A Year of Love

The Year of Faith, begun by Pope Benedict XVI and continued by his successor, Pope Francis I,  is a call to all Catholics to come to Christ in love, to participate in the most perfect and erotic love affair of all times.  One the petitions for the Year of Faith is offered that this, "Year of Faith be a time to renew our love for Christ and His Church."  This is because both Pope Benedict and his successor recognized the need which each and every person has to have a very personal relationship with Jesus, not only as a savior, but also as a lover.  Mother Teresa of Calcutta  says that, Jesus…loves you, but even more—He longs for you. He misses you when you don't come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don't feel worthy."   It is because of this yearning which Christ has for souls that He offers us those sacraments necessary for a relationship to flourish—the Eucharist, and Reconciliation. In order to take the fullest advantage of these abundant graces, however, it is first necessary to know the unadulterated, most perfect love which Christ offers unconditionally and without reserve.

"God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”   So begins the encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est, by Pope Benedict XVI.  In this letter, Pope Benedict clarifies what the meaning of 'being Christian' is, stating, "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and decisive direction."   He refers back to the different names which the Greeks had for love; the love of agape, an unconditional, unifying, sacrificial, covenant love used in the Bible to signify the love of God for His people, the love of philia, also referred to as the love of friendship, and the love of eros, a kind of "divine madness" which referenced the passion of romantic love and desire.  Pope Benedict offers an unheard of reconciling of the passion and perceived wrongful eroticness of eros and of the divine and unconditional agape. He identifies the intoxicated, unrestrained eros as a maddening lust, which is a, "fall, a degradation of man".   This is a far and perverted cry from the Greek who believed eros to be a love which, "tears man away from his finite existence and enables him, in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power, to experience supreme happiness" .  The Pope then connects the relationship between the divine, promising an eternity of love, and the call to a "reality far greater and totally other than our everyday existence" .  To reconcile the two, both of which are originally part of a divine love, he says that purification and growth in maturity are necessary to, "…heal it (eros), and restore its true grandeur"

The relationship between Christ and His Church is compared by St. Paul to that of an about to be wed or newly wed couple in his letter to the Ephesians, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her…"    With this, he then goes more in depth saying, "Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies…for no man hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body."   St. Paul emphasizes the fact that Christ's with the Church is founded on his relationship with each individual member of His Church and thus is essential to the Church as a whole.  Finally, St. Paul draws a most distinct line between the marital relations of a man and a woman and of Christ with his Church, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined with his wife, and the two shall become one.  This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church."   Not only does Christ want to be a part in the lives of His Church in the most intimate way imaginable; he also wishes to become one with its members and with the Church as a whole.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2013/02/the-catholic-church-young-people-actually-want.html

Check this guy out.

I've got to get a job. Unfortunately, it's one of those times of the year when you turn in job applications and get told that they'll contact you at the end of March/beginning of April. HELLO, I need work now.

*breathes*

Or not...

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers. And what's even worse: they disregard ME.” -Socrates

This is how I feel sometimes. How dare people not respect my wisdom? Then I realize, I don't much mind it either. 

So Lent has begun. I'm a Roman Catholic and proud of it. Lent is, however, probably my least favorite time of year. It could be compared to when a hefty eater goes on a diet. On one hand, the eater hates to give up what is his comfort food, his lifeline (literally in some ways....we must eat to survive!) yet, on the other, he knows that it will have a major impact on his life and improve his future. 

It's kind of of like that. 

I have given up the internet (except for school purposes) and texting (unless necessary). [Yes, I am on the computer. It is Sunday and Sunday's are the Lord's day, not to be counted for fasting and abstaining. "And Jesus said to them, "You cannot make the attendants of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you?" Lk: 5:34] 

Surprisingly, it's nowhere near as difficult as I thought it would be. When you use Facebook and Messaging and texting and e-mailing, you're mostly doing it for recreational purposes. Generally you end up cross-examining other people's lives and comparing them to yours. 

(Yeah, I'm a Pintrest addict....)

How true is this? I want to know. If everyone took twenty minutes out of their day to sit down and THINK about everything going on, where they're headed, where they want to be headed, how they want to get there, instead of going on Facebook and seeing where everyone else is headed and how "easy" it is for them, where might teenagers get? 

SHOUTOUT to all those teens who have to struggle. Oh wait, that's all of them. For some reason, it's hard to look past your own struggles and realize that no one has exactly the same struggles or problems you do. NO ONE. Then again, how many people are exactly alike? I could be struggling with seeing dropping out of highschool and getting a GED, a lifechanging step, as my only option. You could be at home struggling with an alcoholic parent who is helping to define who you are and what you can do at this point in time. Are they the same? NO. Are the struggles equal? They can't even compare because each situation is different. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, so why even bother comparing? 

In psychology last week, we studied a girl named Brandi Binder who had half of her brain removed. Her entire life was changed by those two surgeries and one doctor changed what would have been a relatively unlivable life after that with three words. "Challenge, challenge, challenge." Without a challenge, where do we end up? Challenges build and define us. Rather than worrying about them, embrace them. Know that, when they're over, how they were and are being handled make us into the persons we are to be. 

Edit: I seriously give up formatting on this one. Enjoy.

Has anyone ever read the book Persuasion by Jane Austen, or seen the movie? It's an old story about a woman who is persuaded, by other people, out of marrying the man whom she is in love with, only to run into him many years later, where he carries a grudge. Bottom line, it's about a woman who can't make up her mind.

So what else is new?

Seriously, how hard is it for someone to make up their mind and stick to it? Call me old fashioned or nitpicky or anything else which might adequately fit here, but I am of the opinion that, if you say something, you should mean it and stick to it. Especially if it involves someone else. Changing your mind is one thing. Giving and taking is another.

I was going to sit here mindlessly pondering why songs get stuck in people's heads. Then, I googled it, and all the mystique was lost. Did you know that it's caused by something called "earworm?" Now, everytime I start aimlessly humming or singing a tune, I'm going to some slimy, chubby, wiggling little worm squirming in my ear...

And that just ruined it for you too. You're welcome! Now I won't be the only one.

While google is open, is a worm a  reptile? Why wouldn't it be? It's like a smaller version of a snake.

Turns out, they're something called annelids.

I'm fairly convinced that people do things like this just to toy with our minds. Your level of intelligence is judged by how many long (and, may I say, rather ridiculous) names you can remember, as well as their meanings.

In that case, I'm an idiot.

As you have probably figured out by now, there is no level of intelligence to this whatsoever. It's called simple cabin fever. Why? Because I have no life.

Let me rephrase, I have a potential life.

That potential life is filled with schoolwork, deadlines, ice, and cold.

Hello, Father Winter!

Wait, it's Father Time.

Hello, Mother Nature! Bring the springtime on down!

Needless to say, it is quite obvious why no life, in this case, is better than the potential life. School? Pshhh....who needs that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, shut up. I'm going, I'm going. I bid a fond adieu to my dear old friend, the procrastinator.

Sigh.

I miss it already....

Brrrr....it's freezing! Quite literally. Yesterday morning, I walked out the door with a wet head and my hair froze almost instantly between the door and the 15 or so steps to the car! The thermometer could not make up it's mind and fluctuated between 0, 1, and -1 degrees. Then we got a heat wave and it went up to 2 degrees. This morning, I walked out the door and said, "Oh thank God, it's warmer!"

A look at the thermometer then told me it was 25 degrees.

Eh, I guess everything is relative to one extent or another.

You know the phrase, "I'd probably lose my head if it wasn't attached!"? (If you don't, don't feel bad. I'm not sure where it's from.) Well, that's been me lately. I don't know if it has something to do with this depressing weather we've been having, or it's just my brain getting back at me for all the times I've abused me. Either way, it is quite perplexing. Yesterday, everytime I turned around, I lost something. My keys, my wallet, etc. They were all right where I had put them, yet I felt like Dori.

Speaking of....

And I'm going to leave this at that awkward note because Science (blast the darn thing) is begging for my attention. Actually, it's more like prodding, poking, hammering than begging....