prayer

What is prayer? Prayer is the way we connect to God. It is a conversation with God. Many people do not pray or do not feel like they can pray because they are distracted. It is very easy to get distracted during prayer by many things like people talking, etc. Prayer is necessary in our relationship with God because it is us talking to him. For example, in a relationship with a girl on earth if they do not talk then their relationship suffers. But if they talk, their relationship grows. This is just how our relationship with God works but by through prayer. We all need to pray more, and you will see that you are a happier person because of prayer.

Service Hour Reflection

      For my Sophomore Service hours I completed a variety of tasks with several different organizations. I worked at the Beacon, Challenger Football, A Mentally Challenged Bingo Party, and giving out toys at the hospital. At the Beacon, I was responsible for a number of tasks: first I helped make green beans (sounds a lot easier than it really is because it involved opening hundreds of cans to feed the number of people that showed up) and secondly I cleaned all the dishes, which too sounds a lot easier than it really is. At Challenger Football, I just played with the mentally disabled kids and gave them a fun great time of football. At the Bingo Party, I helped mentally disabled adults and kids play bingo. Finally at the Children’s Hospital, I helped give out toys to sick kids around Christmas time.

      Before helping with the service projects, I always feel disappointed to be “wasting” my day away to do required service for school. I always think that it is going to be awkward helping other people and not a lot of fun, but it never seems to happen that way. After every service project,, I felt great; I felt completely at peace and like I had just done something great. I think its so weird how we always hate our service hours but end up loving doing them after. I realized that, like we learn in Theology, we truly are ultimately fulfilled by God and our social aspects, which is shown by the great feeling of happiness that we feel after completing a service project.

      My service relates greatly to my Jesuit education because our education emphasizes the ambition to be Men for Others. I feel like I have successfully completed this task by helping the mentally disabled have fun, give toys out, and make food/clean for homeless or less fortunate people. I see these experiences connecting to my long term goals because I wish to develop myself to constantly do service and constantly help others, which I believe these projects has helped me move along my path. I think everyone should learn to love service because it is needed and a very fulfilling thing to do.

      I personally, loved doing my service hours with my dad. It’s great to see him out enjoying helping others even though he necessarily doesn’t have to help. It further makes my pops a good role model for me to follow through his regular and spiritual life. These service projects were very difficult at times but very fun at others and I am very thankful for having done them.

Indulgences

Indulgences are the remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sin whose guilt has already been forgiven, available to the faithful under certain conditions prescribed by the church. That is the official definition by the Catholic Church. Indulgences has caused many problems in the past because they sold indulgences a long time ago. When one person stood up against the sale of indulgences, he changed his view of the church and criticized the church in almost every issue creating the Protestant Reformation. The church no longer sells indulgences but offers them if the person who wants an indulgence follows a particular physical and/or spiritual journey. Everyone in the world should try to have indulgences because they reduce our length in purgatory.

Boston Marathon

On April 15, around 2:45 P.M. the in-explainable happened. No one would of thought that another attack on the USA would happen. Every time there is something that happens like this, the Catholic Church prays and prays for the people who got hurt. No one can explain why this happened except for the person or people involved. But no matter what happens, the Catholic Church does not want to kill the person even if they committed the worst crime.

Which of the four marks of the Church seems the greatest or most important and why?

I think the most important mark of the Church is that the church is one. If the church wasn’t one then there would be many different beliefs and no one would believe the same thing; in a sense, our faith wouldn’t really exist. Holiness may be very important in the Church but if the church was not one, then other beliefs could contradict that the Church is or isn’t holy in the first place. Apostolic is also very important in the Church because without it, the Church could not consider itself descending from the teachings of Christ or consider itself correct about theological teachings in the Church. One is more important than apostolic because without the oneness, the apostles could have spread non-unified or false teachings that would confused the Church’s followers. The Church is kept together as one primarily because of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Oneness is also more important than catholic. You can see from the Old Testament that God started with a small group of people and gradually elevated the number of people he guided and taught with time. So if the Church was not universal, then God would be working through a select few of people until it became universal. But it could not become universal without the oneness of the teachings and the faith because if it spreaded non-unified, then many other religions would form that were not completely similar the beliefs of the Catholic Church.

Salvation is what now?? (Protestantism vs. Catholicism)

Protestants and Catholics believe many similar and different things. One different thing is their views on salvation and how we are saved. Catholics believe that we are saved through our own personal effort to remain in a state of grace with God by receiving his grace in the seven sacraments. But before we receive the sacraments, we must be baptized in order to wash away the effects of Original Sin. Also, Jesus needed to come in order to provide the expiation necessary to rebuild the bond between us and God before we would be allowed to lead our salvation ourselves. Now, because of the Reformation centuries ago, Protestants believe that it is possible to be saved by faith alone. They believe that just by believing in God and all that he has taught, you can be saved. I never really understood how people believed that because by believing in God and all he has taught you would also have to follow those beliefs with meritorious works and actions otherwise you would be a hippocrates. And if you are a hippocrate, then you do not fully believe all revelation that God has revealed. Similarly, both protestants and Catholics believe that it is possible for those who do not know about Christ to go to heaven.

Morning After Pill

In the U.S, a law has just been passed that allows young girls to receive the Morning After Pill because the pill posed to major medical risks to young women. The morning after pill is a drug that women take to prevent themselves from getting pregnant the "morning after", or up to six days after, having sex. This is a very controversial topic because it is preventing pregnancies and in a way telling young women that it is okay and normal to have sex at a young age. The Catechism says this about all contraceptives: "2399:  The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception). (Catechism of the Catholic Church)" The Church does not agree with the use of a contraceptive to prevent births unless you already have too many children to handle. The ruling of the morning after pill directly attacks christian as well as parental beliefs: no parent wants their kids having sex as young as 12. Having sex that young ruins the sanctity of marriage and gives children yet another reason to frequently have sex. Personally, I see this as a great idea with many fallbacks. I can see how helpful it would be to woman already having sex, but it also gives younger woman more of a reason to do so. Also, it prevents man and woman from doing what they were made to do: procreate. The morning after pill in a social viewpoint is great, but in my catholic christian viewpoint really sucks.