5&2 Youth Blog

The New Stella Maris

29/1/2018

After more than two months of silence we went back to the "home" of Our Mother, Stella Maris. This time, we are not part of any Youth Weekends anymore. Andi is abroad for a month of exams, Father Gianni has been here alone, with Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament. That might seem sad: a place with empty rooms, cold and abandoned. The reality, however, is totally different. We had a such joyful weekend, without any arrangement and stress, young and energetic people gathered together in good will. Hey! Welcome to the New Stella Maris!

We arrived at around 10 on Satudray morning, for spontaneous prayers in front of the most blessed sacrament. All kinds of petitions were offered, we know that God knows better what we need.

After having lunch together, we had a short sharing moment. After the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, we “chewed over” Sunday’s reading together in Lectio Divina. What a delicious spiritual food that Jesus prepared for us through St. Paul. The Body of Christ and us, all we should do is to listen our Father.

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2017 - A Year with Mary

31/12/2017

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Finally, it is the time to look back upon this year. We have received uncountable favors from Our Lady, so we thank our Mom for helping us. A multitude of events happened this year and I list some of those that really helped me and my friends to grow in faith.

1. The Youth Weekends.

The One Body in Christ Youth Weekends continued with a wonderful group time at Stella Maris. We learned about vocation in the Spring and we continued about family and social challenges in the Autumn.

People from various places shared their testimonies, lots of providences were given (every weekend we received more than enough food, for free!), as well as blessings and healings from adorations, worship and prayers.

Unfortunately, it could not continue after October, since the use of the buildings was banned by the authorities. Nevertheless, we always stand united as “One Body in Christ”.

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My ABC for Advent

20/12/2017

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It's the third Sunday of Advent already, so in this post I will try to summarise my Advent reflections in the order of the alphabet.

A: Annunciation. Our Lady's period of Advent is actually longer than ours, since she knew that Jesus was coming since the Annunciation.
B: But. "Everything before the 'but' does not count." It happens to me all the time. (ノ_＜) I want to pray more, but I don't have time." "I want to participate in the morning Mass, but it's too early." Maybe it could be a New Year's Resolution, to stop all the buts?
C: Child. Many times we should be like children, waiting for the Child Jesus with our hearts full of purity.

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Family and Faith

8/11/2017

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Recently we had the October Youth Weekend at Stella Maris, which was attended by around 20 people. In some ways it is "the last weekend", as the Bishop has announced that all activities should stop at Stella Maris by November. This post is a summary of my reflections at this time.

Sunday Mass at Stella Maris during the Youth Weekend.

1. Love and Serve

Family means a unity of servants, and it is a place to serve. In a family, we serve each other through love and we offer ourselves to another person. Love is never temporary, contrary to what society promotes nowadays.

Jesus serves us by giving his Life. Love in His terms stands for sacrifice. If we want imitate Him, then we should learn to give and to "sacrifice" ourselves. And learn to be faithful like Him!

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Serving like Mary

25/9/2017

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Click to find out more about the next Youth Weekend

This month is a special month: it is exactly one year since we started the Youth Ministry at Stella Maris. However, we don’t yet know if we are going to have the second year of youth weekends. Yes, this post is about my reflections on the current situation at Stella Maris. I have been praying about it for a long while, and now I want to share my thoughts with you, based on Sunday’s readings and Gospel (24/9/2017).

Stella Maris. It is a Marian Shrine and activity center. It was consecrated to Our Lady a few years ago and every May since then, this vow has been renewed.

This Sunday’s first reading (Is 55:6-9) is on the difference between God’s plan and man’s plan. Apparently, we plan in different ways for Stella Maris. For some of us, it is a diocesan activity center; for some of us, it is a Marian sanctuary; for some of us, it is a parish. And for many other people and me, it is a spiritual home.

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The Language of the Holy Spirit

6/6/2017

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Happy Pentecost!

I took part in the vigil at Stella Maris on Saturday, on the Eve of Pentecost Sunday, and the first reading drew my attention:

Then the LORD said: If now, while they are one people and all have the same language, they have started to do this, nothing they presume to do will be out of their reach. [GN 11:6]

It has been said that human communication is not very efficient, that listeners only get few per cent of the original message transmitted by the talker. But languages are also tools to proclaim and unite people.

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The Good Shepherd

8/5/2017

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On the Feast of the Good Shepherd our brother Andreas Bucksrucker received his Admission to the Holy Orders at Stella Maris. Bishop Teemu Sippo SCJ celebrated the Holy Mass and blessed him.

Last weekend it was the May Youth Weekend at Stella Maris, Andreas shared his testimony with us as the theme for the weekend was the Priesthood. What did I conclude from Andi’s story? That the Plan of God is always much better than ours.

Andi at the Youth Weekend at Stella Maris.

This life is a pilgrimage; we walk, and we seek the right way. Sometimes, we create the difficulties for ourselves to finding the way that God proposes. We may not pay attention to what God tells us (like a wayward sheep); we may want to avoid the way by coming up with excuses or following attractive material issues (the rich young man); we may be lazy, not work and think that faith moves everything.

Excuses after excuses, pretexts after pretexts, which will just cause us to end up like the prodigal son: sad, pockets empty, life ruined. Until we find the way back Home, the way that He chose for us, we will not have peace. Because Jesus said, the Peace that He gives is different from the peace of this world. He is the Good Shepherd, the One who knows his sheep, and his sheep knows Him. He knows us better than we do!

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The Breath of Spring

27/4/2017

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Spring is coming, birds and flowers are (slowly) waking up from hibernation. It seems that we humans, too, are rejuvenated. Darkness and all the bundling up slowly fades and we adopt a more active, more social and more joyful mode of life. We walked through Lent and now our souls are lifted up into new flourishing.

The natural and spiritual “parts” or our human project seem to walk hand in hand. This reminds me of many of the lessons I have learned during this spring at Stella Maris during the One Body in Christ – Youth Weekends. God created nature - or, in fact, the whole Universe (to give it a bit more grandeur), including us humans.

Spring is coming. Really.

Of course, these things go hand in hand, or they should, in order to retain balance and the harmony, happiness and wellbeing of humanity and the rest of the created world.

However, our culture and this society do seem to follow some other agenda these days. Life is 24/7, and moving about by foot or on skis, after a ball or among trees has given away to cars, shopping malls and gyms where people can watch their perfected selves in advertisements or next to them in the mirror at yoga class. We are invited to make unhappy comparisons between ourselves and the others that we might find better or worse, and so easily we are lured into feeling envy about the former and something between encouragement and pity about the latter.

Advertisements tell us to strive to be more beautiful and more successful and to keep more busy. In fact, 90% of the people I know respond to the question “How are you?” with “Busy”.

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Learning from St Joseph

20/3/2017

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Happy Feast of St. Joseph to all, especially to all fathers! (Maybe it is a bit late, but better late than never!)

Saint Joseph is known as the providential father and patron saint of the Holy Church, since he was the one who took care of the Holy Family of Nazareth. So, what should we learn from him? Here are some small inspirations that I have.

1. Giving more than what you don't need

Saint Joseph gave everything to his family, even though he didn't understand at all how Our Lady’s pregnancy came about. And I have to be sincere, it happened to me at the beginning in my Catholic life that I only gave my extra money or extra time to people in need.

The Holy Family image at Stella Maris.

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My vocation is love!

20/2/2017

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In my notes, these famous words from Saint Therese of Lisieux summarize the January One Body in Christ Youth Weekend outcome. The whole purpose of life is to find out how God can live in you and through you in the way that He planned from the beginning, from the time before you were even a twinkle in your earthy father’s eyes. God is love (1 John 4) and we all are made in the image of God. We praise God to be more like Him. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me (Gal. 2:20). This is how we are to inherit eternal life.

Each of us is an instrument and only God can play that instrument the most beautiful way, as Fr. Gianni taught us. Or with St Irenaeus we can trustfully believe that the glory of God is the human person fully alive. By all means we should fight against the modern atheist idea that God would be in competition with humanity and praising God would somehow decrease the freedom of humanity.

The beauty of Christian anthropology goes far beyond my comprehension. However, one practical thing that I have learned from St Therese of Lisieux is that in the end of the days, we will be judged according to love. It helps me to not get carried away by doing, by the compulsion “to urge to do great things” and to stop writing up my spiritual CV in my head based on prideful accomplishment. No, no, no… every day we have infinite opportunities to love in small things – done with great love for God. I pray that God would open my eyes to these opportunities and give me the courage to follow up the promptings.

St Therese of Lisieux

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<<Previous

The New Stella Maris

2017 - A Year with Mary

My ABC for Advent

Family and Faith

1. Love and Serve

Serving like Mary

The Language of the Holy Spirit

The Good Shepherd

The Breath of Spring

Learning from St Joseph

My vocation is love!

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