Tips for Surviving Finals and Advent

Not to sound absolutely cliché, but we all know it’s true: It’s easy to forget the true meaning of Christmas. We all get caught up Christmas shopping, cookie baking, and watching holiday movie marathons and forget about that the time leading up to Christmas is an important time in the liturgical year - It’s Advent.

Unfortunately, as college students, our finals schedule doesn’t make it convenient to spend large amounts of time in prayer and preparation for the celebration of Christ’s birth. At the same time, Advent is an important time to reflect, pray, and discern. How are we to take advantage of this call for reflection and not neglect our academic obligations (not to mention our friends and family and extracurriculars)? Here are a few ideas:

1-    Get technical

The wonderful part of technology is that it can help you with all your daily life- including your prayer life! A lot of awesome apps exist to help you with your advent journey. Bible Study apps, Advent devotional apps, and even Rosary apps can help you fit prayer in your pocket. As your faith life is a personal thing, look around and try to find apps that fit your prayer style best. And of course, if you haven’t already, make sure to download Campus Ministry’s app, Notre Dame Daily Faith![WU1] 

2-    Go out and Serve

      There is no better way to get into the holiday spirit and share God’s love than to help others! Plus, serving lunch at a local soup kitchen or caroling at a nursing home makes the perfect study break. Notre Dame offers a lot of easy ways to get involved this holiday season. Try to say “yes” to one opportunity, chances are you can make a difference and not even leave campus.

3-    Add a Prayer Corner to your Desk

If you are planning to marathon study in your room, make a little space for God. Add a candle (electric of course), a cross, and something small to remind you of hope (some evergreen, a flower, etc.). Use your corner as  a place to meditate or  a place to pray for strength when studying late at night.

4-    Take a walk

Notre Dame is beautiful year round, especially in the winter. A walk around the lakes provides a chance for reflection and discernment, as well as a chance to enjoy campus in the snow. Make sure you walk as slow as possible for the most peaceful experience. For a more meditative walk, try to practice taking two steps looking down at your feet and then two steps looking up.

5-    Come and Adore Him

Have you always wanted to fit a little more Eucharistic Adoration into your schedule? Advent is the perfect time! Set your alarm a ½ hour earlier than you plan to wake up and use the extra time to visit the CoMo chapel, for adoration. Having some special time with the blessed sacrament is a great way to start your day and prepare for a long day of studying! Learn more about adoration here: http://campusministry.nd.edu/undergraduate-resources/personal-prayer/eucharistic-adoration/.

As we enter into Advent, it is easy to worry that the bustle of the holidays and stress exams will make Advent a faithless time in our lives. Luckily, there are many easy ways to engage your faith life this season! Try out these tips and don’t be afraid to share how you plan to prepare in the comments section!

A Choir Family

In high school, choir was my main source of community. Though I was often referred to as “Megan the dancer,” the choir room was my sanctuary. The goofy choir teacher who was basically my big brother the kind but intelligent accompanist who let us cry about our boy drama in her office, and, of course, my friends. As the choir kids, we had a close bond and we spent most of our time in and out of school together: at musical rehearsals in local restaurants during lunch breaks, in music theory study groups, and basically any other time we weren’t in choir. It wasn’t even that I loved singing so much or that I was particularly talented. I was just so drawn to the community created there. Choir was my family. It was where I felt safe and at home. When looking to college, I knew I wanted the same experience.

            

Before I arrived on campus, I decided Folk Choir was the best equivalent to my high school choir experience, and I started planning my entire college experience around it. I looked up when they rehearsed, performed, and I started making sure that all my other extracurriculars and classes would fit around it. I was packing my bags for their international tour and worrying how I would go home for a weekend if I had to sing every Sunday in the Basilica. I was already feeling the pressure of such little time and so many things I wanted to do. But I told myself it was worth the sacrifice to have a choir family once more.

            

Late in the summer before my freshman year, I caught a cold. It kicked in full blast just as Frosh-O was starting. My Folk Choir audition was that Saturday. I was trying to save my voice, but it was already going out Friday night. By Saturday, there was no way I could talk, much less sing! When I arrived at my audition, I was told that there was no way I could audition and to come back again in November.

            

As I walked back to my dorm, I wasn’t sad or angry or upset. I felt freed. I was able to take on all the other extracurriculars that I didn’t think I had time for. I had time for dance and quiz bowl and theater and teaching catechism and my weekends were free to going to visit home whenever I wanted. But now, the only thing missing would be a choir.

            

Just two days later, a solution arrived. One of my friends told me that she had joined Celebration Choir and invited me to join too. After one rehearsal, I was convinced. I loved how its weekly rehearsal fit neatly into my schedule. I loved how wonderful it felt to sing familiar vocal warm ups. I loved the rewarding feeling of mastering a difficult piece of music. I loved our choir dinners before rehearsal and the different events and tours we got to take. I loved the diverse group of students in our choir and the different insights they brought. It was exactly what I had been looking for.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll now that I seem to look for God everywhere, in the way the disjointed pieces of hopes and prayers seem to fall into place all at once. Finding Celebration Choir was such a blessing and I know that only God could have led me there. God has given me the best of both worlds: a chance to still sing despite my busy schedule and a beautiful, unique choir family for my Notre Dame journey.

To learn more about the Celebration Choir, check out http://campusministry.nd.edu/basilica-of-the-sacred-heart/basilica-choirs/celebration-choir/ or email Choir Director, Karen Schneider-Kirner at kschnei1@nd.edu.  

           

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Evangelization: A Journey in Love

“Daddy, why don’t you go to church with us?”

Every Sunday I would head to church with my mom, but my dad always stayed home. I was only six, but it had taken me all six years to work up the courage to ask why my father abstained from our tradition.

“I believe in God, but I’m not Catholic,” he replied.

Seven years later, I would watch as my dad received his First Communion and Confirmation at the Easter Vigil. It was a beautifully joyful moment. It was a uniting of my family with the church community. The tiny, old priest beamed with happiness seeing my father join the church and insisted he come up and talk. My mom, who was the RCIA coordinator at our church, made jokes about how she ran out of people to sign up and had to “scrape the bottom of the barrel,” but we all knew how happy it made her to have our dad at church with us at last.

Perhaps I wasn’t old enough to appreciate the beauty behind the decision at the time. Deciding to join the Catholic faith is huge choice to make. Reflecting on this, I decided to have a conversation with my dad that’d I never had before. In the same way I mustered up my courage as a six-year-old, I decided I needed to find the same courage to ask my dad about his decision to become Catholic. Having never talked to him about anything faith related before, this was a huge step, but very rewarding.

I learned my father decided to join the Catholic Church for two reasons. The first was our parish priest. Our church is very lucky to have Monseigneur Peter Lentine as our pastor, though we lovingly call him “Father Pete.” He is a tiny man, currently 95 years old. For several years, the only appearance my dad made at church was for the Christmas Pageant and the Easter Egg Hunt. Despite my dad’s seldom appearances in our parish community, Father Pete didn’t hesitate to make my dad feel welcome each time he visited. “He was also so respectful, even though I wasn’t Catholic,” my dad told me. Father Pete’s welcoming attitude helped my dad decide to start coming to Mass with our family and determine if this was something he was ready for.

My father contributes the other part of his decision to our family. Being able to participate in Mass with my mom, my sister, and I was something important to him. He wanted our family united together in our faith. “It was something I had been thinking about doing for a long time. It was a decision I was ready to make and it seemed the right time to make it,” he told me.

This was probably one of the most personal conversations I’ve had with my dad. Though my mom and I often discuss faith together, it’s a rare topic of discussion with my dad, as our father/daughter relationship consists mostly of us making jokes. Despite being initially uncomfortable, it was a really important conversation to have, because it showed the real impact evangelization had on his life. A huge part of my dad’s journey to becoming Catholic came from Father Pete and my mom.  Through Father Pete’s welcoming and respectful attitude and my family’s love and need for unity, it slowly changed his heart.

It’s easy to shrink from evangelization. It’s a scary word, but it doesn’t always mean preaching on street corners or passing out bibles. It can simply mean loving and accepting people for where they are in their journey and reaching out to show them the love that you’ve experienced in your own faith. I look to Father Pete and my mom as examples of evangelization in its simplest and truest form. And I hope that one day I can evangelize as they do, with respect, and with love.

Discernment Advice from the Pope

Discernment is a word we hear again and again as Catholics. We hear it tucked into the homilies at Mass. We hear it in small groups during retreats. We see it on the brochures pushed into our hands by smiling priests and nuns. It’s whispered by the stones in the grotto, our academic textbooks, and in our late night conversations with friends, when we sigh and say, “I don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life.”

For better or worse, discernment isn’t just a college thing. In the same way that discernment doesn’t necessarily mean deciding between married life or a religious vocation or what career to pursue. Discernment can mean deciding if you want to pursue a relationship, if you want to try out for a musical, or apply to spring break in Appalachia. It can mean small decisions, big decisions, and everything in between.

Pope Francis recently said, “Discernment takes time. For example, many think that changes and reforms can take place in a short time. I believe that we always need time to lay the foundations for real, effective change. And this is the time of discernment. Sometimes discernment instead urges us to do precisely what you had at first thought you would do later. And that is what has happened to me in recent months. Discernment is always done in the presence of the Lord, looking at the signs, listening to the things that happen, the feeling of the people, especially the poor. My choices, including those related to the day-to-day aspects of life, like the use of a modest car, are related to a spiritual discernment that responds to a need that arises from looking at things, at people and from reading the signs of the times. Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.”

We all want fast answers, quick fixes. We want our lives to make sense easily. The Pope tells us though, that making good decisions through true discernment takes time. It means taking time to reflect on all we experience and seeing, then listening to God’s voice in it. I often tell the kids in my catechism class, that God has many voices. Sometimes it is a loud voice telling us exactly what to do. Other times God speaks in whispers, giving us little hints, signs, and feelings that help us decide.

I was recently with another Domer at a job interview. When discussing why he decided to apply he said that he had been reflecting on this quote from the Pope: “Do precisely what you had at first thought you would do later.” He had always assumed he would apply for this job later on in his life. Hearing this quote though helped him realize that this job wasn’t something to put off, but do right now.

Our lives are constant practices in discernment. Just as we must approach prayer in different ways, we all must approach our own discernment in different ways as naturally we are all called to different vocations.

A New Way to Pray

My Monday evenings for as long as I can remember mean one thing: catechism. Growing up and still today, it means a quick dinner, then jumping in the car and driving to spend an hour and fifteen minutes in classroom. As I’ve grown up, my role has changed from student to teacher. Teaching catechism is one of the highlights of my week. Thanks to the Institute of Church Life, I’ve been able to continue teaching catechism while in college as a part of their Catechist Program. This is my second year teaching 5^th/6^th Grade at Holy Family Paris. I look forward to watching my students discover their faith learn more God’s love for us.

            

One particular activity that I always look forward to sharing with my class is called “prayer stations.”  It is one of the most fun, but also most important lessons that I teach. I arrange several stations around the room- one for journaling, one with prayer books, candles, and rosaries for silent prayer, one tucked into a corner for partner prayers and faith sharing, and one in the hallway for meditative walking. After giving kids an overview of each station and how to use it, I put on some peaceful music and let them try each station for 5 or 10 minutes before rotating. It’s a chance to see a different side of many of students. It’s a chance to watch the boy that struggles with answers in class smile thoughtfully into his journal. It’s a chance to see the troubled student walking peacefully through the hallway. It’s a chance to overhear a conversation from the faith-sharing corner where two students are praying for one’s grandfather in the hospital or discussing how they learned about their faith. As often our catechism curriculum is tied down to textbooks and curriculum standards, it’s one of my favorite opportunities to see my own students take their faith in their own hands and explore prayer.

            

A few weeks ago, while on Sophomore Road Trip, the tables were turned. Our first on the road trip, we were presented with a “prayer buffet.” I’m not going to lie, the SRT leaders did a much better job than I did at creating prayer stations. They had stations for drawing and using clay, some for reading the Bible, prayer books, and sacred readings, some for writing intentions, some for silent meditation, some for praying before the cross… there were honestly so many different opportunities to pray there. I loved it! It felt like a wonderful gift to escape the business of life and spend an hour exploring prayer. By the end, I realized different forms of prayer that I never would have tried or thought worked for me, ended up being wonderful chances to escape in God’s love.

It also made me realized what a great gift I give to my students. As they often come from families where faith isn’t important or they rarely attend mass, giving them tools to form a prayer life is such an important ministry I can offer them. At the same time, I realized that in order to be a good catechist, I need to continue to explore my own prayer life. I can only help my students grow in faith, when I make the commitment to do the same thing myself.

The Road to Sainthood: Father Solanus Casey

Detroit, Michigan tends to get a bad rap. Crime, drugs, and violence haunt its burned out houses and abandoned factories. Growing up in the suburbs of Detroit, I’ve seen two sides of the city: a rough, threatening place and a place where small bits of hope peak through. These small bits of hope are seen in Detroit’s many gems like the Detroit Institute of Art, Eastern Market on a Saturday morning, Belle Isle andTigers Stadium.  Each of these places serve as a reminder that hope is on the horizon,  and one place where I really feel this sense of hope is at the Father Solanus Casey Center.

            

Father Solanus grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin in the late 1800s. He worked as a logger, prison guard, and streetcar operator.  After praying a novena for direction, he  discerned his vocation to join the Capuchin priests and heard Mary tell him to “go to Detroit.” He struggled with the coursework and his superiors determined that he was not fit to fulfill the duties of a priest. He was ordained a simplex priest and was given the job of porter. That was where the miracles began. He would listen to people’s problems as they approached the door to the church and tell them to start thanking God because their prayers were already being answered. As time went on he grew very famous for his miracles and people came from all over to meet him and ask for miracles. His intercessions continued throughout his life and he continues to work them today. Even St. Andre Besset, who has a special connection to Notre Dame and the Holy Cross Order, asked for a blessing from Father Solanus while visiting Detroit in 1935.

           

The church and monastery where he lived, St. Bonaventure on Mount Elliot road in Detroit, has since been turned into a museum and pilgrimage center. With a prayer sculpture garden (based on St. Francis’s Canticle of the Sun), a museum of Father Solanus’s life, and Father Solanus’s tomb to pray beside, the center is a place of peace in one of Detroit’s rougher neighborhoods. It has become a place where people flock still for answers to their prayers and deepen their relationship with God through learning about the life of this very holy man.

           

The greater goal of the Father Solanus Casey Center is to work to help him become a saint. Recent years have brought forth the stories of many miracles worked by Father Solanus. One miracle involves a child without bones in her legs suddenly gaining them when she was placed on his tomb. Another is of a woman with a severe skin condition that was suddenly cured. Unfortunately, however, miracles are not always enough for sainthood. The process of becoming a saint is difficult. The miracles must  stand up to doctors in the Vatican who determine whether there is no scientific explanation for the miracle. It is a thorough process, but the people who work at the center remain determined to help him become a saint. Father Solanus is currently Venerable. More miracles are being examined in order for him to become Blessed and Beatified.

            

To learn more about the center and Father Solanus, please click here [ LINK TO http://www.solanuscenter.org/]. And if you are looking for a weekend getaway or a convenient pilgrimage, turn your eyes to Detroit. You’ll find a place filled with hope, particularly at the Father Solanus Casey Center, where you can join Father Solanus on his road to sainthood and your own.

SRT: Saying Yes to Adventure

“What is your vocation right now?” Asked my retreat leader this past weekend.
After careful consideration, I replied, “Saying yes to adventures.”

Getting on a bus full of mostly strangers headed to a mystery location, to do a weekend full of activities of what you don’t really know- is a daunting prospect. And yet, that was exactly what I found myself doing. With a nearly exploding backpack, a cliché retreat nametag, and my pillow (stuffed full of the stuff that wouldn’t fit in my backpack)- I boarded my bus and awaited my adventure.

Welcome to Sophomore Road Trip. Each fall Campus Ministry loads up buses with students, each bus going to a different location, calling students to put the stress and uncertainties of college life behind them and embrace the unknown. As the kind of person who loves schedules and planning, the idea of not knowing where we were going, what we were doing was initially really uncomfortable.

Luckily the retreat leaders didn’t give us a chance to panic. From the moment the bus left Notre Dame Avenue, it was a constant stream of icebreakers as the bus full of strangers turned into new friendships. By the time we arrived at our first stop (a delicious old school pizza parlor), we found ourselves sitting at tables of half new friends and half old ones.

Over the course of the weekend I would continue to accept adventure over and over: canoeing to an unknown island with a group of friends, doing a trust fall, and even climbing up a high ropes course! I went exploring through the woods. I tried new forms of prayer. I participated in an impromptu dance party. But more than that, I accepted the risk of telling people about my struggles and discuss our mutual struggles to discern what God is calling us to do.

The wonderful thing about retreat is that it lets you do exactly that- “retreat.” Take a break from studying, dorm life, and extracurricular to focus on what is really important. It gives you a chance to revive your spiritual side and reignite your fire for God. Sophomore Road Trip is especially unique because it forces you to let go of worries and hesitations and embrace the unknown. In the same way, we must embrace the unknown in our lives.

Last week, I discussed taking a pilgrimage: the idea of taking a faith journey, but letting God take the steering wheel. Sophomore Road Trip is the perfect way to take a mini pilgrimage. Putting your focus and trust in the Lord and the journey. It’s often easy, we discussed this weekend, to spend all our time stressed about the future. Wondering if we have the right major, if we are applying to the right study abroad program, or even knowing if we’ve picked the best future career path. Instead, I learned that it is far more beneficial to look at now and take things one-step at a time. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” reads Jeremiah 29:11. The vocation God has for all of us right now is just to trust in the moment and leave the future to the Lord’s plan for us. In a way, we are all on this road trip of life, where we must get on and take part in the journey, enjoying each moment for what it is and not just for the destination.

As for me, I am choosing to do this by saying yes to adventure. Saying yes to going to midnight Glee club concerts with my roommate. Saying yes to going on a trip to France. Saying yes to exploring the new forms of prayer I learned during retreat. Saying yes to playing sports that I am terrible at. Saying yes to making new friends and creating deeper friendships with old ones. But most importantly, saying yes to the unknown. When you are God’s journey, God’s road trip, there are no wrong turns.

A Dance for the Pilgrimage

The people of Brittany, France have special dances they do before pilgrimages and along the way. The dances are laden with symbolism- movements and numbers representing a connection to God and to the entire celestial universe. In just a few weeks, I will dance the same dances myself as I take my own pilgrimage.

It was just six months ago that I found myself staring at a rejection e-mail. I had applied to spend a month of my summer studying creative writing in Nottingham, UK. It was a program for Freshman and Sophomores offered through the Fulbright Commission. I had spent months working on my application: working with advisors to perfect my essays, trying harder than ever in my classes to improve my GPA. Even though it was one of the most competitive programs in the country, I was still heartbroken when I didn’t receive an invitation.

I had spent my entire life dreaming of going to Europe. My family had never been able to afford a trip there. Here I was, a French major who had never seen France, an English major who had never seen England! I felt this restless frustration for never setting food in Europe. I decided to turn my disappointment into determination. I made the resolution that I would go to Europe within the year and offered my prayer up to God, asking that if God willed it, my plans would find a way.

It was not long after that I partook in a series of conversations that shaped the direction I took in deciding how to fulfill this dream. A discussion with another student in the waiting room of the Romance Language office that encouraged me to write to my professor and ask if I could do research for their class; A conversation with the girl that sat next to me in English class who I discovered did research in France over Spring Break and offered to help me; A meeting with my future professor where I expressed my wish to study folk dancing in France; An exchange with another professor where my loose ideas and thoughts became a plan of action. As the summer progressed, my plans continued to fall into place. Surely, God must share the same dream for me, I thought, as I received e-mails from Breton Folk Dancing groups offering to let me interview them and to teach me dance.

In early September, I finished my grant proposal. I had spent lots of time drafting, reading sample proposals, working with CUSE office to edit it, and sending to everyone I knew to read it over. My professor lauded it, telling me that I was a shoe-in for a grant. I had planned on just submitting the proposal to the Nanovic Institute to ask for funding, but ended up checking off the box for CUSE as well, though I had been warned they were much harder to receive.

I continued to wait and pray. The idea of traveling to Europe alone to do research was beginning to seem a little daunting. I put it in God’s hands. I asked God to keep me safe. If the trip would end up putting me danger or a scary situation, I prayed that God would not allow it to happen. I reminded myself that the most important part of a pilgrimage was to put your entire trust in God and have God lead you where you were supposed to be.

I got my reply from Nanovic during one of my classes. They weren’t funding my trip. I fought my tears through the class and tried to throw into activities to distract myself, my inside I felt like the plan I had was crumbling. I felt angry. I had trusted the people editing, my professor, and God- I had thought this was going to happen. I had thought that finally my dream of Europe was going to come true.

When I returned from dance rehearsal on Friday, I was greeted by an e-mail from CUSE regarding the grant. I took a deep breath and told myself I didn’t get it, determined not to be too heartbroken. But surprisingly, when I opened it up, I found they had offered me funding. And that was when I realized how God had really been present the entire time.

The grant was smaller than I had planned, but at the same time, it encouraged me to reach out to ND alumni living in France, asking them for help with housing. Now instead of being alone, which was what had made me wary of the trip, I’ll be staying with other young Americans abroad. I realized that each failure and complication of the trip had shaped it to be exactly what God wanted it to be. The entire point of pilgrimage is to let God take the steering wheel and guide you on your journey. And in typical God-like fashion, the result was better than I could have created myself.

As I go to take my pilgrimage, stepping into the shoes of the Bretons before me who used dance and movement to represent their connection to God and their trust in him for the journey- I look forward for the chance to better my French, to diversify myself a dance, but most importantly, to continue to place my entire trust in God and let him to continue to have the steering wheel.