The virtue of hope

This was originally prepared as a reflection for a youth ministry session at St. Anthony of Padua parish.

“Hope” is a word we use a lot on a daily basis.  We say things like, “I hope you are doing well,” “I hope I get this job”, “I hope the restaurant has gluten-free food,” “I hope the pandemic will end soon.”  We hope for something which is difficult to attain ourselves.  We don’t say “I hope there will be air to breathe tomorrow,” because we expect there to be air.

But what does “hope” mean in the Christian sense?  What is the virtue of hope?  Ordering of one’s live in the ultimate sense towards God, towards final salvation.  Trust in God, extended into the future.

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The virtue of charity or love

This was originally prepared as a reflection for a youth ministry session at St. Anthony of Padua parish.

The word “love” in English is used to mean so many different things these days.  For example, when I say “I love pizza”, does the “love” in that statement equate to a husband saying “I love you” to his wife?

In other languages we find different “types” of love have different words.  For example, in Greek, four main types of love are:

  • storge – familial love, love between parent and child
  • philia – friendship or bonds between people with common values or interests;
  • eros – romantic or intimate love;
  • agape – the kind of love that Christ taught and showed and this is the type of love we will be focusing on today.
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Charisms: Gifts from the Holy Spirit

We each have our own individual strengths and limitations. It’s sometimes easy for one person to accomplish a certain task than another.

For one person, mathematics might come easily and naturally, whereas for another person it may be difficult and frustrating to apply, although not impossible.

In the mission of the church, God has equipped each of us with unique gifts to carry out specific tasks within the mission. It isn’t impossible for us to do other tasks, but it won’t be as easy as others that are aided by the charisms with which we have been gifted.

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to participate in a Called & Gifted seminar to learn more about these charisms.

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Why we Pray and How to Pray

“Prayer.” In youth ministry, it’s one of the most common responses youth give when they can’t think of anything else. Catholics who were raised in the faith from childhood may have been taught reciting prayers such as the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, and other “standard” prayers. Is “prayer” just saying the same words over and over again? Why do we as Catholics pray? And how do we pray to make the most out of it?

In the past two weeks, Fr. Justin Huang, pastor of St. Anthony of Padua parish in Vancouver, preached in his homilies the answers to these questions. I think it was a great reminder for some of us who might be just going through the motions and forgetting the purpose of prayer.

In the following sections, I summarize Fr. Justin’s homilies, but I encourage you to read the full homilies linked to understand the details.

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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 do this.  I was working from home that day since our team would be going Go-Karting close to where I live.  Since I would be home for the majority of the day anyway, I figured it would be slightly easier to measure my water consumption.  On the other hand, you could call it slightly cheating – it definitely was not a regular day for me.

So to plan out my 4L day, I roughly allocated 1L for my morning routine and breakfast, 2L to drink during my “work” time, and the remaining 1L for the evening and dinner.  Here’s how my day went: Continue Reading

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