a lot of tears, but just as important were all of the laughs and smiles and new friendships!

Always remember that God loves you and is looking to heal us. Look for opportunities to pray with others, too, asking God to provide!

“Next time you go on a retreat I’m going to sign up, don’t even tell me what it’s about.” – Brenden

“Had one of THE BEST weekends EVER!!!!! I loved it!!! and I’m really happy with the outcome!!! Thank you to all the ones that were at Vermont and experience the Holy Spirit!!!” – Lenny

“Feeling so blessed and loved after personally experiencing the Presence of the Holy Spirit within me on such an amazing weekend. I pray I never forget all God has accomplished for me in a mere 48 hours, I feel my heart on fire with love like never before and I’m so grateful for the amazing people I shared this experience with up in Vermont” – Liam

“Thank you my loving family that is filled with the children of God for spending the most amazing weekend of my life with me. You all, like God have taken the time to breathe life into me and awaken me from my sins and allowed me to see love. I couldn’t have done it without you, and I thank the Lord for allowing the holy spirit to enter my life once again and I know I couldn’t have done it without you. Vermont is beautiful, but a place is only as good as the people in it. You’ve made a change in my life that I will always be grateful for, so thank you from the bottom of my heart. ~ WAVEEEEE. & peace be with you.” – Ella

“Where do I even begin…just got home from a retreat at the beautiful St. Anne’s Shrine up in Vermont. Most of the emphasis was on strengthening the relationship with the Holy Spirit, and the gifts that can come about from it, via talks and discussion groups. The small group prayers were very beneficial, as we learned to pray with and for each other, which isn’t always the easiest thing to do for some of us.

A lot was also discussed and prayed on the idea of spiritual, physical and emotional healing. Given the current medical situation with Mom, this couldn’t have come at a better time for me.

Overall, just a very moving and powerful weekend.” – Ian

An Ordered Life

Greetings from Ave Maria, Florida!

FOCUS New Staff Training has been a blast! It’s been a two week grace bomb from God for us all, with so many new friends to meet, things to learn, and things to do! During the week, we literally have our schedules from 8 in the morning to 10 at night filled for most days. It’s insane. We basically have no time to relax, so I’ve had to be very careful to schedule sleep into my day… because I got sick when I didn’t!

I’m really excited our daily holy hour, which I’ll be doing for the next two years as a missionary. I’ve only been doing it for about a couple of weeks now, but it’s already been a fantastic part of my daily schedule! I’ve had an active prayer life especially since the end of high school, but I’ve never committed to a daily holy hour before. During it I do some mental and contemplative prayer as well as reading some scripture and a spiritual book in between segments of prayer. It’s usually in the morning, which is a great way to start off my day and helps me to keep Jesus in the forefront of my mind for the rest of the day. We also have daily mass, but I’ve pretty much been doing that for the past few years, so that’s not as much of a change. With both, it’s been important to get enough sleep, because when I’m tired or sick, it’s really hard to have fruitful times of prayer.

The liturgy of the hours is another way to live a more ordered life. They are prayers that are said at certain parts of the day, morning, noon, evening, and night. The Apostles themselves followed this Jewish custom as you can see in the book of Acts (10:3,9; 16:25, etc.). I can tell that there is a lot of wisdom in this because of my experience that the more that I pray during the day, the more open and aware that I am for the rest of the day of God’s presence.

In addition, I’m finding ways to remind myself of God’s presence through the rest of my day so that I can make room for silence in the midst of all the hustle and bustle- for me, just putting my hand over where my scapular is is a good reminder, maybe some of you have a similar experience with a cross or ring. When we feel inclined to pray, take that opportunity! Don’t let those opportunities pass!

How we live our days is how we live our lives, so make sure to find time to make Jesus not just a part of your life, but the center of it.

A Missionary Church

“What would you change about the Church?”

I got asked that question a few days ago. My immediate reaction was something like this:

Of course, what I mean by that is that I wouldn’t change any of the doctrine or big T traditions of the Church. The Church is Jesus’, it isn’t mine to change. Jesus gave us the Church so that we can be converted, not so that we can convert it.

But besides the essentials that aren’t changeable, there is at least one thing that I’d change about many Catholic churches in the west: I’d make the churches more mission oriented and evangelistic. At my home parish, I don’t know if I ever see anyone bringing anyone new to church. It’s more of a family thing, where you only go to mass if your family has always went. In many ways, it strikes me as more of an exclusive club than a family of God. The Church is not supposed to be exclusive at all, but rather reach out to even the poorest and and the most helpless. Of course the Catholic Church is going to lose some members to Protestant churches in the west if this continues to happen. The truth is just not enough for people, they are looking for a relationship with God as well! They need to experience God! And despite having all of this on Protestant churches (MASS, apostolic succession, adoration, confession, charismatic groups, charities, bible studies, praise and worship, prayer groups), cradle Catholics often don’t even know the significance or don’t take advantage of it.

I recently went through my parish directory, and since we’ve been in the same parish all my life, I knew a lot of the names. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the names from parish activities. I knew the names from school, sports, and other community activities. That’s a major problem: the Church should be bringing people together, not isolating them! Many of those people do not go to Sunday mass any more, and I bet that a significant amount of them would return if only there was someone who would personally invite them back.

I don’t want to dis my home parish, they’re fully in union with the Pope and at masses I get to receive our Lord in the Eucharist and hear His Word in the Scriptures. I received all of my sacraments there and I love it. There are a ton of really fantastic people there. But I want to challenge my parish and all other parishes in the west (Europe and the Americas) to do more to embrace the Gospel. We must fully embrace Jesus and the Gospel message in our lives, and then from there we need to share it with as many people as we can! I’d love to see many small groups in my parish where the Sunday only parishioners can be individually shown the Gospel by others who know it better (starting with the priests!) so that they can do the same for others. I’d love to see this not only for adults but for the youth, so that they don’t scamper as far away from the church as possible after they are confirmed. I’d love for the parishioners to get to know each other outside of just saying “peace be with you” at mass. Make sure that the children see the priests and any other religious more often than just Sunday mornings, so they can see that they are real people too.

We obviously need a renewal in the everyday churches across the west. I know that it can be done: the student parish at the University of Illinois that I attended was solid: there were so many different ministries and retreats where students would interact with other students, staff, religious sisters, and priests in order to embrace the faith not just for Sundays but for a lifetime. Sure, there are improvements necessary everywhere, but this is a wonderful example of how it can be done. I can’t wait to try and share my experience at my new campus as a FOCUS missionary next year, and reach out to those who otherwise would be isolated from Jesus and never understand the Gospel.

Pope Francis has talked about this many times already in his pontificate, and one of his most famous quotes so far was:

“When the Church does not come out of itself to evangelize, it becomes self-referential and then gets sick.” – Pope Francis

He said this to show that simply going with the flow isn’t enough for us as Christians. As Christians we must constantly strive to put Jesus in the center of our lives. He emphasized that point in a tweet:

“We cannot be part-time Christians! We should seek to live our faith at every moment of every day.” – Pope Francis

A great follow-up on this post for anyone interested is the following book: Pope John Paul II and the New Evangelization by Ralph Martin and Peter Williamson – Amazon

Prayer: A Waste of Time?

There are many people who have given prayer an honest try and become frustrated with it because they don’t experience something. So what is the purpose of prayer? What should happen?

What do you expect to happen when you pray? Do you expect to feel physical sensations?  Do you expect to hear God? Do you expect to have clarity with all of your problems? Or with even just one? The more that I think about it, we have unrealistic expectations about prayer. This is a big reason why we get frustrated with it, and I can definitely relate. All of these things can happen, but they are the exceptions, not the norm.

So why should we pray?

“The spiritual life is not primarily about certain practices of piety and techniques of prayer, but about a relationship. It’s about responding to the One who has created and redeemed us, and who loves us with a love stronger than death, a love that desires to raise us from the dead. Much of that is true of human relationships is also true of our relationship with God. Human relationships of friendship or marriage need time, attention, and care for them to continue and to grow. The same is true of our relationship with God. We have been called to union but we need to respond.” – Ralph Martin, The  Fulfillment of all Desire

Prayer is the primary means of developing a relationship with God. Let me compare it to a regular friendship. You come to meet someone by being introduced by a friend. In a similar way, we come to know God by being introduced by a friend. We come to actually know someone by talking and spending time with them. Likewise, we come to know God by hearing His Word in scripture and by conversing with Him in prayer.

How do we listen to God in prayer? I have often struggled with this idea. I’ve always been waiting for Him to speak to me or to put images or words in my head. But God likes to enter into the world quietly. One example of this is how Jesus could have descended from the sky when He came, but instead He chose to be born by a woman: a baby who was completely dependent on His parents. In prayer, God enters in very discrete ways. He has absolutely put words or phrases in my head or even images, but in a much less profound way than you’re probably imagining. The goal is not to have this happen, but they can be pretty sweet gifts at the time, helping me to direct my attention one way or another.

But prayer is just boring! I guess I haven’t addressed this yet. I have experienced boring prayers. Boring prayers are usually when I’m not actually praying, I’m just pretending. But sometimes we will have a dry time and we will have a lot of difficulty entering into prayer. In these times we especially need to remember to ask Jesus to help us.

“Whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” – John 14:13

Why is it so hard to enter into prayer in the first place? Remember, in prayer we have free will, just like any other time. Often I find myself just sitting there waiting for God to come and take over my prayers so that I don’t have to do anything, I can just revel in His glory. But that never actually happens. I actually have to concentrate in order to do that. I need to place myself in His presence. There is a very significant difference between simply thinking about issues of your life and offering them up to God in prayer and asking for His help. I fall into this trap too much, be careful of it. Ask Him to help you to pray. It can be very helpful if you’re having difficulty concentrating to pick a passage from scripture or spiritual reading and reflect on it. A very simply way to start praying is to repeat Jesus’ name to yourself. Sometimes I can tell that the Holy Spirit is especially present and good emotions come up (gratitude for His mercy, awe at His majesty, sorrow for sin, desire to be more faithful, etc.), and from that point on my prayer becomes insanely easy where I completely lose track of the world. That’s the whole point of prayer I guess, to be with God in that intimate way.

“For mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.” – St. Teresa of Avila

There is a place for oral prayers in growing in our relationship with God, as well. If you let them be boring and repetitive, then you’re wasting your time. But if you “chew” on the words that you are saying, they can be as powerful of a prayer as you can say, especially prayers based in scripture like the Our Father, that Jesus taught us.

“A single Our Father said with feeling has greater value than many said quickly and hurriedly.” – St. Francis de Sales

I’d encourage you to pick at least one time every day to designate for prayer, and hold yourself to it. Just as you only learn to swim by swimming, you only learn to pray by praying! Then from there, find ways to pray at all times (1 Thess. 5:17). Just throwing up a random “thank you Jesus” every once in a while is a good start. The end goal is to constantly have Jesus on our hearts in all that we do.

To conclude, prayer is important because it allows us to get to know God and enter into a relationship with Him. Just as you can never be friends with someone you don’t talk to, you and God aren’t going to be very tight if you never pray.

What are you putting first in your life?
material things <<< human relationships <<< your relationship with God

Also see:
The Battle of Prayer
15 Steps to Pray Better

Signs of the Transition to Manhood

Lately I’ve been thinking more about what it is to be a man. We talked about it in bible study this week for much longer than I was expecting, and it was one of the better discussions I’ve had in a few weeks.

This got me thinking of some of the talks that I heard at SEEK Conference last month about manhood. Dr. Johnathan Reyes did such a great job of comparing the signs that differentiates a boy from a man, and I’d like to share them with you:

• A boy is occupied by looking for fun. A man is occupied by his duties.
• A boy worries about whether others like him. A man cares more about whether he is respected.
• A boy is self-focused in all that he does. A man keeps his thoughts and gaze outwards, thinking of others first.
• A boy chooses the most comfortable option. A man makes sure to choose to do the right thing.
• A boy avoids responsibility. A man is responsible. In the business world, a man accepts the responsibility of owning a project.
• A boy becomes discouraged and gives up. A man perseveres through trial.
• A boy doesn’t change the environment that he is in. A man improves every environment that he enters.
• A boy views women as objects, as a “collection of body parts.” A man sees women as the whole person and respects and honors them in what he says and does.
• A boy needs rules to act uprightly. A man is self-disciplined.
• A boy brags about his accomplishments. A man does not exalt himself.
• A boy avoids commitment. A man’s word is good and he honors vows to death.
• A boy is governed by his passions. A man is governed by the truth.

This is a challenging list. But I think that it is important that we challenge ourselves and hold ourselves to a high standard (see the self-disciplined part). Are you where you want to be? I know that it’s a struggle. It is much easier to work on your journey to manhood when you do it together with a good friend or two. Share your desire to grow to become a better man with one another. And don’t forget to pray! Ask God to help give you the grace to overcome sinful tendencies.

Make war on sin, and start living like a man. Turn this Tedashii song up!

God is Love, Part 1

Have you ever read a papal encyclical? They are letters written by the Pope, often to the entire Church! As I read this one, I decided to write up a nice (and quite thorough)  summary of it for you, so enjoy!

The first encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI was Deus Caritas Est, or God is Love. Please go ahead and read it yourself if you have time, it is pretty easy to read in my opinion, and it is so good that it was hard to keep myself from just copying and pasting the entire thing!

As I read through this encyclical, it became ever more apparent to me how important this message is today. The message that God is love, that man is meant for love, and that true love integrates the whole person- not just body or soul. We love God by loving our neighbor, and through this we can always continue to learn more of God’s love for us. This first part is a summary of the first half of the encyclical, which focuses on “The Unity of Love in Creation and in Salvation History.”

“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should … have eternal life” (3:16). In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel’s faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth. Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere “command”; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us.

While God is often talked about in hateful ways in recent times, the Holy Father wanted to stress in his first encyclical that the central point of Christianity is God’s love for us, as shown through the person of Jesus Christ.

Let us first of all bring to mind the vast semantic range of the word “love”: we speak of love of country, love of one’s profession, love between friends, love of work, love between parents and children, love between family members, love of neighbour and love of God. So we need to ask: are all these forms of love basically one, so that love, in its many and varied manifestations, is ultimately a single reality, or are we merely using the same word to designate totally different realities?

The first type of love that the Holy Father defines is “eros,” which is merely enjoying material things and bodily pleasure. He continues:

Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man’s great “yes” to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere. The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness.

Man is a being made up of body and soul. Man is truly himself when his body and soul are intimately united; the challenge of eros can be said to be truly overcome when this unification is achieved.

As you can see, the Holy Father isn’t necessarily saying that eros is bad, but rather that applied by itself, it does not respect the entire human person, and therefore leaves a sense of want in its wake. He also mentioned that another type of love is philia, which is the love of friends, which in scripture often refers to the love between Christ and His apostles. Next he turns his attention to the Song of Songs, pointing out that in the ancient Hebrew text there are also two different types of love: dodim, which is insecure and searching love, and agape, which is concerned for the care of the other and willing to sacrifice. He explains:

 Love is indeed “ecstasy”, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: “Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Lk 17:33)

The Holy Father cautions us from making a clear distinction between the two loves, characterizing agape as “Christian” love and eros as “non-Christian” love, because they actually are both connected:

Yet eros and agape—ascending love and descending love—can never be completely separated. The more the two, in their different aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized. Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to “be there for” the other. The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature. On the other hand, man cannot live by oblative, descending love alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift. Certainly, as the Lord tells us, one can become a source from which rivers of living water flow (cf.Jn 7:37-38). Yet to become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God (cf. Jn 19:34).

Continuing that thought, he concludes that the different types of love, whether based on faith or worldly things, do not inherently contradict each other, but rather purifies the other:

Biblical faith does not set up a parallel universe, or one opposed to that primordial human phenomenon which is love, but rather accepts the whole man; it intervenes in his search for love in order to purify it and to reveal new dimensions of it.

The Holy Father next discusses the image of God that is portrayed in the scriptures. First of all, we learn that there is one God, who created all things (Deuteronomy 6:4). From this, we gather that God wills our existence. We also learn from the scriptures that God loves us, with a personal love- so much so that the prophets described it using metaphors of marriage, with idolatry portrayed as adultery. The next paragraph, on how God loves us with both eros and agape, is so good I might as well copy the whole thing:

We have seen that God’s eros for man is also totally agape. This is not only because it is bestowed in a completely gratuitous manner, without any previous merit, but also because it is love which forgives. Hosea above all shows us that this agape dimension of God’s love for man goes far beyond the aspect of gratuity. Israel has committed “adultery” and has broken the covenant; God should judge and repudiate her. It is precisely at this point that God is revealed to be God and not man: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! … My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst” (Hos 11:8-9). God’s passionate love for his people—for humanity—is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice. Here Christians can see a dim prefigurement of the mystery of the Cross: so great is God’s love for man that by becoming man he follows him even into death, and so reconciles justice and love.

He continues by saying that from these very scriptures, we can see that God desires unity with us all, and not in some sort of Hindu way but rather a personal way:

Man can indeed enter into union with God—his primordial aspiration. But this union is no mere fusion, a sinking in the nameless ocean of the Divine; it is a unity which creates love, a unity in which both God and man remain themselves and yet become fully one. As Saint Paul says: “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:17).

From the scriptures we not only learn who God is, but also who man is. Man desires love as well!

Of all other creatures, not one is capable of being the helper that man needs, even though he has assigned a name to all the wild beasts and birds and thus made them fully a part of his life. So God forms woman from the rib of man. Now Adam finds the helper that he needed: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). …man is somehow incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole, the idea that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become “complete”. The biblical account thus concludes with a prophecy about Adam: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). Two aspects of this are important. First, eros is somehow rooted in man’s very nature; Adam is a seeker, who “abandons his mother and father” in order to find woman; only together do the two represent complete humanity and become “one flesh”. The second aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of creation, eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfil its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love.

Next we see how Jesus Christ is the new revelation of God’s love, which is constantly renewed with the sacrament of the Eucharist: the reality of God’s love for us all which unites us as one.

When Jesus speaks in his parables of the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep, of the woman who looks for the lost coin, of the father who goes to meet and embrace his prodigal son, these are no mere words: they constitute an explanation of his very being and activity. …His death on the Cross is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form. By contemplating the pierced side of Christ (cf. 19:37), we can understand the starting-point of this Encyclical Letter: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). It is there that this truth can be contemplated. It is from there that our definition of love must begin. …Jesus gave this act of oblation an enduring presence through his institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. He anticipated his death and resurrection by giving his disciples, in the bread and wine, his very self, his body and blood as the new manna (cf. Jn 6:31-33). The ancient world had dimly perceived that man’s real food—what truly nourishes him as man—is ultimately the Logos, eternal wisdom: this same Logos now truly becomes food for us—as love. …Here we need to consider yet another aspect: this sacramental “mysticism” is social in character, for in sacramental communion I become one with the Lord, like all the other communicants. As Saint Paul says, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:17). Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become “one body”, completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbor are now truly united: God incarnate draws us all to himself.

The Holy Father stresses the connection between love of God and love of neighbor, quoting the first letter of John which says that someone who says that they love God but do not love their neighbor is a liar. He answers a common question on the difficulty in seeing God by saying that we often can see God through the witness of Christians and the Church in general:

True, no one has ever seen God as he is. And yet God is not totally invisible to us; he does not remain completely inaccessible.  He has become visible in as much as he “has sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 Jn 4:9). God has made himself visible: in Jesus we are able to see the Father (cf. Jn 14:9). Nor has the Lord been absent from subsequent Church history: he encounters us ever anew, in the men and women who reflect his presence, in his word, in the sacraments, and especially in the Eucharist. In the Church’s Liturgy, in her prayer, in the living community of believers, we experience the love of God, we perceive his presence and we thus learn to recognize that presence in our daily lives.

The Holy Father encourages us by noting that love isn’t just a sentiment, but a continual process of faithfully following the God’s will:

In the gradual unfolding of this encounter, it is clearly revealed that love is not merely a sentiment. Sentiments come and go. Acknowledgment of the living God is one path towards love, and the “yes” of our will to his will unites our intellect, will and sentiments in the all- embracing act of love. But this process is always open-ended; love is never “finished” and complete; throughout life, it changes and matures, and thus remains faithful to itself.

Next he concludes this part of the encyclical:

 Love of neighbour is thus shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave. Only if I serve my neighbour can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me. The saints—consider the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta—constantly renewed their capacity for love of neighbour from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely this encounter acquired its real- ism and depth in their service to others. Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. Love is “divine” because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a “we” which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).

Heroes

Jesus didn’t come to earth for a little vacation. He came so that He could give His life for us, because He loves us that much, despite how we’ve sinned against Him.

When Jesus was tempted by the devil, He didn’t have to turn the devil down. He really could have given in.

When Jesus was preaching, He didn’t have to say the whole truth of who He was. He could have just said the nice things so that the people wouldn’t try to stone and kill Him.

When Jesus was in the garden before His passion, He could have just ran away. He didn’t have to let them take Him in for a trial.

When Jesus was before Pilate and the Sanhedrin, He could have said anything and they would have spared His life. All that He had to do was take back what He said.

At Calvary, He didn’t have to give His life. He didn’t have to stretch out His arms to be crucified. He didn’t have to hang there on the cross in agony.

He didn’t have to do any of it. But He did, out of love.

In the same way, we are called to follow Jesus and love others, even when it is difficult. Following Jesus in every phase of our life can lead to sainthood, but sainthood is often a misunderstood word. Following Jesus and loving even when it is hard is what heroes do. So really, Jesus is calling us all to be heroes.

Being a hero is not an easy task for sure, but it is possible for us all. It doesn’t mean that we will have super powers or even will do spectacular things like catch a falling baby or performing CPR. Sometimes being a hero means comforting someone in need, standing up for what you believe in, not lashing back at those who hurt you, or sticking up for those who can’t defend themselves.

It’s easy to get drunk. Are you enough of a hero to treat yourself with dignity?

It’s easy to cheat on homework. Are you a hero enough to stick with your morals?

It’s easy to gossip and make fun of others. Are you a hero enough to be a true friend?

It’s easy to look at porn. Are you a hero enough to respect yourself?

It’s easy to sleep around. Are you a hero enough to respect others and yourself?

It’s easy to have an abortion. Are you a hero enough to protect the lives of the defenseless even when it might mean more suffering for you?

Being a hero is not easy, but it is what we all deserve: from ourselves and from each other. Jesus already was our first hero. Let’s follow His example in both the big and small matters of our lives and truly learn to love each other.

The Battle of Prayer

Prayer is something that I often take for granted. I decide that I’m going to pray.. and then, well, often this happens:

Silence

Uh oh. Why isn’t this working? Um, God.. I’m waiting for my mystical prayer experience.. any time now.. Hello? Anyone home?

You know that feeling? Prayer is hard! And despite my assumptions, it doesn’t just HAPPEN. Instead, it requires effort on our part. We need to get on God’s “level,” in a sense.

Prayer is a BATTLE. It’s not a cakewalk, we really need to put effort into it.

I ran into this cool section in my Handbook of Prayers: Student Edition book by Midwest Theological Forum, and I’d like to share it with you:

Prayer presupposes an effort, or fight against ourselves and the wiles of the Tempter. The battle of prayer is inseparable from the necessary “spiritual battle” to act habitually according to the Spirit of Christ: we pray as we live, because we live as we pray. (CCC 2752, 2754-2755)

The principal difficulties that we find are:

• “We don’t have the time.” Prayer is considered as an occupation incompatible with all other things we have to do. Remedy: Make the time for your personal prayer, knowing that nothing could excuse your failing to do so.
• “We get distracted.” Concentration becomes difficult and we easily give up. Remedy: Turn your heart back to God, offering him the distractions with humility, without discouragement.
• “We feel dry.” It seems that the heart is separated from God, with no taste for thoughts, memories, and feelings, even spiritual ones. Remedy: Remember that “unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

There are also two frequent temptations that threaten prayer:

• Lack of faith. Prayer is not the first priority. Remedy: Ask our Lord with a humble heart, “Lord, increase my faith.”
• Acedia, a form of depression stemming from lax ascetical practice that leads to discouragement. Remedy: Trust God more and hold fast in constancy.

So I’d like to encourage you to renew your efforts of prayer with a new vigor! You can do it! It isn’t easy for any of us, trust me.

Your faith isn’t going to go anywhere..

.. if you don’t pray.

Prayer is the lifeblood of a relationship with Jesus Christ. So if you want to go deeper in your relationship with Christ (side effects might include: joy, peace, love, skipping around in public, hope in all situations, self-knowledge, generosity, courage, and salvation and eternal life), then you can’t forget this essential step.

I especially wanted to share this with you because I think that I’ve been a little lazy with my prayer lately, and with that I’ve felt like I’ve fallen a little from Jesus. That time of meditation, contemplation, and silence is perfect for calming down a busy day and keeping things in perspective, and it keeps us in touch. Just like not talking to a good friend in a while, it makes us uneasy and insecure about our friendship- and with Jesus it’s the same way.

Put in the time. You’ll thank yourself later.