5&2 Youth Blog

Catholic Life in Spain

20/1/2017

This is my first post in the New Year, as I was in Spain with my family for my Christmas holidays. I would like to share with you some differences in being Catholic in Spain and in Finland.

Religious Education

In Spain, the classes in religion that are taught in schools are Catholic Church teaching. I’m so glad that I was invited to a secondary school to share something of my life in Finland (of course, mainly about my apostolic life). Many students were surprised to hear about the low number of Catholics in Finland and… the cold weather. It sounds funny, but it’s really difficult for them to imagine a “North Pole” lifestyle.

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Desert Life - Tea's Experience

16/1/2017

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A desert? Not the first association that comes to mind when you hear the word Finland? However, for me my recent return to my home country felt like a move into one - the Biblical desert; a place where we are alone, stripped of the comforts and tempted by evils. Bit no need to get anxious, a happy ending follows! as always with the God of Israel who is love through and through and eagerly waits to give us that glass of life giving dehydration!

I returned to Finland after living 6 years abroad. During these years I met Jesus, gradually we became acquaintances and finally at Easter 2016 I joined the Church – His beautiful Body, perfected by the imperfection. During years 2015 and 2016 I spent several months at the Madonna House, a Catholic apostolate welcoming everyone to join their daily life for shorter or longer visits.

Easter Sunday dawning. We hiked up a hill to sing laudes, and to have some hot chocolate, paskha and kulich for the glory of the Resurrection!

My stay was a wonderful, life-changing experience. Worship of the living God naturally wells from the daily routine of prayer, work, leisure and shared meals lived out in obedience, poverty and chastity. Well, that is a whole another story. Now I concentrate on the shock that return to “the world” brought about in my life.

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Pilgrimage of Trust in Riga - Mari's Experience

12/1/2017

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We spent our New Year 2016-17 in an ecumenical Taizé meeting in Riga, Latvia, with 15,000 young people who had come together to pray, make a pilgrimage and to meet young people from all over Europe and the world. The four of us were blessed to be placed into host families, me with my sister Anna and Henriikka (you can read her report from Riga here) and Walaa together. We got to experience the warm hospitality of the Latvians and can be grateful. This year the ones of us that had been to Taizé meetings before were happy to see so many friends from previous years.

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Pilgrimage of Trust in Riga - One Participant's Experience

10/1/2017

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From 28th December 2016 to 1st January 2017, young adult Christians – Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant – from all over Europe gathered in Riga, the capital of Latvia, for the 39th European meeting animated by the Taizé Community.

Our Finnish Catholic youth team set out from Tampere in the afternoon on December 27th and we arrived in Riga the same evening. It was rainy and windy that evening, so we tried to find our accommodation as soon as possible. We improvised and took a few buses, until we happily noticed some young Germans riding the same bus. They proved to be heading toward the same temporary accommodation we were looking for. Thanks to their amazing navigation skills (i.e. Google Maps), we found the right place quite easily. This year's Taizé New Year Meeting brought together around 15,000 participants between the ages of 18 and 35.

Source: Taizé Webpage. Click to enlarge.

We had prepared for the meeting by praying as well as by reading some Latvian history. Our grandparents and parents had told us about their travel to the Baltic countries a few decades ago. During the meeting, we were accommodated in local host families. With our hosts, we could discuss what it was like to live in Latvia and in other countries today. We were really touched and grateful they wanted to open their houses to us and share this experience with us.

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Catholic Life in Spain

Religious Education

Desert Life - Tea's Experience

Pilgrimage of Trust in Riga - Mari's Experience

Pilgrimage of Trust in Riga - One Participant's Experience

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Yiran Chen

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Catholic Life in Spain

Religious Education

﻿Desert Life - Tea's Experience

Pilgrimage of Trust in Riga - Mari's Experience

Pilgrimage of Trust in Riga - One Participant's Experience

5&2

Bloggers

Yiran Chen

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Desert Life - Tea's Experience