Who here likes flow charts? Those are the thingys that make connections between certain ideas or topics, etc. I like 'em. I think they help me to make sense of the overall interrelatedness of certain things. They help us to formulate Main Ideas and they help us to focus our attention on those main ideas and the steps we need to take to build a foundation and construct a solid understanding of the topic.
Ok, let's build a flow chart for our faith. From what angles do we analyze our Church or our Religion? We could look at our Church through the lense of Doctrine, or Catechesis as the fancy people like to say. This is the fundamental principles that, over time, our Church has established to live a good life. This is where we apply the statement "The Church teaches... blah blah blah." Another perspective of our Church may be through the lense of Spirituality. What the blazes is spirituality? Spirituality is connectedness- how do we connect ourselves to our environment, other people, the universe, etc. Another way we can look at the Church is as part of our Identity. I imagine somewhere on each one of our "lists of lables" that people put on us, or we put on ourselves, the word "Catholic" eventually shows up, or at least "Christian". Our Church can be viewed as a Body of Individuals while it is also at the same time a single Unit. Our final lense that I want to look at is Community. This is why most people go to church, to belong to a community, or because you DO belong to a community. So the first week, when I asked you why you are here, a lot of you said "'cause mom made me come."
From these four basic lenses or perspectives of our Church, I have built a flow chart (SO cool, I know) to express, basically, how are faith is connected and points us in the direction of where our ultimate focus ought to lie as young Catholics. So, without further adieu, THE FLOW CHART!!!:
Catechesis
> Morality
Spirituality > Forgivenss
> Relationship with God > Eucharist
Identity > Vocation
> Body of Christ
Community
So what the heck does all of this mean? Well, that is for us to figure out throughout the rest of the year. What I see here is an invitation to you, as young Catholics, to worry less about how and why you have messed up, as our Church is typically labeled as a set of rules, But to focus your attention on more dire human needs- Forgiveness and Eucharist. When we deal with our probelms, we are called to recommit ourselves to God. This means that if we can learn to focus less on the mistakes we make (easier said than done) and focus more on the forgiving power of the Eucharist (which is the Greek word for "Thanksgiving"), we are better equipped to become more Christ-like.
Does any of that make any sense?
What I want you to do (high schoolers and contributers) is to reflect on the past 72 hours (that's three days). Focus on the good things you did to make your community a better place (helping people out, furthering your education to grow into a constructive member of our society, talking with people, being a good friend, brother, sister, son, daughter, etc.).
Now think about your faults (being mean, disrespectful, rude, or apathetic, which means not to care whatsoever, to/about another person).
How many more times did you act in a constructive manner, than a destructive manner, or rather, what percentage of my actions were good actions vs. bad actions? Does it split 50%-50%? 60%-40%? 70%-30%? 10%-90% (God help you!)?
How do we widen that gap to make our good actions stand out just a little more everyday?
Think about this, pray about this, and comment to this post and tell me why you think we tend to focus more on the bad stuff we do than the good stuff.
