Do we know their names?

We're All Pumpkins

If my child marries yours...

If my child marries yours…

I just want you to know that I'm praying for you.

When I'm awake at night - feeding babies, burping babies, giving tylenol to a feverish toddler, covering up chilly toes, tucking green monkeys under little arms - I think of you. Because chances are, you're awake too, doing the same sorts of things. Taking care of tiny children that I already love because they will someday hold the hearts that are beating against my chest tonight.

I'm praying that you'll stand firm against the pressures to overcommit and hyper-schedule, that you'll shut out the voices that tell you you're not doing enough, that your kids aren't doing enough.

I'm praying you'll have the wisdom to know when to pick that crying baby up out of her crib and when to just sit outside her door, your fingertips pressed to the wood, willing her to feel your love and comfort and just finally fall asleep.

I'm praying that you will take those children to church...that the mothers and fathers of our future grandchildren will grow up knowing what it means to worship, even when that means missing out-of-town basketball tournaments and marathon sleepovers.

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Question of the Week: Forgiveness, Mercy, and Perfection

As part of our preparation for Confirmation, we need to ask questions and seek answers to our thoughts about life, faith, God, the Church, and our role in the world. In fact, we should never stop asking questions and seeking answers in our lives whether we are a five-year-old repeatedly asking why or a ninety-nine-year-old pondering the mysteries of the universe. Each week we will tackle one question that a teen asked at the beginning of the year, answering the question both at an OLV Teen Night and here in the blogosphere. Chime in with your thoughts as long as they are constructive and approaching the topic with love. Thanks for sharing in the journey!

Q: If God forgives us all for our sins then why does the church still want us to be perfect?

A: A good coach in sports, music, academics, or any pursuit balances praise and prescription. The coach has to celebrate the things a student does well ("Nice catch!" "You really got that Mozart piece down!" "Way to go on your times tables!") and what a student can do better ("Next time, make sure you tuck the ball close to your body so you don't fumble." "Be sure you are using the right fingers to play that sequence on the piano." "You just missed one on your test."). Criticism, when it's well-placed, can make us better football players, piano players, math students, and human beings. That's why the Church, why our priests, and why the Lord doesn't let us settle for being a lesser version of ourselves.

God's mercy is endless. We cannot commit a sin that God cannot forgive. However, we are responsible for responding to God's mercy with our own love. Our lives need to be transformed when we come to know God's love. That's where the Sacrament of Reconciliation/Penance/Confession comes in. We don't need this Sacrament to have our sins forgiven--God can do that any time. What confession offers us is reconciliation to the community, acknowledgement that we have fallen short, accountability to another human being, and grace--sweet, abundant, beautiful, healing GRACE. Grace both helps us to be the best version of ourselves and helps us to know God more deeply through our actions.

In Matthew 5:48, Jesus says, "So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." He calls us to a deeper level of self awareness, a level where we are constantly striving for virtue, where we are trying to deeply know, love, and serve the Lord. We won't ever be perfect in this life, but that shouldn't stop us from trying. As a bumper sticker I saw once said, "Get to Heaven or die trying!"

My Side of the Confessional: What Is It Like for a Priest?

By Fr. Mike Schmitz, LifeTeen.com (see this blog in its original form here)

I was once riding in a shuttle-bus with a number of older folks on the way from an airport. They noticed that I was a priest and started asking questions about it.

“Do you do all of the priest stuff?”

“Yep.”

“Even the Confession thing?”

“Yeah. All the time.”

One older lady gasped, “Well, I think that that would be the worst. It would be so depressing; hearing all about people’s sins.”

I told them that it was the exact opposite. There is almost no greater place to be than with someone when they are coming back to God. I said, “It would depressing if I had to watch someone leave God; I get to be with them when they come back to Him.” The Confessional is a place where people let God’s love win. The Confessional is the most joyful, humbling, and inspiring place in the world.

What do I see during Confession?
I think there are three things. First, I see the costly mercy of God in action. I get to regularly come face to face with the overwhelming, life-transforming power of God’s love. I get to see God’s love up-close and it reminds me of how good God is.

Not many folks get to see the way in which God’s sacrifice on the Cross is constantly breaking into people’s lives and melting the hardest hearts. Jesus consoles those who are grieving their sins . . . and strengthens those who find themselves wanting to give up on God or on life.

As a priest, I get to see this thing happen every day.

I see a saint in the making.
The second thing I see is a person who is still trying – a saint in the making. I don’t care if this is the person’s third confession this week; if they are seeking the Sacrament of Reconciliation, it means that they are trying. That’s all that I care about. This thought is worth considering: going to Confession is a sign that you haven’t given up on Jesus.

This is one of the reasons why pride is so deadly. I have talked with people who tell me that they don’t want to go to Confession to their priest because their priest really likes them and ‘thinks that they are a good kid.’

I have two things to say to this.

He will not be disappointed! What your priest will see is a person who is trying! I dare you to find a saint who didn’t need to God’s mercy! (Even Mary needed God’s mercy; she received the mercy of God in a dramatic and powerful way at her conception. Boom. Lawyered.)

So what if the priest is disappointed? We try to be so impressive with so much of our lives. Confession is a place where we don’t get to be impressive. Confession is a place where the desire to impress goes to die. Think about it: all other sins have the potential to cause us to race to the confessional, but pride is the one that causes us to hide from the God who could heal us.

Do I remember your sins? NO!
So often, people will ask if I remember people’s sin from Confession. As a priest, I rarely, if ever, remember sins from the confessional. That might seem impossible, but the truth is, sins aren’t all that impressive. They aren’t like memorable sunsets or meteor showers or super-intriguing movies… they are more like the garbage.

And if sins are like garbage, then the priest is like God’s garbage-man. If you ask a garbage-man about the gross-est thing he’s ever had to haul to the dump, maaaaaaybe he could remember it. But the fact is, once you get used to taking out the trash, it ceases to be noteworthy, it ceases to stand out.

Honestly, once you realize that the Sacrament of Reconciliation is less about the sin and more about Christ’s death and resurrection having victory in a person’s life, the sins lose all of their luster, and Jesus’ victory takes center stage.

In Confession, we meet the life-transforming, costly love of God… freely given to us every time we ask for it. We meet Jesus who reminds us, “You are worth dying for… even in your sins, you are worth dying for.”

Whenever someone comes to Confession, I see a person who is deeply loved by God and who is telling God that they love Him back. That’s it, and that’s all.

In Confession, I see my own weakness.
The third thing a priest sees when he hears Confessions is his own soul. It is a scary place for a priest. I cannot tell you how humbled I am when someone approaches Jesus’ mercy through me.

I am not over-awed by their sins; I am struck by the fact that they have been able to recognize sins in their life that I have been blind to in my own. Hearing someone’s humility breaks down my own pride. It is one of the best examinations of conscience.

But why is Confession a scary place for a priest? It is frightening because of the way in which Jesus trusts me to be a living sign of His mercy.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen once told priests that we scarcely realize what is happening when we extend our hands over someone’s head in absolution. We don’t realize, he said, that the very Blood of Christ is dripping from our fingers onto their heads, washing the penitent clean.

The day after I was ordained, we had a little party and my dad stood up and made a toast. He has worked his entire life as an orthopedic surgeon, and he was a very good one. My whole life, his patients have come up to me at one time or another and told me how their lives have been changed because my dad was such a good surgeon.

So, there my dad was, standing in the midst of these people, and he began to say, ‘My whole life, I have used my hands to heal people’s broken bodies. But from now on, my son Michael… um, Father Michael… will use his hands (at this point, he got choked up)… He will use his hands to heal broken souls. His hands will save even more lives than mine have.’

Confession is such a powerful place. All I have to do is offer God’s mercy, love, and redemption… but I don’t want to get in Jesus’ way. The priest stands in judgment of no one. In the Confessional, the only thing I have to offer is mercy.

I get to sacrifice for you.
Lastly, when a priest hears Confessions, he is taking on another responsibility.

One time, after college, I was returning to Confession after a long time and a lot of sin and the priest simply gave me something like “one Hail Mary” as my penance. I stopped.

“Um, Father…? Did you hear everything I said?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Don’t you think I should get a bigger penance than that?”

He looked at me with great love and said, “No. That small penance is all that I’m asking of you.” He hesitated, and then continued, “But you should know… I will be fasting for you for the next 30 days.”

I was stunned. I didn’t know what to do. He told me that the Catechism teaches that the priest must do penance for all those who come to him for Confession. And here he was, embracing a severe penance for all of my severe sins.

This is why Confession reveals the priest’s own soul; it reveals his willingness to sacrifice his life with Christ. He sees our sins as a burden that he will take up (with Jesus!) and offer them to the Father, while offering us the mercy of God.

Remember, Confession is always a place of victory. Whether you have confessed a particular sin for the first time, or if this is the 12,001st time, every Confession is a win for Jesus. And I, a priest, get to be there. That’s what it’s like… I get to sit and watch Jesus win His children back all day.

It’s flippin’ awesome.

How to think about Halloween as a Catholic

By SIMCHA FISHER, CatholicEducation.org

How delightful it is to be Catholic, when so few things are forbidden — so few things are out of the question.

While I was busy rubbing my hands together and thinking about how hilarious and yet subversively informative my post about Halloween costumes was going to be (once I got around to writing it), noted overachieving spoilsport Jimmy Akin went ahead and wrote it. Even worse, the big show-off produced a slick video about it, including some very relevant images of kittens and puppies. He also, without losing his rhythm, got sidetracked by thinking about delicious brains.

Akin makes the sensible point that people are attracted to spooky stuff for a reason — that God made us so that we enjoy small doses of peril and tension, because it prepares us to deal with the real thing, which will surely come along sooner or later. (This is where the adorable and extremely relevant, but adorable fighting kitties comes in.) So as long as we don't spend our lives wallowing in gore and ghoulishness, it's healthy and normal and perfectly fine to indulge in a little dramatic scaring and screaming from time to time. Therefore, spooky Halloween stuff? A-OK.

Akin's point reminds me of something my sister once pointed out: that when Daddy tosses the baby up in the air and baby laughs, it's because there really is a joke there, albeit a very simple one. The situation says, "You're in danger!" but the baby knows, "But it's Daddy! I'm fine!" See? Funny stuff right there, if you're a baby. And a pretty good analogy for the delightfully childlike question, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" Whee! There's yet a third answer to the question of whether creepy, gory costumes and other Halloweeny practices (or scary stuff in general) are appropriate for Catholics to indulge in: some Catholics argue, "This isn't just a little holiday from the somber demands of my Faith — it's actually my way of laughing at the devil! I'm spitting in ol' Nick's eye and reaffirming the truth of the triumph of the Resurrection when I . . . um. . . buy this rubber mask of a clown with an axe splitting his forehead open. See? Ad majorem dei gloriam! Wooooooooooooooo!" I used to roll my eyes over these rather contrived arguments, thinking, "Gee whiz, just admit that you want to have fun sometimes, and stop trying to make some big religious deal out of everything."

But honestly, now I think that even overthinking it can be a perfectly legitimate Catholic approach, if that's what appeals to you.

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That's My King

I posted this before, but the high schoolers will hear it on Sunday. Plus, it's just COOL. How could you and I not be inspired by these magnificent poem from Dr. S. M. Lockridge?

The Hour that Matters Most

The following are excerpts from The Hour that Matters Most by Les and Leslie Parrott with Stephanie Allen and Tina Kuna.

When you're at home, you want to breathe deeply, lower your shoulders, and relax. There's a feeling of belonging, acceptance, and contentment. At least there should be. Healthy homes--homes that function as they should--refresh, recharge, and renew. They become places where children's identities find flight and values take root.

For Stephanie Allen, her own home was none of these things. As a busy working mom of two active kids, it was all Stephanie could do to keep up with the demands of the daily schedule. Church youth group, soccer practice, and school activities meant lots of time in the car, and very little time for real interaction among family members.

Stephanie longed for the kinds of relationships she remembered with her own parents and sibling when she was growing up: relationships built on conversation and connection--often forged around the dinner table. She remembered the way her family would linger after a meal just to talk and catch up, and she wished her own family could do the same. But after a long day at work and a couple of hours shuttling kids from one activity to the next, who had time for making elaborate meals? Some days it was all she could do to keep up with everything and get a meal on the table for her family. She realized that she needed a game plan.

Stephanie started meeting with a friend once a month to assemble meals for their families. "It was a great time for us to talk and laugh," Stephanie remembers. "And at the end of the day, we each had a month's worth of meals in our freezers, ready to pull out when we needed them. One less thing to stress about." Those monthly "assembly days" provided a sense of liberation from the dreaded daily chore of scrambling home after work to pull together a wholesome for the family....

"So many moms are working hard and trying to keep up, but it's really difficult," she says. "The bottom line is that we just want to raise great kids."

Creating Comfort
Chicken noodle soup, meatloaf, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy, bread pudding, brownies, doughnuts, apple pie. These are commonly referred to as "comfort food," and with good reason. Most of us find great comfort in a tasty meal we've grown up with, a meal that doesn't have to be explained by Gourmet or Saveur magazines.

But true comfort, the kind that heals emotional hurts and turns around bad days, involves far more than our palates. One dictionary defines the word comfort as "a feeling of relief or encouragement," or "contented wellbeing." A quick review of the word's origin, though, uncovers a deeper meaning. We get the verb to comfort from the Latin com- + fortis, meaning "to make strong" (that is, like a fortress).

So to comfort literally means to make someone stronger. And that's exactly what you do for your children. Comfort fortifies their spirits. Whenever you encourage your children with uplifting words, console them with a tender touch, relieve their sorrow with your mere presence, support them with heartfelt praise, or provide a wholesome meal and the love that's served with it, you are helping to make your children strong.

What would strengthen your home?
If you pressed a magic button to instantly strengthen your home, what would it do? We don't mean the physical house. We mean the feeling, the chemistry, and the climate of the relationships within it. We're talking about the spirit of your home.

Would you want it to include more laughter? Meaningful and engaging conversations? Vulnerability and respect? Mutual support? These are the things most parents mention. And if you're like the hundreds of parents we've surveyed, you're likely to sum up the desire your have for your home by saying you want it to be the safest place on earth....

...Understanding what makes a healthy home is not the same as building one. That requires being proactive. And in the pressure cooker of our busy daily lives, being proactive is where most of us get bogged down. When emotions are frazzled, bills are mounting, and time is in short supply, doing something proactive can be the last thing on our minds.

But what if that doing were actually easier than you imagined? What if it took less time and were simpler than you could even believe?

That's where the hour that matters most comes in. Countless studies have shown that if parents could take only one proactive and practical step to engender family commitment, appreciation, affection, positive communication, time together, and all the rest, it would be to establish a regular dinnertime around a common table without distraction. One hour a few times a week. That's it.

Click here to learn more about The Hour that Matters Most.

Mother Teresa on God, Love and Charity

These are quotations from Mother Teresa: Her Essential Wisdom, edited by Carol Kelly-Gangi.

I can understand the greatness of God but I cannot understand his humility. It becomes so clear in him being in love with each one of us separately and completely. It is as if there is no one but me in the world. He loves me so much. Each one of us can say this with great conviction.

Do we believe that God's love is infinitely more powerful, his mercy more tender than the evil of sin, than all the hatred, conflicts, and tensions that are dividing the world? Than the most powerful bombs and guns ever made by human hands and minds?

Don't allow anything to interfere with your love for Jesus. You belong to him. Nothing can separate you from him. That one sentence is important to remember. He will be your joy, your strength. If you hold into that sentence, temptations and difficulties will come, but nothing will break you. Remember, you have been created for great things.

Don't search for Jesus in far lands--he is not there. He is close to you; he is with you. Just keep the lamp burning and you will always see him. Keep on filling the lamp with all these little drops of love, and you will see how sweet is the Lord you love.

We are able to go through the most terrible places fearlessly because Jesus in us will never deceive us; Jesus is our love, our strength, our joy, and our compassion.

Jesus loved us to the end, to the very limit, dying on the cross. We must have this same love which comes from within, from our union with Christ. Such love must be as normal to us as living and breathing.

Let us not be afraid to be humble, small, helpless to prove our love for God. The cup of water you give the sick, the way you lift a dying man, the way you feed a baby, the way you teach a dull child, the way you give medicine to a sufferer of leprosy, the joy with which you smile at your own at home--all this is God's love in the world today.

We have to love until it hurts. It is not enough to say, "I love." We must put that love into a living action. And how do we do that? By giving until it hurts.

True love causes pain. Jesus, in order to give the proof of his love, died on the cross. A mother, in order to give birth to her baby, has to suffer. If you really love one another, you will not be able to avoid making sacrifices.

Love is, just like Christ himself showed with his death, the greatest gift.

Love is not patronizing and charity isn't about pity, it is about love. Charity and love are the same--with charity, you give love, so don't just give money but reach out your hand instead.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds. Yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

The words of Jesus, "Love one another as I have loved you," must be not only a light for us but a flame that consumes the self in us. Love, in order to survive, must be nourished by sacrifices, especially the sacrifice of self.

We should always ask ourselves, "Have I really experienced the joy of loving?" True love is love that causes us pain, that hurts, and yet brings us joy. That is why we must pray and ask for the courage to love.

Reptile Adventures

 

A couple guests slithered into OLV Teen last night. Thanks to Reptile Adventures for making our snake-themed night a success. If you are interested in having Reptile Adventures for your birthday, school event, or any other function, visit their website or Facebook page. You can also email them at info@reptileadventures.org or call at 863-1192.

See more images from the night on our Facebook page.

Pigs

October Parent Newsletter

Our October Parent Newsletter went to inboxes last week, but if you missed it, you can always look on the newsletters page on this blog. Click here to view the newsletter and all the good tidbits inside. Thanks for reading and supporting our youth in their faith formation.

What Scares Us About Confession

 

By Tylor Starkey on The Catholic Dormitory

I remember a dear friend who, when in the process of converting, was dreading her first confession. So much so that, when the time came, she was crying the entire way to the confessional. She was scared, confused, and she didn’t entirely know why. Afterwards, she confided that she didn’t want to have to go to the priest, to Christ, and lay out all the things she had done. She didn’t want to seem like a bad person and she knew that’s exactly what she sounded like.

What terrifies us so much about our own sins? To the point that we often cast blame on others for our transgressions, we downplay their importance or even convince ourselves that they weren’t really sins at all. We convince ourselves that we’re not “that bad”. We try to make it seem like we didn’t have a choice or we didn’t really know what we were doing.

We’ve all heard the lines… Maybe I’ll go to the next parish over where I don’t know the priest that well. Maybe I’ll just leave out how many times I’ve done that particular sin. Maybe I’ll talk a bit lower so Father won’t be able to tell it’s me.

Why do we do these things to ourselves? When I was a recent convert, I remember thinking that, surely, these priests have better things to do than listen to my confession. Surely they don’t want to hear all the bad things I’ve done or how often I’ve failed myself and God. The longer I’ve been in Seminary, however, I’ve learned to look at it a bit differently. Here’s an example:

A friend of mine was recently ordained to the priesthood. During a summer camp for high school youth, a month and a half after his ordination, he set up for the night to hear confessions. And these kids lined up out the door. He heard confessions for hours, by himself. After a long night I went to get him, telling him he’d seen everyone. He took off his stole, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Brother, there is a life after Seminary, and it is magnificent”. He was exhausted, sweating and smiling ear to ear.

I’ve heard from so many priests that the one time they feel most like a priest is in the confessional. Don’t believe me? Ask any of them.

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A to-do list for college-bound seniors

From the Idaho Statesman and McClatchy Newspapers. See this article in its original form here.

Here's some of what high school seniors are thinking about when they're not doing homework, participating in their extracurricular activities, hanging with friends, sleeping, eating or texting: their college list, testing, campus visits, applications, essays, transcripts, activity list, letters of recommendation and scholarships.

• Let's try to destress the situation by creating a fall timeline and breaking each of these bigger tasks into more manageable pieces:
• Finalize the college list, making certain it is balanced with reach/target/safety schools. Be sure to include an in-state safety school for financial reasons.
• Review the standardized testing calendar and register for the SAT in October, November or December or the ACT in October or December.
• Find out whether any colleges on your list recommend or require SAT Subject Tests and register for the tests.
• Check your school's calendar for and take advantage of any teacher work days to schedule campus visits.
• See whether any colleges you're considering offer open house dates or discovery days for seniors.
• Determine which schools offer early action.
• Decide whether a binding early decision option at one college makes sense.
• Figure out which of the colleges on your final list are on the Common Application and which are not.
• Research the number of essays required or recommended by each college and create a document for each college listing their essay prompts and deadlines.
• Set up accounts on each college's website.
• Create a document to keep track user names and passwords for each college.
• Prepare a timeline of activity based on each college's deadline (i.e., don't work on the Common Application if none of your early-action colleges accept the Common Application).
• Brainstorm essay ideas for colleges with the earliest deadlines.
• Write a first draft of essays. Edit essays and edit again. Ask a trusted source to review essays.
• Meet with college representatives when they visit your school.
• Review and order high school transcripts. Find out how your high school sends transcripts to each college. Most high schools transmit transcripts electronically.
• Prepare your resume/brag sheet/activity list and give it to your references.
• Research which colleges accept letters of recommendation, how many they require and how many they will accept.
• Ask teachers, coaches, advisers and employers for letters of recommendation.
• Begin researching scholarships.

Faith Like a Mustard Seed

Remember that having faith small as a mustard seed is not a place to cease following the Lord but to put our deepest selves into learning to love the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and our neighbor. Mustard seeds grow into magnificent trees when treated with care and cultivated.