5&2 Youth Blog

Merry Christmas!

25/12/2018

If Jesus was born here, in our present-day world, how would it be? I share with you a short film that I saw the other day: He is Near.

In the video, instead of a donkey, Mary and Joseph had a supermarket cart; instead of a stable, she sought shelter to gave birth in a multistorey car park. These are appearances, but in a deeper sense they question if we are ready to receive Him. Are we ready for His arrival?

Christmas has became commercialised. In most places we see a white-bearded man with a huge belly who is clothed in red rather than baby Jesus. Christmas songs start playing by late October and disappear off the airwaves immediately after the 25th of December, replaced by huge sales. Then some friends and acquaintances start saying: Christmas is nothing, it is just buying gifts, eating and relaxing.

It is easier to understand the meaning of Christmas when you look at other languages than in English, Finnish or Swedish. In Spanish, it is Navidad, which shares a root with the word nativity, the birth. Coincidently, in Chinese Christmas is 圣诞 (or sheng dan), which means “Holy Nativity”. That makes better sense: This day is dedicated to marking Jesus’ birthday.

Gerard van Honthorst - Adoration of the Shepherds (1622).

The Best Finnish Course

10/10/2018

After three long-distance trips during the summer, I am finally 100% here (in my heart!). Now that the winter is coming, I am also back. This time I want to write about the best Finnish course.

The Lord has blessed me to live in Finland for almost three years. I have made lots of friends here and met interesting people in my daily life. Nevertheless, like any other foreigner in Finland, I am no exception and I also struggle to learn Finnish. (Oh, I thought it was enough to learn svenska - Swedish!)

Having already taken Finnish Level One, this year I started with the jatkokurssi - continuation course. But, strangely enough, I do not feel the course is as challenging: many of the words I knew already and I also didn't find it that difficult to conjugate cases. What happened?! It's as if I had taken some extra courses already!

The prayer to St. Michael, which I have learnt by heart in Finnish.

Until yesterday, I did not know where I had learned the words I knew. But guess what?! A huge percentage of my Finnish vocabulary I have acquired in the Church! We were learning positioning words and furniture, for example oikealla puolella (which I read every Sunday in Creed: at the right [hand of the Father]). There are many more words, such as koska, siksi, jos, leipä, taivas, koti that I realized I had learned by reading the day's Gospel in Spanish while I was listening to it in Finnish, or through repeating prayers or songs.

What do we do? – Turku Youth Group

25/6/2018

This is my third year living in Turku and being part of the parish youth group. After being member for a year, I started organizing activities with other friends. So new things are coming up, and people usually ask: What do you guys usually do?

My answer is: we do a little bit of everything.

To be clearer, I would classify the activities into three groups:

Formation and spiritual activities, such as catechesis, adoration, prayers, etc.
Community Service, helping the parish for the Christmas Bazaar or the church coffee for special events.
Fun, hanging out together, sharing our experiences and sometimes being silly together.

To give you a better description, I will write down what we have been doing recently (or during this past year).

To My Dear Prends – a Sunday Reflection

6/5/2018

No, no, that is not a typo in the heading. Prend means friend and is a word that we invented during World Youth Day in Poland in 2016. To put it simply, it is an invention that began with our imperfect English. I remember that at that time I could not even properly recite prayers in Finnish and hardly follow people’s conversation. However, out of love, my friends - prends - helped me understand everything. We danced together, got lost together, roamed around in beautiful Krakow together. Those are nice memories.

World Youth Day in 2016.

In today’s gospel, Jesus called me again to be his friend. This is the second time in 3 days.

What is a Friend?

God's Business Model

16/3/2018

Ora et labora, God can always be found in the little details in our lives. This time, He is with me as I am writing my thesis. These are stressful days, I've been working for more than 12 hours straight when inspiration comes.

I was working on a business model canvas for analyzing a company, something that is commonly used for start-up companies. (Here's a link to the one I used.) Suddenly I thought, if God was a company, what would His business model be?

And that gave me the inspiration for this blog post.

Faith 24/7 - A Lenten Reflection

11/3/2018

One day I was having lunch with my colleagues and we were talking about our weekend activities. The conversation went something like this:

I said: I went to Lohja for a church gathering.
My colleague: Was it in Vivamo? I used to go there when I was little.
I: No, it was at Stella Maris, we often go there for youth gatherings.
My colleague: That’s nice, but religion is not my kind of activity.

Religion, activity? Is religion an activity?!

Who Cleans Your Church?

17/2/2018

All the churches that I have been to are spotlessly clean. I used to think that people take care of all sacred places, so they don’t litter. And I never thought about this question until a Monday afternoon in 2016. That summer, I discovered that the sisters in my parish were having community prayers with the Most Blessed Sacrament daily at 4 p.m. So, I started visiting Jesus every time that I could.

Adoration in Turku.

On a Monday, although I was late for adoration due to work, I still went to the church to pray. It was around 5 o’clock in the afternoon and the main door was closed. So, I asked a sister to open the door for me. We had the following conversation:

Sister: "We are cleaning, do you still want to come? It is a bit noisy, you won’t be able to pray."

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.

2017 - A Year with Mary

31/12/2017

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”.

My ABC for Advent

20/12/2017

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.