I went to a nearby parish for confession today.  In the windows of one hallway, posters were hanging on which First Communicants drew pictures and expressed why the reception of the Blessed Sacrament is important to them.  This one struck me particularly:

Day Four of the Tense FOCUS Waiting Period has come and gone without event.  I remain wary whenever my phone rings.

Anyway, I’m happy because I actually had a good idea for a Lenten practice.  Every day of Lent, I’m going to express a 10-second version of some element of the Gospel (whichever element the Spirit moves me to express) to a complete stranger.  It’s scary and novel to me, and therefore I like it and it’s not totally lame.  It’ll also give me some more to write about on the blog, so stay tuned.

The Veni Creator, as rendered in Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa’s Come, Creator Spirit (p. 5):

Come, Creator Spirit,
visit the minds of those who are yours;
fill with heavenly grace
the hearts that you have made.

You who are named the Paraclete,
gift of God most high,
living fountain, fire, love
and anointing for the soul.

You are sevenfold in your gifts,
you are finger of God’s right hand,
you, the Father’s solemn promise
putting words upon our lips.

Kindle a light in our senses,
pour love into our hearts,
infirmities of this body of ours
overcoming with strength secure.

The enemy drive from us away,
peace then give without delay;
with you as guide to lead the way
we avoid all cause of harm.

Grant we may know the Father through you,
and come to know the Son as well,
and may we always cling in faith
to you, the Spirit of them both.

Amen.

I blog live from Interview Weekend for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS).

Let me explain.  FOCUS is an organization in which college graduates go on missions (two years minimum) to various universities and colleges around the country, and help college students transform their lives in Christ.  FOCUS has been at my college for three years, and I’ve been loosely involved in each one of them.  I’m about to graduate, so the local leader badgered me about applying to be a FOCUS missionary, just to go to their Interview Weekend and learn more.

So here’s the deal.  I love FOCUS.  I love their mission and everyone who’s involved with them.  They’re the best people in the world.  By all accounts so far, God has given me a lot of gifts that would make me a good missionary.  Interview Weekend has gone swimmingly for me.

The bothersome part is that I’ve never felt particularly called to FOCUS and I still don’t know if it’s God’s will for me.  I don’t know how I will know, either.

There are two scenarios here.  They will call me, and either they will offer me a job, or they will not.  If they don’t, well, good then.

If they do, then I have a really tough decision in front of me.  I don’t know how God will make His will known to me, but I do know I have to be sure in order to commit to it.  So if I do get an offer, I’ll need a lot of prayers.  Regardless, please pray for all the other applicants for guidance in their discernment.

“It is not true that everyone today — in general — is closed or indifferent to what our Christian faith teaches about man’s being and destiny.  It is not true that men in our time are turned only toward the things of this earth and have forgotten to look up to heaven.  There is no lack of narrow ideologies, it is true, or of persons who maintain them.  But in our time we find both great desires and base attitudes, heroism and cowardice, zeal and disenchantment — people who dream of a new world, more just and more human, and others who, discouraged perhaps by the failure of their youthful idealism, take refuge in the selfishness of seeking only their own security or remaining immersed in their errors.

“To all those men and women, wherever they may be, in their more exalted moments or in their crises and defeats, we have to bring the solemn and unequivocal message of St Peter in the days that followed Pentecost: Jesus is the cornerstone, the Redeemer, the hope of our lives.  ‘For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12).”

– St. Josemaria Escriva, Christ Is Passing By, p. 132.  I read it in The Navarre Bible: Acts of the Apostles.