Making Connections

            Graduates of 2012, I congratulate all of you for your High School academic and extracurricular achievements that have brought you to commencement.  The pain is over and you can breathe—at least for now: no more rushing to class, taking exams, writing papers and  working in the lab.  You have run the race, achieved your goal and earned your diploma.  This is your day and our culture is pointing you toward the good life ahead.  But before you pursue the good life, how did you get where you are today?  Who paved the way for you?  The         celebrities of our day would have us believe that they have or they themselves are the answer.  To give credit, there have been good examples and even some heroes.  Consider how Steve Jobs has touched our lives in the 21^st century.  What an impact his innovations have made to change our present world and will, no doubt, continue doing so despite his passing as well as our passing from this world?  I can already imagine the day when neither I nor my computer will ever save any hard copies of anything I own.  It will all be out there somewhere in the “cloud.”  We will be retrieving all of our data from the network of the virtual world.  People like Steve Jobs had passion and changed our world.  He had the creativity to connect things and now we are all, at least, digitally connected. 

But before we all get lost in the virtual world of the cloud, we have all made other connections with the ordinary people who have become extraordinary heroes in our lives?  In the years of learning since your birth and your formal education, I submit to you that it is our    parents, our teachers and friends who have kept us well connected.  Parents certainly have endured burdens to offer you the shelter of their maturity, their wisdom and their labor.  Teachers who refused to give up on you, but tried one thing after another in a warm and caring way to unlock your desire for learning.  Friends have formed your social network and emotional bonds that provided you with a balance between work and fun.  And, I am sure there have been many others whose influence have urged you to go beyond yourself and to imagine yourselves as better, more compassionate and more thoughtful.  All these resulting accomplishments are yours, but the work to get there is by no means yours alone.  It is now the time for you to connect whatever you have learned from the work of these heroes to your own unique works.  And, in this way the next generation will come to know your particular gifts that were born from the common legacy of your life.

You, and we, and all who came before us, are   indebted to the ordinary heroes who helped us to carve out the milestones of our lives.  Through their work joined to our own we can each discover the passion in our own lives.  Do what you love to do and you can change the world for the better.  Dedicate yourselves to the things that are worthwhile—achievements that require sacrifice and pain and heartache and risk and, yes, sometimes, failure.  For your work to endure, desire what is good, be inspired by what is true and beautiful, and expand your spiritual strength.  Listen to the heroes who have truly cared for you.  Get enough sleep at the appropriate times, eat healthy, be honest with yourself, evaluate whether your goals are achievable and what effort is required.  Balance work, sports activities and social events.  Making connections from our past learning to our future hopes bring us into a community of companions who share our journey.  Making connections with new pilgrims along the way can enrich our lives and foster creativity.  As we reach out beyond ourselves in an ever expanding   community of work, study and service to others, we will also discover our own personal limitations.  Mutual relationships in community offer us what we need to be more than we can become by ourselves alone.  In making these connections with others we are formed and informed into a greater human being. 

But it does not end there.  Making connections stretches us beyond our reach in this world of space and time.  No matter how spiritual we as human beings can become by making connections on this earth, we must never lose sight of the bigger vision.  Wherever your lives take you, none of us is ever complete without making connections to another universe outside of our space and time world.  Community can both hurt and heal us.  We humans cannot fix everything.  Ultimately, there are questions that do not have answers and problems that  cannot be solved.  Our search in making connections must also take us beyond the limits of our human community into a universe of mystery. 

We all need to be connected with the absolute mystery of God.  There is yet another cloud much earlier than the internet cloud of the 21^st century.  The Hebrew Scriptures speak of it as a “column of cloud.”   By means of this cloud the presence of the divine preceded and showed a pilgrim people the way to their destination.  It reminds us even today that the God of every age is guiding us.   Faith in God is our connection beyond the limitations of humanistic spiritualism.  In your search for the good life, remain connected to God who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Graduates of 2012, my sincere congratulations to all of you and I wish you the blessings of a bright future as you continue “Making Connections!”

Mary Lead Me

When I think about a person who I'd like to try and model my life after, of course the obvious would be Jesus Christ, but my go to gal would have to be Mary, His mother.  Several years ago, she and the Holy Spirit teamed up to get my attention.  It was the year 2000, the Great Jubilee.  Having been a Catholic my whole life but distracted most of the time with the "things of life", I began to search for a deeper balance within myself of body, mind and soul.  I ramped up my exercise to 3 or 4 days a week, took the UD biblical study course that met weekly and decided to get to daily mass at least twice a week. That's when it first happened, the tug at my soul to receive Holy Communion more often and to pray the rosary daily.  I had always enjoyed the quiet “simpleness” of daily mass but had gotten away from it after college and as for the rosary, well, I knew very little about it.  So why now?  Why was I being drawn into this form of prayer that seemed so repetitive and quite frankly, boring.  After all, wasn't the rosary a prayer that little old ladies said or that you said when someone died?  Over the next year, I found myself studying up on the history, mystery and power of the rosary.  I quickly learned that it began with the desire of mankind to connect with our Lord Jesus Christ during their busy work days and that not only were there four simple prayers of the rosary but events or mysteries that are attached to those prayers.  Those repetitive Hail Mary's and Our Fathers did not stand alone but were supposed to pull me out of my busy life and put me in the scene from scripture with Jesus and Mary!  In 15 short minutes of my day, I could immerse myself in the rhythm of the rosary and spend time meditating on Jesus.

 Mary led me there.  That's what she does.  She constantly sets our hearts and feet on the path to eternal life.  She doesn't want one soul lost to this world but every soul united in the next with her Son, Jesus Christ. Perhaps we will never fully understand the connection that Jesus and Mary have to one another, but one thing is for certain, that Mary loves each of us as her own and that it is her deepest desire to help us chart the course for our lives in this world to the next.

Dear Blessed Mother, continue to see to our eternal souls! 

~Cathy N.

Life Force changing lives!

As a member of the Scholarship Committee for the Women's Group, I have been reading the 22 applications that we received this year. As an "older" member of our Catholic Community, I have not been involved, nor even thought about too much, our youth activities for our kids. However, after reading and digesting these essays, I am struck by what Good Shepherd Youth Programs are doing for the kids. Wednesday Night Live has obviously made a huge impression on our youth. It is not just a "get together" with friends and peers weekly to these teens...it is a life force which has changed all of them. The Confirmation Retreat seems to have brought unknown rewards to the students, both in their faith, their goals, and in their relationship with God...and others.

In our secular world, when the news is full of sad stories, it is so great to know that "my church" and "my priest" saw the value of youth activities in the parish. I wish my daughters had had the guidance of  Mark, and the response of Father Richard, when they were teens, facing their Catholic Faith head on.

~Cathy L