Advent: Waiting and Preparing

by Kaitlyn Willy, BCC Chaplain’s Apprentice

I’ve been trying to find time to write since I got back from break, but like everyone at Butler, the end of the semester has me swamped. Between all the work I have to do, my community commitments, studying, and trying to finish my 100 book challenge by December 31, I really don’t have time to do much, including Advent. So, I took it as a sign from God at 2:30pm today when I sat down and finally looked at the Advent calendar on busted halo and it gave me this challenge: “Sit down today and finally begin that long-term project you’ve been meaning to start or pick it up again if you’ve stopped working on it.”  (By the way, you should totally check out the calendar! http://bustedhalo.com/features/advent-calendar-2012)

Okay, God, I’ll write the blog article.

Advent. I love Advent. And by that I mean I L-O-V-E Advent. It’s my favorite liturgical season. I get really excited every year on the first Sunday of Advent. We get to light the candles. We get to start a new liturgical year, start a new year in the lectionary. I get to wear LOTS of purple. Advent is THE BEST. My love for Advent is a little ironic; since it’s the season of waiting and waiting might be my single least favorite activity. In spite of my love for this season of lights, I’m not the best at “doing” Advent, at least not from a traditional perspective. I don’t have a Jesse tree in my home. I only rarely remember to open the door on my advent calendar and read the reading for the day (apparently most of you have advent calendars with chocolate? I guess then I’d remember… instead, mine has scripture). We’re four days into the season and I haven’t read a single page of my Advent prayer book for the year because it’s at home and I’m at work and rarely remember to bring it in or to read it at home—and I sincerely doubt I will get much better at remembering. Despite all of that, it’s still my favorite season.

Advent is a season of waiting, yes. But, look at what we’re waiting for! At Advent, we remind ourselves that not only are we soon to celebrate the birthday of our Savior, Christmas, but also that we are anticipating, every moment and every day, the second coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Is that exciting, or what?

This week, I had a great experience with the BCC where we invited other faith groups to come for an Advent Information session. Our friends from Hillel who came asked us what this second coming thing was anyways, and we had the opportunity to explain it, or at least to try to explain what we believe about it. As I reminded the BCC students, the idea of the Second Coming is not something to meet with fear, but rather with joy. Christ is coming!! ALLELUIA!! He is coming to take away the things that come between us, to let us be as we were meant to be.

I recently read the book Perelandra by C.S. Lewis. If you haven’t read the space trilogy, you should. Something that Lewis said in this book really struck me and is appropriate to think about as we are experiencing Advent. In Perelandra, the main character, Ransom, is having a conversation with the Queen and King of an unfallen world (aka, Adam and Eve, only an Adam and Eve who withstood the serpent’s temptations and did not give in). They are discussing what we call the end of time. Ransom tries to explain that because the world will change drastically when Christ comes again, we believe it will be the end of the world. Instead of agreeing, the Queen says that it is really the beginning. If we believe that we are a fallen world, that this is not how the world was meant to be, and that when Christ comes the world will be as it was meant to be, then we have to accept that in preparing for Christ’s coming, for the coming of the kingdom, we are not preparing for an end, but rather a new beginning. While we certainly need to take a good look at ourselves and address our sinfulness and repent, the thought of the new beginning should bring us joy and consolation, not fear.

So, Advent is about preparing to welcome Christ into our hearts and preparing for the second coming—big tasks, for sure, but exciting. The next question that our Hillel friends asked us was how do we do this?

Advent is three dimensional, and the part we’ve talked about above covers only two of the dimensions. The third dimension is recognizing that we not only welcome Christ into our hearts and await the second coming, but that to do so and prepare, we must greet Christ in every person we encounter. Every person we meet has a divine soul and is, on some level, a divine being. We are all made in God’s image and likeness. C.S. Lewis says something of this as well:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - These are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” – C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory

And if we understand this, that these immortal souls who we meet every day are really so extraordinary, then how we treat them must by necessity change from how we act now. In his Rule (Chapter 53—Thanks, Pat, for sharing this), St. Benedict says this of greetings guests:

Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for He is going to say, "I came as a guest, and you received Me" (Matt. 25:35). And to all let due honor be shown, especially to the domestics of the faith and to pilgrims.

As soon as a guest is announced, therefore, let the Superior or the brethren meet him

with all charitable service. And first of all let them pray together,and then exchange the kiss of peace. For the kiss of peace should not be offered until after the prayers have been said, on account of the devil's deceptions.

In the salutation of all guests, whether arriving or departing, let all humility be shown. Let the head be bowed or the whole body prostrated on the ground in adoration of Christ, who indeed is received in their persons.

After the guests have been received and taken to prayer, let the Superior or someone appointed by him sit with them. Let the divine law be read before the guest for his edification, and then let all kindness be shown him. The Superior shall break his fast for the sake of a guest, unless it happens to be a principal fast day which may not be violated. The brethren, however, shall observe the customary fasts.

Let the Abbot give the guests water for their hands; and let both Abbot and community wash the feet of all guests. After the washing of the feet let them say this verse: "We have received Your mercy, O God, in the midst of Your temple" (Ps.47[48]:10).

In the reception of the poor and of pilgrims the greatest care and solicitude should be shown, because it is especially in them that Christ is received; for as far as the rich are concerned, the very fear which they inspire wins respect for them.

Now, I know that I cannot kiss or wash the feet of every guest who comes into my house (or every student that comes into my office)—if for no other reason, because they (and, probably, I) would feel very uncomfortable with it. Yet, as I am reminded by Lewis and St. Benedict, I often fail to do more than look up from my work or cooking or book when someone enters my office or my home. I greet them half-heartedly, then, unless something more is needed from me, I go back to my work.

Is that really a way to welcome a human being, made in the image and likeness of God, an immortal soul?

Advent is really a time when we try to remember this in a special way. It is not that we aren’t always supposed to love our neighbor—obviously, that is part of our daily life as Christians, even outside of Advent. The thing about Advent is that it is a reminder of how we should act, how we should love. As I said in my last post, the spirit of Christmas is love. If Advent is the preparation for Christmas and the spirit of Christmas is love, then Advent is a time to practice love—not only for our friends, but for strangers; not only for strangers, but our families and neighbors we don’t like as well as others.

So, during this wonderful season of Advent, I invite you to stand back and look at those around you. Remember Lewis’s reflections and St. Benedict’s Rule. As you wait to welcome Christ into the world at Christmas, lovingly welcome these humans made in the image of Christ into your life. I promise you, these preparations will it make Christmas mean so much more when the waiting is over and we welcome Christ in on December 25.

On Thanksgiving and Delight

Written by Kaitlyn Willy
BCC Chaplain's Apprentice
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I cannot believe it is November! November is a crazy month in college, I think. We just celebrated Halloween (with a super awesome Confused Holiday party—check out the BCC Facebook page for pictures) and now we’re getting ready for Thanksgiving Break.

I love Thanksgiving. It’s not about the food—with celiac, most of my family’s food choices make me sick—but rather, it’s about seeing my family for the first time in a long time, some of them for the first time since Christmas.

The worst thing about being so far from home in college, and now as a college grad, has always been what I am missing at home. I have baby cousins whose ages span from one year to six years. I have missed more of the important moments of their childhoods than I can bear. The only thing that really makes it bearable is the time I get to spend with them at the holidays. 

Last week, as I was thinking about how close Thanksgiving was, I kept thinking about these beautiful babies and how I couldn’t wait to see and hug each one. These cousins, really the sons and daughters of my cousins, Bailey, Trustin, Westin, Colton and Jarret Wayne are pretty much the highlight of every holiday (and the cause of much ruckus and chaos that it wouldn’t be a holiday without). Food is nice, presents are great, but these beautiful kids and the energy and love I get from them are at the top of my list when I think about what I’m thankful for at Thanksgiving; them and their mommies and daddies, their grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles who have loved me from the moment that I was born. I come from a big, crazy, hillbilly family in the Missouri Ozarks that makes the family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding look tame. Both sides of my family live in the same town and together, we make up about half of Rolla (or at least, that’s how it seems). Words are inadequate to express how much I love them and how hard it is to be so far away.

Just as I was beginning to look forward to this Thanksgiving and getting to see my family, I found out that one of these precious little ones, Jarret, was sick. Jarret is my cousin Travis’ son and has always been the one who was more likely to be sick. This time, he had had an emergency appendectomy (extremely rare for a five year old) that caused an infection. They have had to do two more surgeries (one major, one minor) since and Jarret is still in the hospital. Every day, I wait for a text message from my aunt or a phone call from my mother to see how he is doing. I am scared at how sick he seems to be and bothered that I’m not there to do anything (as if I could do anything anyway). I believe with all my heart that with prayers and love, he will be okay. But I can’t help but think about how this experience reminds me of my junior year.

As many of you know, I spent the second semester of my sophomore year in Rome. While I was there, two of my cousins passed away, one from cancer and another from a blood clot. The week I got back, another cousin died, this time in a car accident. It was a horrible, difficult, painful year for our family and when my cousin, Travis, was in a serious car accident five days before the start of my junior year, I wasn’t sure how to keep moving. It felt like I was trying to move under water, everything was sluggish, everything was slow. Even though Trav and I have never been extremely close, I couldn’t imagine my life without his snarky personality or beautiful smile or wonderful laugh. For several months, I started my day by checking facebook to see what updates his mom or sisters had posted, called my Mom to check in, texted my aunts. It was not until Thanksgiving that I got to see him, safe, alive, and getting healthier every day. That Thanksgiving, even in light of the losses we had suffered, we truly had a reason to be thankful.

 Travis and Jarret Wayne (I think JW is two in this picture), my two miracles!

I believe with my whole heart that Travis recovered as a result of the numerous prayers that were being offered for him. Our whole hometown seemed to rise up and embrace our family with love and support and give their prayers. My university community and the high school students I worked with prayed for us, my priest offered many masses for Travis, and friends would sit with me and pray and hold me and let me cry. That’s what healed Travis, and I believe that with those same prayers, Jarret will be okay, too.

Of course, now I have even more desire to be home with my family this Thanksgiving. I want to support my cousin Chris, Jarret’s grandma, who has spent far too much time in the hospital as a caregiver these last few years. I want to be able to show my love for this family whose love gives me life. And I want to be able to be there, to look at and count my blessings, and to thank God for the gifts He has given me.

As Thanksgiving approaches, we talk a lot about what we are thankful for, perhaps more often than we do all the rest of the year combined. But I want to introduce a new word to you, a word that I have been meditating on a lot lately: delight. Delight is something that wells up inside you, that brings you joy even when there is also sadness.

Take delight in those you love. Something I enjoy immensely is to stand apart for a moment and look at a group of people whom I love deeply and just delight in this gift of having them, having them so near to me, being given the opportunity to love them. When I go home next week, I will spend a lot of time delighting. I will delight in holding Audrey Cecilia, the two-month-old daughter of one of my best friends who I haven’t gotten to meet yet. I will delight in seeing Travis healthy and hopefully, I can delight in Jarret being healthy too. I will delight in the little ones and all my cousins, my aunts, uncles, and my parents without whom I could not be me. In this delighting, I grow more grateful and also grow closer to the God who stands and looks at and delights in me. And I will thank God that I have this chance to be with them, that I can delight in them and love them in person, and that He has made me in His image, made me His own delight.

So, please pray for Jarret and our family and be safe as you go home to delight in your own family. Happy Thanksgiving!

Finding our Elis...

Written by Danielle Vaclavik
BCC Senior

The first reading we reflected on during the Busy Person’s Retreat was about Samuel, a student living in the temple and learning from the priest Eli.  He knew who God was supposed to be but did not know who God was personally because he lived in a time when signs from God were rare.  In the night, God called out to Samuel but when Samuel heard God, he thought it was Eli and went into Eli’s room.  Eli told him to go back to bed.  This happened three times before Eli realized what was happening.  He told Samuel the next time he heard the voice to respond “Speak, your servant is listening.” 

I started Sunday school in Kindergarten and attended all the way through Confirmation.  My mom took me to mass every weekend and to confession when I didn’t.  Like Samuel, I had been schooled in the ways of the church.  I knew who God was supposed to be, but like Samuel, we live in a world where messages from the Lord are rare and visions are quite uncommon.  For me, God was a hypothetical not a reality.

Like so many kids, college offered me the excuse and the freedom to walk away from church.  Soon Sundays were for sleeping in, not church.  For the next three years, I never regretted my decision to walk away.  I had everything I needed.  Looking back, God came to me so many times to offer me his hand.  He came through my family.  He came through my friends.  He came in the quiet of the night when I cried out wondering why I wasn’t happy when I had everything on my “checklist to success”.  He followed after me, calling my name, promising comfort and healing if I could just hear him.  But, I walked past him in the night, attributing those promises of comfort to other things.  Money. Boys. Drinking. Prestige. Yet, he did not give up.  God kept calling my name.

Last spring I studied abroad.  I arrived in Rome not knowing anyone.  I was scared but hopeful for the semester to come.  Never could I have imagined the plans God had in store for me.  God followed me to Rome.  Well actually, it would be more accurate to say he called to me all the way from Rome.  I arrived searching for the voice in my head.  I followed it all over Rome and half of Italy before it led me into a little chapel on Ash Wednesday, my first mass in over three years.  Here I met my Eli.

As my friends and I sat waiting for mass to start, a tall blonde deacon came over to ask us to help with the readings.  Flustered, I said “Yes”, while I internally thought, “I haven’t been in a church in three years and this guy wants me up on the alter?!”  Deacon Victor was an American seminary student in his last year before priesthood.  I didn’t know it at the time, but he and his good friend, Deacon Pat, would become stables in my everyday life from that day forward.  God, it seems, impatient for me to finally get the picture, had sent me not one but two Elis for my time in Rome. 

Through a chain of events that could truly have only been divine intervention, my roommate, Erica, and I agreed to attend Day 3 of the Lenten Station Churches with Victor and Pat the following day.  Station Mass is not the Stations of the Cross, but an ancient Roman tradition in which, during Lent, a mass is celebrated at a specific church each day.  Not just any 40 churches, but the same 40 churches every year since the Council of Trent.  Some of these churches were so old that they only celebrated this one mass a year.  After mass, we would look around and sometimes get to see tourist restricted areas like crypts and underground chapels. 

Without really knowing why, my roommate and I decided we would go to every 7am Station Mass we were in town for.  This was no easy commitment for a study abroad kid looking for a laid back semester in Europe.  So here I was getting up at 5am everyday to attend mass, totally out of my depth.  I clung to the little red history book they gave us detailing each church’s unique history.  I clung to it like a shield because being there for academic reasons was easier than being there for the right reasons.  Because even though I was going to mass with all these seminarians and nuns, I still felt silly.  I felt stupid for wanting to go.  I felt like a fake.

Mass was usually followed by a cappuccino and croissant at a café, which, as Lent and our friendships progressed, turned into two hour daily breakfasts where I learned about God from my Elis.  They were unknowingly preparing me, so that one morning, in some cathedral in Rome, in a sleep deprived haze, as I was going through the motions of mass, when God spoke quietly in my heart, I knew him.  My response was not as eloquent as Samuel’s.  I am ashamed to say it was more like a litany of angry accusations.  And you know what?  God laughed at me and then politely listed off all the moments in my life when he had come to me in the night and I had walked straight passed him to seek refuge elsewhere.  That day I started to pray, really pray.  It changed everything.  I would just kneel there talking to God…yelling at God…crying with God…simply listening to the silence, letting his voice in.  And it was wonderful.

Like Samuel, my Elis showed me how to hear God when he called my name.  The men and women I met in Rome changed my life.  They opened my eyes simply by being living examples of Jesus, being present in my life and including me in theirs.  I have learned, we all have Elis in our lives teaching us and preparing us to know and understand God.  They prepare us so, that when God calls out, we will be able to answer confidently; “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”

In the Spirit of Christ, which is Love

by Kaitlyn Willy
Chaplain's Apprentice

So, I was going to write about all the travels that I’ve been doing lately. I mean, I’ve gotten to do a lot. I spent a weekend at St. Mary of the Woods for my orientation as a Providence Associate. That was an awesome opportunity to grow closer to God. I then spent last weekend, actually 5 days, in Dallas for a Ministry Conference. I got to see cool people, family and friends that I have been missing and wanting to see. I’ve had so many blessings lately and I wanted to tell you all about that. But then, today, I was reading my facebook news feed and something else more important was re-iterated to me in a way that I feel like I have to tell you about it.

One of my good friends from college is also one of my heroes. Her name is Genevieve. I call her Genna. And Genna is a teacher in the poorest school district at the poorest grade school in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Yes, I know, we talk a lot about poverty at the BCC. We’re Catholic and part of Catholic Social Teaching is preferential option for the poor. But let me tell you about this poverty.

One of the students in the bilingual class at Gena’s school lost his shoes the other day.

Who knows where or why, he’s a five year old boy. That happens. The problem is, they were his only pair of shoes. His mother sent him to school in slippers. The school said that wasn’t appropriate footwear and he had to go home until he had real shoes. His mom can’t buy shoes until the middle of the month at payday. It’s the beginning of the month now. This kid is going to have to stay home from school for a week—in kindergarten, an important year where missing a week is like missing a month—because his mom can’t buy shoes. And that’s not to mention that he probably gets the majority of his food at school. So now, he has no shoes and he’s hungry. And the school district can’t do a thing about it, because they can’t even put paper in the classrooms. The teachers have to buy their own supplies. And let me tell you, these teachers don’t get paid much.

Guys, this is not okay.

My first instinct was to ask Genna what size shoes I need to buy this kid. I mean, I can’t do a lot to change the world, but I can get this kid shoes so he can go to school. Genna can’t do it—the school doesn’t pay her enough to keep her own kids in nice shoes, much less put shoes on her students. I’m still waiting to find out about his shoe size. I know there are several other friends of Genna who are waiting for the same thing. One of us will get him shoes. And when we do, he will go to school. And someday, I pray, he will change the world and then, maybe there won’t be any kids without shoes.

But my buying a pair of shoes doesn’t really solve the problem.

The problem is, I live in a house with nine other people. Between all of us, there are probably over hundred pairs of shoes in this house. And there are probably over a hundred kids in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex whose shoes are too small or too big and cause blisters or too worn to keep their feet warm. Why? Why is it that in the richest nation in the world in the 21^st century this is still happening? And forget Dallas, my old home, what about Indianapolis? What about our city, the one in which we attend school and live at least 9 months out of the year? What about the kids in our schools?

I imagine it’s not much different.

We need to reevaluate our lives, people.

I have been talking about Nazareth Farm (where the BCC will be taking our Alternative Spring Break trip next semester) a lot lately. That’s because a) I love it and b) I want you to go and love it, too. One of the four cornerstones of Nazareth Farm is simplicity. Let’s talk about simplicity for a moment.

Simplicity seems to mean something different for every person. One person can say they’re living in simplicity while they have a flat screen tv and a dvr (I would question this person and their idea of need). The next person might be living in a tiny house (check out Tumbleweed Tiny Houses if you don’t know what I’m talking about) and own less than 100 items (I can’t do that—sorry, my books are really important to me). Whatever you think simplicity is, we are called to it. As we say at Naz Farm, we are called to live simply so that others may simply live.

During the month of November, I would like to both invite and challenge you to try to live more simply. Maybe that means not going out for that burger, ordering that pizza or those insomnia cookies. Maybe that means that instead of buying a new scarf, you’re going to use the one you bought last year. Same for that new coat and those new mittens. Maybe you’ll look in your closet, count the number of pairs of shoes you own and donate a dollar for every pair to the BCC Christmas Family Adoption fund. If you don’t have a lot of shoes, but find yourself buying a lot of something else, maybe you’ll match that. Maybe you’ll tell Mom and Dad that instead of yet another new blouse or new boots, you want to donate that money somewhere else. Maybe you’ll participate in the Tech Fast and see where, without the temptation of entertainment technology, you really do have enough time to volunteer, to serve, to change the world. Maybe. I can’t make that decision for you. I can only decide for me.

As we begin November, I notice a lot of Christmas stuff in the stores. It’s a little early for it, but I am starting to be in a Christmas mindset. Christmas reminds me of my Uncle Tim, who I never met. He died from cancer at the age of 18 almost three years before I was born. But my uncle had a saying and it was passed on to me. Around Christmas, when he wanted something, he would say, “In the spirit of Christmas, which is love, please ___.”

In the spirit of Christmas, which is love…. Perhaps it would be better to say, “In the spirit of CHRIST, which is love.” Because He was love. He was not just love the noun, but love the verb. Suddenly the question at Christmas becomes the same as the question we must ask ourselves every day all year round: How do I, Kaitlyn Willy, love better? How do we, the Butler Catholic Community, love better? How do you, reader, love better?

To answer that, this year, in place of buying each other gifts, my community is adopting a local family and giving them Christmas. And by Christmas, I don’t mean they’re getting a bunch of toys (though I might slip a few in). Primarily, I’m shopping for PJs, undies, socks, and bras for an elderly grandma and her daughter and clothes to keep their three babies warm. This family will be way more excited about these clothes—which won’t be all that nice and certainly won’t be name-brand items—than I have ever been about a Christmas gift. Need does that to people, it makes them find joy in the simple things.

In keeping with this spirit of love, the BCC Service Committee and Leadership Team have decided to adopt two families for Christmas. I mentioned this above, in the “maybe” paragraph. I’m serious, friends—count those shoes, those lattes, those whatever-you-spend-your-money-ons. Donate a dollar for each one you have. Or, donate five dollars, ten dollars, whatever you can muster. Ask mom or dad or grandma to give you your Christmas money early—donate it. Make a difference.

And, if you really want to keep it up, go to Nazareth Farm. Live simply so that others may simply live. Do as Christ calls us to in the reading for tomorrow: love your neighbor as yourself. Change the world.

When people ask me to describe my students, I say that they all want to save the world. Guess what, friends—this is how you change the world. You change it one person at a time. Not one poor person at a time, but one human being made in the image and likeness of God who has intrinsic dignity and who for some reason or other lives entrenched in poverty and cannot get out. One step at a time, one foot in front of the other— in the spirit of Christ, which is love.

The Presence of Jesus in Adoration

Written by Lauren Stark
A Sophomore on the Leadership Team
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            Growing up Catholic and attending 13 years of Catholic school, I had experience in practically every Catholic activity. I was an altar server and Communion minister. I attended and led retreats. I prayed the rosary. But for some reason, I avoided one event:  adoration.

            I guess I considered adoration something I could do without. I prayed on my own, so why did I need to do it in front of a shiny monstrance?

            So when I attended the Steubenville Youth Conference this summer with my home parish and found out that we would be participating in an hour-long adoration, I was a little nervous and skeptical.

            But that all changed the minute the priest came out holding the monstrance in the air.

Something inside of me stirred. I felt…Jesus. It seems almost too cliché to say, but in that moment when the monstrance was right in front of me, I for the first time truly felt God’s presence—His real presence—inside that host. I fell to my knees and joined all the people around me in prayer. I cried and smiled. The feeling of God’s love filling me was something I had never felt before.

That hour was the quickest of my life, and from that day on, I was hooked on adoration.

Adoration is something uniquely Catholic. When the monstrance that holds Christ is set before the worshippers, He is really and truly in that room. Although we do believe that God is always with us, this is a more tangible way to recognize that—and to remember Jesus’ sacrifice for us. I am truly lucky to be a Catholic and to have adoration as a way for me to worship.

A few weeks ago, I was struggling. I felt disconnected from my friends, my school life, and my faith. And I didn’t want to stay that way. I had been wanting to participate in adoration in Indy since the start of school, but I had been putting it off, once again thinking that I could do enough on my own.

But that day, something—God—was tugging at my heart, telling me to go see Him. I jumped in my car and drove to St. Luke’s down the street. There, in the beautiful adoration chapel, I saw my God again. It was only a short thirty minutes of prayer. And for most of that time, I didn’t say anything. I just sat in His loving presence. And it worked. My spirit was revived, and I felt happy and full again. Adoration connected me again to my faith and the world around me.

I know adoration can seem intimidating or unnecessary. But I really encourage you to give it a try. Just twenty minutes. Bring a prayer book or the Bible. Bring a rosary. Bring some worship music like I do (“Savior, Please” by Josh Wilson is my favorite song to adore God to). Bring your needs and desires. Or just bring yourself and your openness to hear what God has to tell you. You won’t be disappointed.

Miracles

Posted by Chris Antolin
Leadership Team

So I've been listening to this song called "What Faith can do" by Kutless. It's a great song! I actually heard it while working (or leading) a Christian awakening retreat this past Oct. This song constantly strikes me. More notably, it reminds me of It all goes back to when I was a Senior back at Roncalli High School. It was in May, just a few weeks before Graduation. My parents and my sister were off at one of her gymnastics meets (she got a gold in vault! I was proud of her!) and I found myself alone at home. I decided to go and eat lunch out by myself. Most of my friends had spring sports and jobs that took up a lot of their time. As I was eating alone, this man confronted me and asked me if I was a priest. Me, being kinda shocked by the question, said that I was a little too young to be one. I asked him why he thought I was a priest. He told me, "I have never seen a kid wear a cross (refering to my retreat cross) and value it so much that he does not want to ever forget it".  I told him how great of an experience I had and how I think of my faith as something that will always stay in my life. The gentleman and I had a conversation about faith for the next half hour. I will remember this conversation for time to come. I remember how he considered it a miracle that I wore the cross. He told me how he sees kids now and how they don't tend to live up to their faith. He never thought that he would see a kid, yet a guy, show his faith off so proudly. I found his comment true, but I never thought the word "miracle" would seem fit for this. I asked him why he used the word "miracle". He then went to ask me a question I will never forget. He asked me "Do I believe in miracles?". Now me, having a different definition of a miracle (a supernatural one), said no. He told me that I should, because they are always happening throughout the world.

 I thought about what he had told me at that point. I still didn't know whether or not they exist. I, later, changed my opinion.

 Many of you probably had no idea, but for the past 18 years, I struggled to be able to hear like a normal person. I was born with a 95% hearing loss. My hearing was compared to someone talking to someone else and that someone else is under water. My parents said that they would yell my name while I was near them and I could not hear them. My parents hated it, and I had no idea what was going on. They made a decision: I had my first surgery on my ears in first grade. It was either that or a hearing aid. There was one problem that occurred as time went on. My hearing got better, but there were "issues" that came with the surgery. I was one of the kids with a rare case in which the holes in the eardrums did not close after surgery. Seems like this was not problem? It was the worst problem. This smallest drop of water into either of my ears would give me a serious infection for a week sometimes. I went through this and 2 more surgeries as my life continued on.  This July of 2012, I had an opportunity to try and have this problem fixed for good. Another surgery, except this time it was to patch the holes created in my eardrums.

The surgery day came, and my surgery went well. The surgeon told my family and I something that shocked me. My eardrum had hardened into a bone-like eardrum (they are suppose to be soft for sound to bounce off of it). The surgeon said that I was another kid with an extremely rare case. So I was already a kid with an extremely rare issue with my ears. The surgery went from being a simple patch job into a complete removal and reconstruction of an eardrum.


 Now going back to the song I mentioned earlier, there is a part of the song where the lyrics go like this:

I've seen miracles just happen

Silent prayers get answered

 My surgeon told me that the condition of my "Petrified" eardrums was the most interesting scenario. For the past 4-5 years, my eardrums were like this, petrified and rock hard. He told us all that my eardrums were NOT suppose to be working (In other words, I was suppose to be deaf for the past 4-5 years). Today that remains a mystery. My surgeon has no idea on how I could hear or even hear as well as I did.

 To me, this is that "miracle" that the gentleman was talking about. I knew at that time, that miracles DO exist. Think of it like Love; there are so many definitions of what it is or can be, but it happens all over the world that we know so well. I believe that God had blessed me with this miracle and I am extremely grateful to have had such an experience.

 So, to those reading this, take the man's advice that he gave me. Believe in miracles. They happen all over the world and they may even happen to you one day! Never lose HOPE and never lose faith in what God has in store for you!

The Greatest Adventure of All

by Kaitlyn Willy (BCC Chaplain’s Apprentice)

The Gospel reading this weekend was Mark 10: 17-30. This is one of those readings that I think we read a lot and miss the point. Often, we look at the rich young man and imagine him to be selfish, he doesn’t want to give up everything he owns and so he won’t gain entrance to heaven. It’s like this great attack on the rich, but then those of us without money are safe. NOPE! That is definitely not what God has in mind. In fact, I think that this is a reading that can speak to us at our core if we make ourselves open to it.

I don’t know about you, but this Sunday I started to feel uncomfortable sitting in the pew even before the priest got to the selling everything part. After all, the rich young man says that he has observed the commandments from his youth and is so comfortable with them that he is willing to ask what more he can do. Can you say that you have followed these commandments with that kind of faith? I certainly can’t. Even if we try to be perfect (it would be impossible for us to actually be perfect) and follow these laws completely, Jesus calls us to sell what we have and give it to the poor. Now, that certainly doesn’t seem fair! We’ve done all this work and tried so hard to follow these commandments and now we have to sell everything? No wonder the rich young man went away sad! I think we always imagine that he did not in fact sell his possessions—a failure, rare in Christ’s ministry.

I would like to think that if Jesus appeared before me and asked me to sell all that I have and give it to the poor, I would react at least a little better than the rich young man did, walking away without a word, his head hung down in sadness. But then I have to take into consideration my own priorities and recognize that they might be different from those of the rich young man. I don’t really value wealth above other things (if I did, I probably wouldn’t be a campus minister). I certainly don’t treasure money or possessions above my faith. While I might like my iPad a little too much to live in complete simplicity, I do like things being simple. My ideal house is a tiny house with 117 square feet (see Tumbleweed Houses if you don’t know what I’m talking about) where I wouldn’t be able to fall into the temptation to buy things because there would be no place to put them. I’m not really a money person. My biggest downfall in regards to materialism is probably my book collection, but even that I would give up (albeit sadly) if Jesus asked. But let me tell you what I do value so much I wouldn’t want to give it up for Jesus: my relationships.

St. Ignatius of Loyola talks about radical detachment: “We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.” According to Ignatius, when something is taken away from us, we should be detached enough that the loss cannot shake our trust in God. We accept that all things are for the greater glory of God. Ad maiorem dei gloriam!

When I moved to Indiana to go to Notre Dame, it was really hard for me to leave Dallas: a place where I was loved, where I had made the connections and friendships that were my most prized possessions. It’s one thing to leave home for college. The relationships that sustained you in your childhood, the family and friends who have known you your whole life, those generally survive distance and time. But the relationships you make in college don’t always make it. Sure, I still have my best friends (my bestie even texted me this morning and woke me up), but some of the relationships I had in college necessarily had to change: we didn’t bump into each other in the hall anymore; we didn’t see each other in the cafeteria. Other than the occasional facebook status, I might not hear from some friends at all for months. This was difficult for me at first because a lot of my relationship with God had been centered around the people in my life with whom I ate, studied, hung out, and prayed. In moving to Notre Dame, I had to learn which prayers I said because my friends said them and which ones I said because I needed to pray them.

Last year, speaking with seniors who were getting ready to graduate, it seemed that this was the same fear that they had. How do you worship without the community that has helped you grow? How do you live a life as a Catholic without the BCC?

Friends, God can ask us to give up or change our relationship with many different blessings in our lives. For the rich young man, it was money. For me, it was my community and friends from UD. Fortunately, before I left UD, my spiritual director taught me about detachment. I learned that sometimes even the greatest blessings (like community) have to be taken away in order for us to grow. My friends and community at UD had become my safety blanket and as long as I clung to it, I could easily resist the change that God was calling me to. Sometimes, we must be brave enough to let go of our desires, our treasures and our loves in order to become who God calls us to be.

As is said so many times in Scripture, “BE NOT AFRAID!” I can tell you from experience that although these times of transition and letting go are hard, once we give up the things that we cling to (money, friends, habits, desires, plans, and sometimes even beliefs) we can become ourselves-- not someone else, not someone entirely different, but someone who is even more ourselves than we ever dreamed of being. I am more me now than I have ever been and I will continue to grow into myself the more I let God change me. These changes are never easy, but if we have the courage, we can embark on the great adventure of becoming ourselves. We become not only ourselves, but ourselves in relationship with the God who knows us more intimately even than we do: the greatest adventure of all.

Welcome

Written by: Kaitlyn Willy, Chaplain’s Apprentice

Hello and welcome to the BCC Blog!

Fr. Jeff and I first started talking about having a BCC Blog last year and since then, we have been working out some kinks.

If you would like to write something for the blog, please send it to me at kwilly@butler.edu. 

More to come!

Thanks,

Kaitlyn