Second Week of Advent

Great news! Yesterday Vince officially said "yes" to discipleship with John. So that side of my "discipleship chain" is "spiritually multiplying" (sorry for all the FOCUSspeak).

As the semester winds down, I'd like to leave you all with a few reflections from a lecture by Fr. Michael Keating, given at FOCUS summer training, that have struck me. They may also have particular weight during this Advent season."Our joy must not come from circumstances." It is so difficult in any type of work to follow the commandment St. Paul gives us in 1 Thess. 5:16: "Rejoice always". But Fr. Keating's words here are magnificent. If we're allowing our surroundings to determine our attitude, what reason have we to be joyful? Surely we can come up with some, but ultimately this world is dying away. Our hope is in heaven, in the love of the Cross, in the glory of the Resurrection. And Christ's coming into the world at the incarnation is the beginning of that Resurrection event.

Our job as evangelists is to reveal hearts. As Jesus challenges the rich man in Luke 10, we are not to water down the message so that we can "people heaven". The rich man is told to sell his belongings and follow Jesus. He walks away sad. Again in John 6, Jesus declares that He is the "bread come down from heaven", and "whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life". When the disciples doubt and "returned to their former way of life", Jesus did not call them back and say, "wait, you're right, that was a pretty weird way of saying it, what I really meant was..." No, He revealed their hearts, both to themselves and to His Father in Heaven.

This Advent, let us not be afraid to call each other to a greater love of Jesus, the Incarnate Word. Let us dare to celebrate Christmas, not during Advent, but during Christmas. The Church gives us 8 days to rejoice. Christmas does not end on December 25th, but begins. How will you celebrate the octave?

FROM THE CAMPUS

One could say it was recruitment week around here. Last Saturday I went up to Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg to help the FOCUS team up there with their recruitment event. And we held ours on Tuesday this week. They both went very well.

Our lovely team director, Helen Almeter, gave us the day off on Mary's Immaculate Conception, and we went to our National Shrine, whose patronage (yes, our national patronage) is The Immaculate Conception! Dan Murphy, a young man from my Bible study, went with us (most students are currently swamped with work before finals) and we met FOCUS teams from George Mason and University of Pittsburg there. It was an incredibly beautiful mass, again celebrated by our papal nuncio Archbishop Pietro Sambi (I'm growing quite fond of the ol' guy). We were again on EWTN, and the choirs brought Raul and I to tears. We all went out for lunch afterward at the Capitol City Brewing Co. in downtown D.C.

I'm just holding my last Bible studies of the semester, and next week we'll spend time encouraging students as they study and take finals. We set up the Catholic Students Center mostly for quiet study, but one room will be the designated blow-off-your-steam room complete with snacks, movies, nintendo, etc.

Raul is getting very excited about the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, to be celebrated this Friday. I think he's planning on taking me to a mass at 7pm tomorrow night, then to a vigil at 2 in the morning. He's pumped! I hope you all celebrate this patronage of the Americas by eating some tasty Mexican food!

May God bless you in this Second week of Advent!