Part of the forearm of Saint Francis Xavier has been making its way across Canada this past month and this past Wednesday it made an appearance at my home parish, St. Francis Xavier Parish in Vancouver. Normally it’s displayed in the Church of the Gesù in Rome. Who was Saint Francis Xavier? Francis Xavier was a Spanish missionary who traveled to numerous countries including India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan, spreading the Gospel and converting hundreds of thousands to Christianity. He was on his way to China in 1552 when he became ill with a fever and subsequently died. Xavier was Continue Reading
Catholic
Random thoughts from a child of God.
Post-summer update
I can’t believe it’s September already. The weather is starting to become cool and wet, days are becoming shorter, marking the end of what has been an incredible summer (and year to date). It’s been a while since I’ve written here, so with the changing season I thought I’d share a bit of an update of 2016 so far. Some of these warrant their own blog posts, but until I have time to write the full thing here is a summary.
The 4 Liters Water Challenge
At one of our recent EDGE youth ministry sessions talking about the Corporal Work of Mercy “giving drink to the thirsty”, we challenged our youth and ourselves as leaders to complete the 4 Liters challenge. On a normal day most of us use over 350 liters of water, however, for many other people around the world, water is not as abundant and people may be lucky to get four liters of water each day. So the challenge is to live in “water poverty” for one day, using only four liters of water over a 24-hour period. I ended up picking last Thursday to Continue Reading
Ignite Your Torch 2014
Two weekends ago, I co-chaperoned four youth from our parish on a trip to Ignite Your Torch NW, a Catholic youth conference held at St. Martin’s University in Lacey, WA. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and this blog post documents a bit of that.
Popes Saint John Paul II and Saint John XXIII
Yesterday, Popes John Paul II and John XXIII were declared saints in a canonization mass attended by over 800,000 people in St. Peter’s Square. For the rest of us who weren’t able to make it in person to Rome, the event was live-streamed and now available to watch on YouTube! Here in Vancouver, the archdiocese held a Mass to celebrate this event with about 10,000 attendees in Pacific Coliseum. What makes a saint? I couldn’t really find a better way to summarize it so here are some quotations from Mark Hart’s blog post on “What makes a saint”: …the Church doesn’t “make Continue Reading