HOT HOT HOT! — UFFT #30

A nice view of the lake on a hot, summer day!

Living in South Carolina for many summers has taught me many things, but one lesson stands out amongst the rest: the heat in South Carolina, when coupled with the almost unbearable humidity, is unlike any heat that I have felt anywhere else in the United States. Some days it is so hot that going outside for just a few short minutes leaves you with the thought that you may have just succumbed to heatstroke! Other days, you awake in the early hours of the morning to get in a run or some sort of outdoor activity before the oppressive heat rolls in, just to discover that by 10:00AM the temperature is already scraping around 90 degrees!

I remember one time, back when I was much younger than I am currently, a friend and I were inside his house during one of these ridiculous summer days. It wasn’t just any old summer day in South Carolina, no, it was a day where the heat had broken the 100 degree mark! As fate would have it, this was the day that my friend and I were EXCEPTIONALLY bored and couldn’t find anything fun to do indoors that we hadn’t already tried for a few minutes. That left us with one option left; the one option available to two elementary school kids who had no method of transportation. We had to venture outside.

Faith For Sale! — UFFT #29

Now that I’m in college, I have to start eating like a college student!

You know how people, usually Youth Ministers and Priests, really like to use the phrase “You need to OWN your faith!”? Through my few years in Youth Ministry so far, I must have heard that phrase hundreds, maybe even thousands of times! But I really do have to admit, I’ve never quite understood what it stood for. I mean, the phrase itself just sounds odd, doesn’t it? I mean, I haven’t ever seen a stand on the side of the road selling my faith, or a huge department store selling the faiths of all different types of people where I can go to purchase my faith! So if I can’t just buy my faith, how on earth am I supposed to own it? Well, I may have finally started to really understand what people mean when they talk about “owning your faith.”

About a week ago, I moved into Clemson University to begin my first year in college. For some people who I talked to during this past summer, the fact that they were going away to college had really set in early, either when they had received their acceptance letters, picked out their roommate, or something else of the sort. For me, the fact that I was actually moving out of my hometown and setting up shop for a year here in Clemson really didn’t set in until both my parents and my roommate’s parents had left and we were finally on our own. At that point, I could just feel that something had changed; I felt different somehow.

A Not-So Heavenly Melody — UFFT #28

Christ is truly present among us. How blessed are we to be able to experience that?

Imagine this; you walk into a darkened room, empty except for a few people spaced out around. As your eyes begin to adjust to the extremely dim lighting, you see that there are about a hundred chairs, maybe more, placed around the room in a square pattern surrounding a small, raised table with a clean, white cloth draped over top. On top of the raised table, you see a few gently flickering candles casting their light about the room and sending sparkles onto a beautiful golden vessel. As you investigate more closely, you realize that this is just no ordinary vessel, this is a monstrance, and inside the monstrance is Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. You can’t take your eyes off of Him; everything else spectacular about the room seems to fade away as you focus more and more on the beauty that is the Eucharist. Suddenly, you begin to get this feeling within you, a feeling of utter disbelief that Christ would come to spend time with you. You begin to wonder, how could you ever give back during this time? How could you honor Him with all that you are during this time? What could you possibly do that would be worthy of having Him witness it?

This is exactly how I felt in this same situation this past summer. I was working at a summer camp for my Diocese and we were in the middle of an amazing Adoration time, but there were only a handful of people left in the room; the adult staff and the Behind the Scenes staff. I was in absolute awe over the fact that Christ was present in that room, which was kind of weird for me because it’s not the first time that I had been to Adoration by any means, but nevertheless I found my mind wandering in that direction. As I continued to pray and meditate and just BE in God’s presence, I kept getting this nagging voice in the back of my head. It said something very simple to me, something so simple that I just kept dismissing it without taking any time to consider it. The voice kept saying “There is an opportunity here. Don’t be afraid.”

A Helping Hand — UFFT #27

I love today’s Gospel reading. For those of you who don’t know or can’t remember (it’s ok, sometimes we forget!) the reading comes from Matthew 14: 22-33. It’s the story of Jesus walking on water and Peter’s not-so-successful attempt to follow in Christ’s footsteps, literally.

Today I was helping out at a retreat at my Church playing music, and during the opening prayer, we all took some time to meditate on that passage from Matthew. I love doing this sort of group activity because the Gospels are so full of incredible lessons that when people share what they discovered, more often than not they have a wide variety of different answers. That being said, I thought that today’s article would be a bit different; rather than me prompting you by giving some food for thought, I’m going to prompt you by sharing what I discovered.

Are You Comfortable? — UFFT #26

The view from behind the altar after Mass. And no, that’s not a painting, that’s a window.

This weekend, I went to the beach. I went to the beach to help work a retreat that was happening for a few people from my Diocese. Since I was going specifically to help, I really expected to be giving and giving and giving all weekend long, which honestly would have been perfectly fine with me because I really enjoy giving my time to help others, it’s just how I’ve been raised! But God had other plans.

For those who know me or have read really any of the stuff that I’ve written for Unleavened previously, you would know that I’m pretty shy around people that I don’t know very well. In fact, it really extends beyond just shyness, I’m just plain awkward in one-on-one conversations. I don’t really know why I’m like that, it’s just my nature to want to sit back and listen rather than try and talk someone’s ear off! Sitting back during group conversations with people that I don’t know very well is comfortable for me, it’s easy, but God shared something amazing with me this weekend that has challenged me to my inner core.

This weekend, everyone who was on retreat, both adults and youth, spent some time going through a guided Bible Meditation. We read over a passage from Luke’s Gospel, Luke 5:1-11. I recommend you go look it up and read the passage, because it’s a really great one, but for those of you who would power-read through this post, to sum it up here’s basically what happened:

Jesus was being crowded by many people trying to hear his teaching, so he asked one of the nearby fishermen (Simon Peter) to put out a short distance from shore so that He could preach from there. Once He was done preaching, Jesus asked Simon to sail Simon’s boat out to deeper waters and to cast the nets out, even though after a whole night of fishing, Simon had caught nothing. When the nets were cast into the ocean, so many fish were caught up in the nets that the nets began to break. Seeing this, Simon Peter threw himself to the ground, asking Jesus to depart from him.

As I was running that passage around in my head, something odd stuck out to me. As Jesus was in the shallow waters, He was preaching to the people, but nothing more than that is heard about the crowd or anyone in it for the rest of the story. Instead, Jesus put out to deeper waters, and there, unlike close to the shore, is where a true conversion happened.

I think by having this oddity stick out to me, God was trying to tell me something about myself and my mission on Earth. You see, like I was saying before, I like to be comfortable, I like to stay in that shallow water where I can know for certain that I’ll be ok. Push me any farther out, however, and I begin to like it less and less the farther away from the shore I get. But the important part about all of this is that Luke doesn’t mention anything about conversion of other people until Jesus goes out into the deeper waters. I think that God was trying to tell me that if I just sit around and stay in my comfort zone, then I won’t be able to fully complete the tasks that He has set forth for me. In order to truly be the light of Christ to other people, I have to step outside my comfort zone; I have to put out into the deep.

So that’s my challenge for you this week. First of all, think, where are you MOST comfortable? How about where you’re LEAST comfortable? Focus on that place or situation where you’re the least comfortable; is God calling you to step outside your comfort zone to help someone else, or even help yourself become the best child of God that you can be? Take a risk, go outside your comfort zone; I promise you’ll be amazed at what you’ll find.

The Greatest of These… — UFFT #25

The feeling of triumph was just too much to not include my triumphant picture!

I love the outdoors! Nature is absolutely gorgeous and when the temperature is JUST right, there’s nothing better than going out exploring with some great friends to see what secrets creation holds!

Yesterday, a few friends and I decided to go hiking up in the northern part of South Carolina (near the Greenville area). Our mission? Find a beautiful place known as “Rainbow Falls”.

So early that morning, we loaded up, made the three-ish hour drive to the upstate mountains, and arrived at the park’s welcome center. When we told the Park Rangers that we were planning on hiking up to Rainbow Falls, they gave us a warning. They said that the trail that led up to the falls was one of the hardest trails in that mountain area because the entire walk was incredibly steep and because at some points the trail was practically non-existent, and in order to get across the small rivers created by the falls farther up the mountain, we would have to get creative. Of course, we were all very determined to get up to those falls, so we set off in high spirits, laughing and joking all the way to the foot of the mountain trail.

You Can Lead a Horse to Water… — UFFT #24

Sometimes you just have to let God do His work.

We’ve probably all heard the old saying “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink!” used time and time again throughout our lives; I know I have. More often than not, people tell me that often-used cliché while I’m venting about a failed attempt at trying to convince, persuade, or teach someone to think like I do.

It’s really frustrating to me when I’m in conversation with someone and no matter how solid my evidence is, no matter how believable and accurate my facts are, and no matter how much I point out the tiniest flaws in their argument, they refuse to side with me and think how I think or believe what I believe. Being the logical person that I am, this sort of stubbornness just doesn’t make sense to me!

It’s even MORE frustrating because lately we, as Catholics, have been called to a “New Evangelization” to try and get the word out about the Good News of Jesus Christ that’s found in the Catholic Church, the fullness of truth! But it seems that no matter what, I can’t seem to get people to fall in love with the Church, no matter what I do! I can bring them to Youth Group, talk them through the Mass till I’m blue in the face, and even answer their never-ending questions about transubstantiation and the Saints, but at the end of the day, I can never get masses of people to learn to love the Catholic Church!

My Dangerous Prayer — UFFT #23

Asking for humility is dangerous, but living without it is even more so.

Well, I can’t say that I didn’t ask for it. I can’t say that God did all of this to me without my permission, because, well, I DID indeed give Him permission…as a matter of fact, I asked Him to do it. Confused? Let me give you some background.

This summer I have been so blessed to help out at both of my Diocese’s summer camps (CLI), one for the Jr. High kids and one for the High School kids. Both of them were such an incredible experience and really worked wonders on my faith life. During the Jr. High CLI, I got to be a small group leader (ironically with Elizabeth Collins, the newest member of Unleavened Ministries!) and I had the time of my life. I got to experience what it was like to directly minister to these kids, some of whom had never really thought about faith in a serious way.

Rising Up — UFFT #22

Guess they should have labeled this “Divine Inspiration”!

This past week has been absolutely insane. Why, you ask? Well, for the past week, I have had the opportunity to be a Counselor at this summer’s Jr. High CLI, a week-long summer camp put on by the Diocese of Charleston every summer. Though it was insane, the week itself was incredible; the campers had a blast, they learned a lot about faith, and on top of it all, they got to learn how to apply their faith in their lives as they returned home.

Even though it is my second year on the JHCLI Staff as a Counselor, it never ceased to amaze me just how much I was learning by being a Counselor. Whether it be just from the talks, the small group time with our kids, or just the experience of how to lead those same small groups, every Counselor got something new out of the experience. It was amazing to see just how much of an impact that the camp had on the campers, but it was something altogether more incredible to see how much the Counselors developed, even just over the short span of a single week.

Catholicism… WOW! It’s EVERYWHERE! — UFFT #21

The Italy Crew, all ready to board the flight to Europe!

During the Spring Break of my Junior year, I got an amazing opportunity! Myself, along with a few others from my school (most of whom were my close friends) got to go on the trip of a lifetime with one of our favorite teachers. Where did we go? Beautiful Italy!

It was a really busy span of days for us, each day being full of seeing sights, exploring, and just taking in the beauties that Italy had to offer! We visited Florence, Assisi, Venice, Rome, and Vatican City during the course of the trip, and each city had tons of incredible buildings, landscapes, and cultures that were so new to all of us and that we just wanted so desperately to understand and be a part of! There was one part of our trip, however, that was pretty familiar, considering none of us spoke a lick of Italian!

Since our trip spanned over more than a week, there were times when we stopped to attend Mass. Granted, again, we didn’t really UNDERSTAND most of what was being said since none of us spoke Italian, and some of the customs were different, but there was an odd comfort in knowing that we were celebrating the same Catholic Mass that our friends and families would be celebrating back in the States! Now, you may be thinking, “Well that’s not THAT amazing, I mean, you WERE in Italy, one of the most Catholic countries on the GLOBE!” and that is true, however it was truly amazing if you flipped the scenario around.

You see, we were so close to the center of the Catholic Church (Vatican City), that it was very obvious to all of us that the Catholicism in that area would be the truest, purest Catholicism. I mean, things are purest closest to the source after all! What really amazed me is that the Mass that we celebrated in Italy was the same Mass that we celebrate in North America, and South America, and Europe, Asia, Africa, the same Mass that is celebrated EVERYWHERE! Even if I were to attend a Catholic Mass that is thousands of miles away from Vatican City, the Mass would still be as pure and true as if it were celebrated by the Pope himself!

It’s no secret to anyone who knows about the origins of the word “Catholic” that the Catholic Church is the same everywhere, because the definition of the word “Catholic” IS Universal. Until my trip to Italy, it never really occurred to me just how true that definition is! I definitely had the time of my life in Italy, and I think that everyone else who went could easily say the same, but the thing that stuck with me the most was that even when I travelled abroad, my faith still was able to come with me. That’s pretty incredible.