Franciscaness

Here are videos some of my Franciscan buddies created for class! Enjoy!

Second Sunday of Advent

"Wait for the LORD, take courage;
be stouthearted, wait for the LORD!"
~Ps. 27

Waiting...

December is full of waiting. Waiting for letters, waiting for the semester to be over, waiting for relatives to arrive, waiting for trains and planes to depart, waiting in shopping lines, waiting for snow, waiting for the next adventure...
...waiting for that one day that everyone looks forward to.

I'm not exempt from the waiting game. It usually drives me nuts in the long run when nothing seems to be happening and I know I can't do anything to make it happen faster.
Something's about to happen...I know it is...now..?..no...when will it happen...?!?!

Then God laughs at me and drops the Psalm into my lap.
Waiting does take courage. It can even hurt having to stay in one place for so long a time when you long to be in another. You have to swallow your pride and accept the fact that you can't do or have something. You have to stop yourself from asking at the top of your lungs, "WHEN God??"

But...While I'm waiting, there's so much time to grow. Just because I'm waiting, that doesn't mean that I can't do anything to prepare. Maybe I'm not given this time to "wait" per se, but instead to grow and prepare for what God has planned up the road. Maybe this state of waiting is where He wants me for now.

Trusting God isn't always easy (actually, is it ever?), but He always pulls through. Even if the Israelites waited how many years for their Savior, it all worked out in the end. Hopefully waiting this time around won't take as long, but even if it does, at least there's a reason.

Adventures part 2 (aka, the more interesting part!)

There's one more story that happened over break that's worth mentioning...I'm very sorry for not having more time to write the rest of them out, but I'll leave you with this one at least.

So there was one point on our adventure where we were still getting used to navigating the streets. New York isn't really all the difficult to navigate through since the streets are numbered and in a grid, but getting used to which way was up or down took a bit of thinking (and walking)!

We were walking on 6th avenue and decided to find 5th avenue since we heard it was one of the best streets to go window shopping down. Well. We couldn't figure out whether going left would bring us down the avenues or going right would. In the end, we decided to wing it like the rest of the trip and head right! Off we went, headlong into adventure!

Yes, you guessed it, we ended up on 7th avenue. Actually, we weren't all that surprised (especially since things like this seemed to be the theme of the entire trip). We turned the corner and started walking back the next block.

Much to our surprise, there was a large, glowing Cross on one of the buildings. As we got closer, we found that it was a Catholic church. Whispering a prayer for it to be open, we went up the steps. Lo and behold, we stumbled into the last few minutes of Benediction! I couldn't help it. It took a whole lot for me to keep from bursting out in laughter. Here we were, semi-lost in the city, and we find Jesus - no, He found us! (Plus, just being able to be with Him in the middle of all the hustle bustle of the city made me incredibly happy! Yes, I'm that type of person.) On top of that, we found out that the Extraordinary Form Low Mass was about to begin! Dear God, how You spoil me so! =D We get lost and we find a lovely unexpected surprise! Honestly, I didn't expect to be able to have any quiet time whatsoever on that trip, much less at church for Mass. Apparently, I was quite wrong.

Well...I think I like being wrong once in a while.