It's my goal to post on here once a week for at least this next year for a couple different reasons. One is that it has been helpful over the last four months to have myself sit down and take in what has been going on in my daily life so that I can appreciate it more. Another is to reach out to the people that I currently don't get to see on a very frequent basis or that live far away and be able to share this new journey with them.
One of the things that I'm enjoying about the structure of this first year of lay-consecrated life with Youth Apostles is that I'm not doing this discernment on my own. Chip is also in the midst of his first year commitment and each week at least two if not three times we sit down with different consecrated brothers and discuss either formation/studies on the consecrated life from the perspective of the different books that we're reading and also just how we're doing with the new day to day routine of prayer, community time, ministry, and personal goals. That structure really keeps me from getting complacent and not really examining how this new style of life is either making me more joyful or is causing me to not be joyful.
This past week was quite a busy one for me, we had the 30th Anniversary for Youth Apostles to prepare for and went very well this past Friday. Bishop Louverde and about 20-30 diocesan priests, seminarians, and deacons showed up and a crowd of about 450 showed up to celebrate with us. I also had my normal schedule at Mason, gave a talk on 'Female Modesty:A guy's perspective', and then volunteered to speak with another brother at the diocesan Youth Rally on the lay-consecrated life and what it has been like to come to this point in my discernment. It was also my birthday this past week (Tuesday) and I spent all day Monday smoking a couple pork shoulders in the smoker that I aquired this past June and that was a delightful couple of days in themselves.
The thing that was the focus of the most of my energy was the talk on 'Female Modesty' because it was directed to middle school teenage girls, which presents a number of challenges being a guy talking to that crowd. You have the age of innocence to protect as well as having the charge of making sure you are adequately covering the material and sugar coating things to a point that it is irrelevant. The talk I've been told was well received, which speaks more to the work of the Holy Spirit than my own experience talking to that aged group. When I showed up I had a pleasant surprise of the crowd not just being middle school girls, but their mothers as well, which just kicks that tenderness of the situation up a notch and I quickly examined my talk once more and decisively cut anything that could be taken the wrong way by a mixed crowd of women. As in I didn't want the mothers thinking that I was judging the innocence of their daughters based on the material that I was presenting and what a guy may or may not perceive when he sees a girl dressed in an immodest fashion.
The next few weeks are a little more relaxed for me and I'm looking to get into spending more time on the formation readings. The first few books that we've been reading are much smaller than the ones to come so it'll likely require a bit more time to prepare for the discussions that we have. Right now I'm re-reading Opening to God by Fr. Thomas Green, SJ and Redemptionis Donum by Pope John Paul II. Opening to God is just a great primer on prayer for those looking to get more out of that time they spend with God and the Redemptionis Donum is quite a heavy read even though the book looks like the size of a pamphlet book(40 pages on note card size paper), Pope John Paul II was quite a deep man of prayer and a brilliant philosopher, but he's able to break it down in to more digestible nuggets for those not quite so brilliant (ie yours truly).
On a goofy note I decided to name my fish that I've had since my super-senior year of college. Three of the original 7 are left and one that I acquired last year about this time. Since I have four I decided to make it interesting and try to do some parallelism with the gospel writers since at least 3 of the 4 are paralleled with animals when you see symbols of them.
Matthew – Silver Hatchet Tetra (Whoa to you brood of Vipers)
Mark – Black Skirt Tetra – (Mark/Dark)
Luke – White Skirt Tetra – (Star Wars Reference)
John – Bleeding Heart Tetra (The Beloved Disciple)
Mark – Black Skirt Tetra – (Mark/Dark)
Luke – White Skirt Tetra – (Star Wars Reference)
John – Bleeding Heart Tetra (The Beloved Disciple)
