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Tag Archives: Joy

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Pilgrimage to Judah: Taking time in Advent and Christmas to learn from Mary

By | December 17, 2012
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A few years ago, during the season of Advent, my sister and I traveled to Lourdes, France for a pilgrimage. It was a gift that continues to transform my heart year after year, cup after cup of Lourdes water, rosary decade after decade lifted up in prayer. A pilgrimage is a very special gift that should not be overlooked during this season of Advent for that is exactly the gift that the Holy family gave us in their journey to Bethlehem with the birth of our Savior. To travel a long journey to a sacred place is a gift unto itself: the sights, smells, tastes, and rituals undiscovered yet instantly seized into memory. But, to realize something of unexplainable significance is as majestic as the Magi themselves.

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Looking Through Rose Colored Glasses: The Joys of Ministry

By | March 7, 2012
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In a homily I recently heard, the priest told a story about being challenged to recognize how good things were. He told us that in the busyness of trying to juggle everything it was easy to miss that the Lord’s goodness was abundant. It’s not a stretch to see how easy that is to do in youth ministry. We know youth ministry is hard work. We can be working on environments for Life Nights, trying to find a chaperone for a retreat, scheduling what events we’ll get to this week, checking

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No Purple!: Sharing the Joy of Advent with Teens

By | December 21, 2011
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So how are we sharing that joy with our teens in the midst of the Advent season? Are we able to make the waiting and the longing relevant to their lives? Teen’s very lives are an Advent of sorts, a time they spend reflecting on and preparing for what they hope will be the joy of their lives to come – higher education, jobs, marriage, travel, and adventure.

Teens are waiting, waiting to discover what God has planned for them and just as small children can become impatient, overtired and cranky as they wait for Christmas to arrive, teens can suffer the same fate as they wait to arrive at their “real lives.” The purple of this season of their lives can overshadow the joy in Christ that is theirs right now as well as in the future.

Liturgy Planning Guide

3rd Sunday of Lent – 12/11/2011

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Share the Joy!

By | July 6, 2011

It’s all about sharing joy. More importantly, inviting people to join you in that mission of sharing joy! It’s not a smile on your face; joy is the smile of the soul. It’s bringing joy to people through the sincere love of Christ. This is the heart of evangelization.

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Filled with Joy: Day 2 from the 2011 Life Teen and Edge Training Convention

By | June 15, 2011

Some people, when they go to light a big bonfire, pile the logs perfectly in a square. However, some are a fan of the triangular log configuration. Then there’s always the person who just throws all the logs in the pit and has to rearrange them every 10 minutes. Any way you do it, there’s a general practice of stuffing some kindling or paper in the logs in order to get them to start burning. Everyone knows paper, though it lights quickly, also burns and is gone very quickly. The logs however,

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When the Wheels Come Off: Rediscovering Your Joy

By | February 25, 2011

My already bad day had immediately gotten worse. It was just “one of those weeks” in ministry where everything I did was wrong in someone’s eyes; I had a stack of annoyed emails to prove it. As if that weren’t enough, it was also the week that everything in our house broke almost simultaneously: dishwasher, garage door…even the coffee maker. Forget Murphy’s Law, this was straight up lunacy with a heavy side of spiritual attack.

Liturgy Planning Guide

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 07/03/2011

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Jesus, You’re Fired! Effective Ministry in an Imperfect World

By | January 20, 2011

To Whom It May Concern: In agreement with the clearly delineated Diocesan norms for termination of employment, below are just a handful of the reasons we were forced to fire Jesus of Nazareth from our Parish Staff here at Our Lady of the Emptying Pews: He was never in the office. He was constantly leaving work to “go and pray.” He never turned in a single bulletin announcement. He invited all the “wrong kinds of people” into the Parish community. He turned over tables at the annual Parish

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The Gospel According to . . . My Garbage Man

By | October 28, 2010

It was about 5:30 a.m. and I was in the middle of my morning prayer. The sun had yet to rise. The coffee was hot and the house, serene. Just then, in the middle of my prayer, apprehension gripped my body and shattered my peace. “Oh crap…it’s bulk trash pickup today!” I sprang up from the couch in our prayer room, threw on some warm clothes and within minutes found myself in my back yard. The sun was peeking over the wall and the sound of the city garbage truck echoed through the neighborhood.