To whom much is given...

Luke 12:48
International Standard Version

"But the servant who did things that deserved a beating without knowing it will receive a light beating. Much will be required from everyone to whom much has been given. But even more will be demanded from the one to whom much has been entrusted"

These are words that never really meant anything to me. I certainly never thought I had been given much in life. Coming from a family of 7 kids, I never had as much stuff as the other kids my age. I guess whenever I heard these words, I simply thought I had lucked out. I never thought I was given much and thus not much would be expected of me.

Boy how wrong I was.

My guardian Angel is St. Michael the Archangel. This is pretty ballin' truth be told. How do I know who my guardian angel is when almost no one else does? It's simple really. My mother had 2 miscarriages before I was conceived. The doctors didn't think there was much chance of them having another child. At the time though, my parents only had Mary and Tim and wanted more kids. So, they prayed and prayed to St. Michael, the first among the heavenly host, to come down and be my guardian angel when my mom became pregnant to me. Needless to say, I was born and he has been protecting me ever since.

As a young child I never thought to much into it. I could never see where he was or what he was doing. I still to this day can't generally understand what he does for me. Those few occasions I do, it's pretty special. The biggest time his presence is noticeable is during mass. When I was an alter server, I would often be standing alone during the reciting of the Our Father and thus had no one's hand to hold. At the same time, I could always feel someone holding my hand, generally the left. When I was young I explained this away as an imaginary friend, but when I got older, I came to see the truth. St. Michael would be present there with me praising the lord since in the end, it is his favorite thing to do, give praise.

What does this have to do with Luke 12:48?

Well quite simply, I am not the servant that didn't understand. Nor am I the one to whom much is given, but I am one of the ones to whom much is entrusted... I have been given one of the greatest gifts in God's grace, that of the protection of St. Michael. There is a battle for my soul taking place as there is for all of ours. The Archangel is definitely winning in my case. Of course, the more deeply he helps me, the more I see that is being demanded of me.

I often feel like the weight of the whole world is on my shoulders, though it is not an unbearable load. I have been given ample weapons to handle this. With Michael as my sword and shield I cannot lose. I'll get it all right eventually, and when that day arrives, I can only hope that there will be much rejoicing because of it. But until then, I shall continue to struggle with my own battles, and fighting other peoples battles as well. Because when you are entrusted with the Archangel, your life is never completely your own. Michael himself is given special assignments to help others when even their own guardians strength isn't enough. This is the same that is demanded of myself.

These are battles that I will win.

Prayer to St. Michael

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against wickedness and the snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.

Amen

St. Patrick's Day Rosary

So my friend Sam (girl Sam, not boy Sam, cuz theres two friend Sams...) and I sat down after our volleyball game tonight to say the rosary. Unfortunately, neither of us know the mysteries, or even what ones to say on what day. As we were discussing what to do, I realized I had the Little Green Book of Blarney in my pocket. It is an excellent book about all things Irish. In the back, there is a bunch of Irish blessings, so in honor of St. Patrick, we said those instead of the mysteries. It was goofy and a lot of fun because some of them are less serious than others but some are really deep an insightful and they all seemed to be just what I needed to hear. Funny how it works out that way.

CB out.

Retreat

So I went on retreat over the weekend. I always find it so amazing how you can come back feeling so refreshed and ready to face the world again. The week after you always have such a powerful spiritual high. I managed to get my friend Abbie to come along to our NUlife meeting on Wednesday which was cool. It's so strange to me to have a group of friends who actually think quite highly of you because no matter how you act they know who you truly are beneath that. It really allows you to be yourself. You know that you won't be judged as harshly for things because the people around you also know about your spiritual life and how strong you are in that regard. Their opinions about you are always tempered by that knowledge and it is a truly wonderful thing.

Jam session

Hopefully this works. I helped my buddy Sam with his final recording project and this was one of our jams. I'm playing drums, Sam's on piano and his friend Thomas from Berklee is playing guitar.

Around the 1:50 mark is Sam's favorite part and I must say it is pretty cool.

Also, Sam believes I have awesome tom fills so he turned up the tom levels so they'd be more pronounced.

Ok, the first time I couldn't get it up, so I made it in a video because that's easier to post.

Hiking Trip

From left to right: John, Brother Joe, Me, Alicia









Nick and Cassidy








Left to Right: Nick, Cassidy, Kat, John, Allison, Parker







View from about halfway up the Marlboro Trail

Skadoosh

That was the title of our retreat. It is taken from the movie Kung Fu Panda and thus I do not see the relevance. Oh well.

Anyways, the retreat started on Friday. We all got to the catholic Center for some pizza and soda before we headed out. The retreat was at St. Thecla's retreat house in Billerica, about a mile down the road from Mary's. So because I claimed to know the area, I was the navigator for our mini-van. Parker, the brother in training, was driving. Well, he just came up here this fall and has never driven on the Mass Pike, and hes from Florida and has never seen a toll booth, and he didn't really know where we were going... The fact that we didn't die is proof enough of God's love for me.

Well we got there without any major incidents and moved our stuff in. We all had individual rooms though they were more like cells. We all hung around for a bit, played ping-pong and goofed off. We played an ice breaker game where everyone has a balloon tied to their leg and the last one standing wins. I won because I'm amazing. We then had our first talk. Brother Brandon (from the catholic center) gave a talk about constantly climbing... I probably missed the main point because I always struggle with paying attention to talks and such. We then had a witness by one of the girls. Again, I don't remember much. We then broke up into small groups to discuss what was talked about and such. This is the part I always love because it truly allows you to get to know people on a very deep level in a very short period of time. There was a lot of music thrown in throughout all of this as well. We then had free time to just hang out and get to know each other. This involved lots of ping pong and card games. Eventually everyone called it a night, myself around one, because we knew it would be a long day ahead of us.

More to come later, I'm just lazy right now.

Broomball

I just started playing Inter mural Broomball with some of the girls on the floor and some of ther other friends. We had our first game last night. We lost... It was unfortunate, but very fun none the less. Its all in good fun anyways and I didn't mind that much, since I didn't expect our team to do very well anyways. Our goalie, Steph, had never played goalie for anything before. Also, she had never been on ice before... I don't know how thats possible considering she's from Sandwich, but whatever. I think we wound up losing like 6-2, I didn't pay to much attention to the score. I played center the whole time and feel I managed to get the best out of my line. Our line scored one of our goals and we only allowed 2 goals while we were on the ice. Being the top line center is always fun. We definitely have some things we need to work on, but there was some very promising results as well. I managed to win every face off I took, and i realized that it is very easy to gain possesion of the ball and drive to the net as long as your willing to slide about a bit and run right through the other teams defense (which is generally the girls on the other team). All and all it was fun and we went out to eat after.

Our friend Rocky Slaughter (thats his real name) is a photographer and he came and got some great shots so hopefully I can get those up soon.

I can't wait now for next weeks game.