So over the last couple of days I have been bummed out about having to leave all of my friends and go and spend my summer on an island where I really didn't know anyone my own age. Well it finally hit me the other day when I was in an XLT (still not sure what it stands for but it sounds so much cooler than FOP) and Matt Maher said that the island that we were on was a desert. Now I was never really good at Math or Science but I always prided myself at geography in the fact that I new that Europe is a Continent not a Country and I thought that I new what a desert was. But he said that the island and for that matter really all of the "east" (New England/Parts of Canada apparently) was a desert but this island in particular. He said that it was time for us to change that we must become an oasis. Before I left home I felt strange at my parish, I mean in the end I just felt I just didn't fit my parish. Maybe it was the priests in the way they had grown lax. Or maybe it was how I felt that I couldn't really participate in the parish because if I did all of the "older people" would attack me telling me how wrong I was just because I was young.
For a while this really hurt my faith. My parish is run by three priests, which most people would be thrilled about because they say they have one and he can't do everything. But at my parish at home our three priests have gotten lax. Even thou they have three priests they still do the amount of work that one could easily do, and they don't really reach out to the community, they do it to more of there favorites. It has gotten to the point where people have started to ask me why the priests only seem to talk to certain people and others they just pass over. I don't know what to tell them... but then a week a go I came to the Good Shepard Parish(s) on Marthas Vineyard. It is three churches all run by one older priest (60ish) whose only help comes from priests that come to Marthas Vineyard for vacation and do a couple masses while they stay in the friary. He manages to but the bulliten on the internet every week as well as cordinate three sets of confessions on Saturday at each individual church. And during his free time he is helping to build a Life Teen youth group, run the parish center (which includes a gym) and he owns his own biplane which he uses at his leiasure.
He is so alive with his faith that it has taught me a lesson. You might not notice it at first but it is in the way that he "tends his flock". He is always there to lend a hand and is really in touch with the community. I mean my parents only come up for a short while in the summer and during fall and spring yet he still has gotten to know them.
I was at mass on Sunday and he was talking before mass (the community is really small this time of the year so sometimes he even does the announcements/welcome before mass) and he was talking about how he was going to send 10% of the offetory collected for seminarians/stuff like that for the diocese. He told us to keep this in your prayers because at the moment the diocese didn't have any seminarians. I thought this was really sad, I mean the diocese has all of this money set aside to pay for seminarians and still there are none. After that I went to the XLT where at the end I really felt a calling to go up and talk to Fr. Nagel(the pastor) after adoration. For the longest time I have been trying to get a copy of
Christian Prayer and besides the "gift shoppe" at Franciscan I haven't been able to find it so I was going to ask him if he knew of anyplace where I can get a copy (I thought that there might be some Catholic bookstore I didn't know about or something) but upon asking him his face lit up as if some unknown prayer had just been anwsered. He said he didn't know about
Christian Prayer but he told me that he had bought several copies of the
Divine Office and rushed me over to our new soon to be deacon. He proceeded to give introductions and this man Karl made arrangements with me to meet and he was going to teach me how to say the Divine Office and get me a copy of the book.
Karl proceeded to say that it was moments like this that kept him Catholic (whatever that means). I was so amazed how supportive this parish is and how they have basically adopted me the past week and I already have plans over the summer to participate more in the parish something I have been dying to do at home for years. It appears that here they realize that youth are people too. Something my old church has yet to realize. Ohh well I think I have finally realized why I came here this summer but it is really hard to put into words. I think it is to grow up, but it is more than that. It is time to make the faith my own. It is a time to dicern and to trust him completly.
Many years ago I was at a Steubenville Youth Conference and I was at the Saturday Night Adoration. I had never really had any amazing experience before than and have never really had anything since but that night as I knelt before the Blessed Sacrament I guess I "Blacked Out" and I saw myself nail Jesus to the cross and my hands were covered in His blood and he spoke to me. He said, "Odin feed my sheep." and "Odin tend my flock." He made me promise that I would serve Him. I said yes and he touched my right hand and told me to promise and I said yes again. This is where I really felt a calling to work in the church and I decided to be a Catechetics major with youth ministry. When I woke up I looked down at my hand and I realized they were covered in blood. Now after further thought I realized that when I blacked out I must of hit my head and got a bloody nose because that was bloody but it still didn't strike me hard. I feel now this summer I finally realized now is the time to "tend the flock."
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preacku_vines's journal
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