Our Hope

Yesterday evening, I was helping lead a Life Teen social event at my parish, celebrating the beatification of (now) Blessed Pope John Paul II. At one point during the night, a youth received a text. And then another youth received a text. And the exclamation from both was the same: "Hey guys! Osama Bin Laden is dead!" Immediately there was an eruption of discussion: Did he get shot? Who shot him? Did they simply find his body? Was the US involved? The announcement of the death of a guy who many presume to be behind so much of the pain and heartache in recent history was jarring. I for one, was shocked that people were already sending texts about it. But one of the youth cut to the heart of the matter. When someone again declared, "It's true! He's dead!" this youth meekly asked,

"...Should we...be happy about this?"

Rise Up: It's Kinda Rhetorical

I just had the best New Years ever by attending CCO's Rise Up Conference, this year held in Montreal. The days from Tuesday Dec. 28th to Saturday Jan. 1st proved to be such a beautiful example of how we, the young people in the Church, are challenging ourselves. Through talks, prayer, mass, praise and worship, workshops, exploring Montreal and ushering in the new year with a banquet and dance, the 600+ young adults, CCO staff, nuns, priests and bishops in attendance came to better understand how they are meant to more fully live and spread the Catholic faith. It was such a humbling, exciting and hopeful experience.

Keep Going

Growing in faith is a lifelong journey, not a one time "here's your faith, have a good day" thing. Very understandable - life is full of success, full of opportunities, but it is also full of stress, sadness, and failure. In the whirlwind that is life, faith can be a difficult thing to hold on to.

But many people do hold onto it. They realize that faith is a journey, and that Christ never said it was going to be easy. Included in that faith journey is something that C.S. Lewis called the "Law of Undulations," the fact that we can experience times of highs and lows in our lives; a series of peaks and valleys - ups and downs. And yet, while we all experience these ups and downs, we can still be progressing, becoming more aware, becoming stronger, and becoming closer to God, despite our many setbacks.