Welcome!

Thank you for stopping by to visit me. I hope you'll stay a while. You and I have been brought together for a reason. God's asking us to work together to change the world, and I can't do it alone. I need your help!

You Have What It Takes

I know you may have been told by plenty of people that you're too young, too small, too unimportant to make a difference but I want to assure you that isn't true. God put everything that you need to make a difference right there in your heart, and He has been preparing you your whole life to be the hero he needs you to be. Everything you've experienced and every person you have met along the way was sent into your life to help teach you the things you needed to know to be ready to accept your mission when it came time. Now is that time and you do have what it takes.

You Can Make a Difference

I know that you may have been told that only really "important" people make a difference in this world, but let me share with you a secret that I've learned.  It only takes changing one life to change the entire world. You can be the person who changes someone else's life, and by doing so changes the entire course of human history for the better. You have the ability to make a tremendous difference in the world just by focusing your energy on changing the lives of the people around you for the better.

You Matter

You aren't an accident. God created you for a reason, with a specific purpose and a mission in mind. You were brought here to be an answer to prayers of the past, the present, and the future. You're the only one who has what it takes to do what He needs you to do. If you don't help the world with your specific gifts and talents, nobody else can take your place. Somebody else may end up doing the work, but they won't be equipped to do it as well as you can and the world will suffer because of that. 

You Won't Be Alone

You don't have to do this by yourself. Remember, we're partners, and as long as you stick with me, I'll be there to help you in any way I can. You also have a whole host of saints and angels that will come to your help whenever you need them as long as you invite them to help.

This Is For You

This blog is for you. It's a record of our journey together. If you want to add something to what's written here, just leave a comment or send me a message. I'll be happy to include it.

Mission Monday: You Matter

It's easy to listen to science teachers who tell you that you come from space dust and descend from animals and believe that your life is just a matter of random chance. It's easy to believe that it doesn't mean anything, that it doesn't have any purpose except the one that you choose to give it. However, I love our Catholic faith because it tells us something very different. It tells us: You matter.

When we listen to Scripture, which is a collection of God's love letters to humanity, we hear His words being spoken to us. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations," He tells us in Jeremiah 1:5.  He says that He has "called us by name" in Isaiah 43:1, and "written your name on the palm of His hands" in Isaiah 49:16. Back in the time of Isaiah, the name of a slave's master was written on the palm of their hands. God is telling us that He loves us so much He has allowed himself to become a slave!

You matter. You have a mission, a purpose, for which you were created. There's a mission which He needs you to accomplish and only you have what it takes to do it.  You have been appointed as a prophet to the nations, and prophets aren't about forecasting the future. They are the mouthpieces of God, sent to deliver a specific message for a specific time and a specific people.  You have a message inside of you that God needs you to deliver. The world needs that message, even if it doesn't always want or like the message.

Over the next few weeks on Mission Monday, we'll talk about how to find your unique message and ways to share it with the world. We'll also talk more about how we can begin to share that message right here and right now, no matter how little or small you may feel. We'll also talk about how you can find help for those times when you're feeling discouraged or run into trouble in spreading your message.  Mission Mondays are all about answering the two most important questions: How do I know what God wants me to do? and What is the best way to carry out what God wants me to do?

Sacrament Sunday: Baptism and God's Promise

The Bible is full of stories about God entering into Covenant agreements with people like you and me. A covenant is a very special kind of promise that is made between God and a person or a group of people.  There are two kinds of covenant agreements that God makes: unconditional promises which do not depend at all upon how we behave and conditional promises whose results depend upon the choices we make.

When Adam and Eve were ordered to leave the Garden of Eden, God made a covenant with Adam and Eve. He told them that even though their choices had introduced death to human kind and now all men would die, there would come a day when mankind would be saved. God promised that He would use the woman's child to crush evil and put an end to death for good. The next big promise he made was to Noah, right after the flood that destroyed most of the earth's people. He told Noah that He would never again use water to destroy humanity and gave us the rainbow as a sign of that promise.

God made a third really big promise to a shepherd named Abraham. He told Abraham that he would become the father of many nations and that they would inherit the land of Canaan. The sign that was to mark Abraham and his children as being part of this covenant was to be circumcised. Any male who was not circumcised would be cut off from that covenant. (Genesis 17)

When Jesus was born of Mary, God fulfilled that promise he made to use the woman's child to crush evil. His death on the cross led to the resurrection and God's fulfillment of the second half of that promise: that He would put an end to death for good.  Jesus took the water that had once destroyed humanity and used it as a sign of a brand new covenant between God and humanity - this covenant was made to everyone, not just the direct descendants of Abraham.

Jesus said that anyone who allowed themselves to be Baptized as a sign of their obedience to God would have their sins washed clean. They would become members of the body of Christ, heirs to the kingdom of Heaven, and able to enter it with Him. This was a conditional promise. His conditions were that we had to be faithful to His teachings and obedient to His commandments or we would lose our place in Heaven. The two commandments we absolutely had to obey were to love Him above all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Baptism does for those who live under the New Covenant what circumcision does under the old covenant: It marks us as belonging to that covenant, allowing us to claim the promises made for ourselves.