Who Cares?

People these days need to stop equating the Church to merely a physical building, and instead see it as the unblemished, indefectible Mystical Body of Christ. Some of these people include those who identify as Catholics - they profess to be Catholic but openly reject a Church teaching. You know the teachings I'm talking about: Same-Sex "Marriage," Contraception, Abortion. But in declaring that they are Catholic, and yet refusing to learn about an infallible dogma of the Church, these people show that they hugely misunderstand who and what the Church is. They'll say that they believe in Christ. Well, what did Christ say? "The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you everything" (John 14:26). What else did Christ say? To his apostles, "whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and rejects the one who sent me" (Luke 10:16). And then just to Peter, "On this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18). And again to His apostles, just for kicks: "When the Spirit of Truth comes, He will lead you into all the Truth" (John 16:13).

Walking the Road

When I first came up with the name of this blog, “The Road to Emmaus,” for the most part I just wanted something that sounded cool. Sure, I knew the story of the two disciples who were despairing because Christ had been crucified. I knew that they did not recognize him until he went all Last Supper on them at dinner, and then vanished in front of their eyes. I simply thought to myself, “I’m a disciple of Christ. I’m not in heaven yet, so I still have work to do. I need to keep walking, and hopefully I will notice Jesus, just like those disciples did.” The title sounded catchy, and it was slightly ambiguous unless you knew your scripture. And that was the extent of why I chose it.

Tantum Ergo Sacramentum

For those of you who don't know, I'm a writer for a Catholic newspaper, The Catholic Register, as part of their youth writing team this year. During Lent especially, we need to readjust, refocus, and improve our prayer lives. Click the link below to read my latest column for the paper, and see my thoughts on how we can truly spend some time dwelling with Christ:

http://www.catholicregister.org/ysn-columns/getting-closer-to-god-through-adoration

Love Part II

Over the weekend, I attended a day-long conference called 'Freedom to Love," featuring renowned Speaker Christopher West. The conference was about John Paul II's teachings on the Theology of the Body, which, in an EXTREMELY small nutshell, details how God created the bodies of Man and Woman to make "visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. [They] have been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it" (TOB 19:4). The mystery spoken of is God's Love, and how that love applies to our human love and to our ultimate destiny of happiness with God in heaven.

Something to Enter Into

The other night, I was hanging out with a couple of friends, and we started talking about our Catholic Faith. Somehow, we began to talk about the doctrine of The Resurrection of the Body - how at the Second Coming of Christ, the souls of all people will be reunited with their physical bodies. I've always felt that this one doctrine, which Christ Himself spoke of ("He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day" [Jn 6:54]) is often one that is misunderstood. Why would we get our bodies back?

Our Primary Focus

On June 12th, I travelled down to Scottsdale, Arizona for the National Life Teen Training Convention that was held for all youth ministry coordinators who had already subscribed, or were thinking of subscribing, to their youth ministry program. It was such an amazing time, filled with so many great people, so many great talks, and so much great music.

A lot of information was thrown at us over the course of 4 days. With over 500 people, we had to choose different breakout sessions. But after every session of "How to Recruit Leaders" or "Teaching Teens and their Families to Pray", or "Leading Teens into Sacred Scripture", all 500+ youth ministry coordinators and 70 priests came back together and listened to a talk that mentioned The Eucharist, or a talk that mentioned Mary. Accompanying all of this was prayer, and there was lots of it. Everywhere. Liturgy of the Hours when we woke up, prayers during general sessions, prayers at the beginning, middle, and end of breakout sessions. Daily mass and Eucharistic Adoration. Liturgy of the Hours before we went to sleep. It was incredibly challenging, yet incredibly peaceful.

Our Torch

A couple of weeks ago, Msgr. Smith’s homily compared Christian Discipleship to athletes training for the Olympics. He also mentioned St. Paul comparing faith to sports as well. Later on that night, I was praying, using one of my daily devotional books. It gave me a scripture passage to meditate on – and whatdya know! It was the one Msgr. Smith referenced that same morning.

“Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable garland, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air...”(1 Cor. 9:24-26).