No Body Now But Yours

From August 23th - August 27th, I was part of an 12 person leadership team that led a Post-Confirmation summer camp for Gr. 7s: Searching in the Spirit. It is a camp, so we all took part in tons of awesome activities like swimming, kayaking, archery, hiking, low ropes, and volleyball. But being a Catholic camp, the leaders also gave workshops and led prayers for the participants, each day focusing on one theme. By the end of the week, the youth had been given lessons based on 5 themes: We Are Sacred, We are Witnesses, We Are Forgiven, We Are Servants, and We Are One Body. All in all, it was an amazing week filled with new friends, a loving community, and lots of laughter, joy, and faith.

My 3 Favourite Prayers

I've recently been tagged by Clay Imoo in an internet meme going around consisting of your 3 favourite prayers. Many prominent bloggers, including Clay and Gene Monterastelli of Apex Ministries, have given their thoughts.

Here are my 3 favourite prayers, besides the sacrificial prayer of the Mass:

Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel: This prayer was originally taught to me by my Gr. 10 religion teacher, and again has been ingrained in me by Msgr. Smith who recites it with the congregation at the end of every mass at Christ the Redeemer. We should never forget the help that we can receive from God's messengers, especially from the leader of his army, in battling the demons that constantly try to turn us from God. It is a prayer that reminds me how important it is to fight for my soul, and to fight for the Church.

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?

Better Is One Day

In Phil 4:11, St. Paul says, "Not that I am referring to being in need, for I have learned to be content with whatever I have." With whatever he has. He realizes that because he has full faith in God, he will never be alone, and that is enough for him to be content with the situations he encounters in his life.

It's an extremely difficult thing to be truly content, in the sense that St. Paul is meaning. I take 'content' to mean 'satisfied,' but I also think that being content is very different from being complacent. Complacency is so easy to fall into. It's pretty much saying "yeah, this is good enough," and leaving it at that. It's thinking that whatever you've done thus far is great, and good enough to get you by; never feeling like you need to go anywhere else.

Apathetic Way to Be

Recently, I’ve been on a shopping spree. And by spree, I mean that I went shopping. Besides this shopping outing that I embarked on, the last time I went to a mall with the sole purpose of buying clothes was like. When Christ was born. “But wait Jeremy! You weren’t born back then!” Exactly. I go to Park Royal because there’s a Future Shop there. If I could wear an Xbox 360, I would.

My friend Daina had planted in me the seeds of “looking good.” To which I replied, “Honey, you can’t look much better than this.” Well, sort of. Well, no. And so that weekend I went to get a nice pair of jeans. And then the next weekend I went back to the mall with no specific shopping aim, but just to look around and see what caught my eye! I ended up buying some really nice stuff, and yeah I was satisfied with my purchases. Yes, I thought I looked nice in the stuff (otherwise I wouldn’t have forked over the money, even if they were on sale). But it actually made me ponder a bit, that from one sentence from a friend (not blaming her, by the way), my state of mind went from trying to look alright and keep warm to trying to look fantastic and keep cool.

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).