Life-teen update (02-18-2007)

Greetings all. It is my hope that you are all taking advantage of this wonderful four day weekend to catch up on some sleep, eat leftover St. Valentine’s Day candy, and do an act of charity out of love for God and neighbor. This past week and weekend were all very busy for those of you who chose to partake in the various activities that occurred. Two of the big ones were the Confirmation retreat out at Cowiche, and the parish mission right here at good old St. Joseph’s. For those of you who were able to attend the retreat you are well aware that it involved not only quality talks on the sacraments, but it also contained one of the most intense games of eight-base that I have ever seen in my life. The REACH team really enjoyed having all of you on retreat and sincerely hopes that you will all attend their annual week long retreat called “The Dub” in June. I think all of you would enjoy it and will tell you more about it as the time approaches. For those of you who missed the parish mission with Mark Price, you missed something that I personally found very powerful and spiritually uplifting. His thoughts on the life of St. Peter and Judas were very well done and meaningful. I especially liked his line from Judas where he says, “There is a part of me in all of you.” How true this is in our daily lives. We constantly sin and fall from God’s grace, but we must choose to get back up again and continue to follow Christ. We must not let our pride get in the way of our salvation or our doing what God is calling us to. This is usually harder than it sounds and has been an obstacle to even the greatest of saints at times. As St Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “Lord make me chaste, but not yet” I will now shamelessly plug the Life-teen program. I know that it is easier to go home, watch TV, and then go to bed Sunday evenings rather than going to youth group. Shoot, there have been a few evenings when I wanted to skip youth group myself and go spend the time playing video games. But God calls us to go beyond what we may want to do and calls us to take up our cross and follow him. I try to make Life-teen a relatively light cross to bear by including things like snacks and games, but some may find it heavy none the less. I still invite and encourage all of you to come. We meet right after the 5:30pm mass. For those of you who attend other masses, stop by around 6:45pm. We are not meeting this Sunday (Feb. 18) but things will be back into full swing next week on the 25. If you don’t want to come alone, than bring a friend. Everyone is welcome regardless of what denomination or religion they may belong to. I hope to see all the high schoolers in our parish next week. God bless.