Day 36, Monday

"Some things I cannot change, but 'til I try, I'll never know!"

I am currently singing along to the "Wicked" soundtrack with my roommate, so I have a feeling this post may be more brief than most because this is too fun.

Today, I told my students that today was the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary/Victory.  Of course, I talked about rosary for a bit, how awesome Mama Mary is, and we prayed a decade of the rosary for our personal intentions.  

Then we read a couple of articles from "The Witness"-The Archdiocese of Dubuque's newspaper.  Both had to do with Pope Francis and Morality.  Man, I love how awesome he is!  He is all about showing love and mercy towards those who show favor towards grave sins or people who have taken part in these: (abortion, contraceptive methods, etc.)  The pope talks about how we need to focus on Jesus' teaching and his approach: LOVE and MERCY.  Sorry, talking down to people is not going to get them to change their hearts.  Introducing them to Jesus' love and mercy through our love and mercy will.  

Then we moved onto another objective which we covered mostly during the sacrament of Reconciliation-just added how forgiveness will ultimately lead to happiness.  We are only happy until we are completely satisfied with God.  Here's a beautiful quotations from Bl. JP2 that I posted as a status last night:

"It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal."  -Bl. John Paul II

Lastly, a few of my students told me about our pastor's homily yesterday about how he said he would be willing to do a monthly Sunday youth mass if students came forward and asked him.  I told them that the hardest part is over- getting approval and someone willing to say an evening mass with a homily directed towards the youth.  And I even told them that I'd be willing to help them organize it with our pastor.  The fact that they have 2 adults that will make this happen makes this a piece of cake.  I'm going to make sure this happens! Although, when we started chatting more about logistics and stuff, one of them said, "Well, it might not even be worth it.  It will probably just be the few of us who want it in the first place."  I made sure to tell this student that we need to always welcome more into our church and we never know how the Holy Spirit may inspire one or 50, or 100 of their classmates or friends to join us once a month for a Sunday night youth mass.  We'll see!  Please pray for this.

Please know of my prayers for all of you.  Allow yourself to be satisfied with God.  He is EVERYTHING!