Heaven...the happiest place not on earth

After talking to a Teen in Life teen Sarah Schlosser at The Fest, I had my 1st Core "home work" given to me by a teen. We were talking almost all things Catholic, vocations, prayer, and purgatory. In the Midst of anwsering her question which was basically what purgatory is. I thought how cool to be a 3 part series on Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory.  

I am going start with Heaven, the Happiest place not on Earth.

A lot of people have there "version" of heaven. For some people it is just a paridies that you go around and talk to your friends  from earth, hang out, and have fun. Other People it is just a place, they aren't sure what it has to offer but you get to meet Jesus. When I was young I imagined Heaven as a place where you see all the generations of your family, like a family reunion, and you spend the rest of your days learning about them. Anytime you hear some one who has had a vison of heaven it is like mass with evey one present, God at the Head with Jesus, and the Holy spirit next to him.

If you are looking for a blog that says, Heaven looks like this, it smells that this, and this many people are here. This is not one of those post, nor will there ever be a post like that unless I go to Heaven come back and can right that post.

To understand Heaven we have to look in the Bible and the Catechism. The bible doesn't say Heaven is like this or that, hence all the intereptaion. But we can look at what Church teaching and the Bible says about Heaven.  Lets start with how you get to Heaven, The Catechism  says this about Heaven, Those who die in God's Grace and are perfectly purified live for ever with Christ. They are like God For ever, for they "see him as he is," face to face (CCC 1023). Now, we learn from a young age that the only way we can go to Heaven is though Jesus, if Jesus was not born (the incarantion), did not die on the Cross (the Crucfixion), and the after 3 days rose (the Resurrection) we could not have eternal life, in other words Jesus "opened" Heaven to us...He partners  in his heavenly glorification those who have believed in him and remained faithful to his will...in othe words heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ (CCC 1026). So to anwser the first part Heaven is a place for Christ's followers.
In the Gospel of John 14:2 it says "In my fathers house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, I would have told you that I am going to perpare a place for you."

Heaven is also a place where God shows us his true self, all the the mysteries get anwsered. The Catechism states "Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man's immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. 

Heaven is a place where God shows us his true self and for those who died in God's "good graces", and for people who followed Christ. For people who might of not died in God's "good graces", and need to purified, there is Purgatory. We will explore that next

~(Afro-)Bobby

Waiting

The title is simple and the thought simpler. Most of our lives we spend waiting for some thing or things. School to start or end. For Christmas, our birthday, Movies, a CD and Books to come out. I can be very impatient  (ask Michelle). Part of it is our world and post modern Culture is all about instant gratification, what I can get now and fast. The other part is I just don't like waiting. I think it is a waste of time, I really don't like lines because we wait, wait and wait. One thing that was great about the premier of Eclipse is there was no waiting they just let us go in and get seats in an already almost full theater. Don't get me wrong some things are worth waiting for, because when you get it; it means that much more. That is one things a love about prayer, you pray, then you have to wait for the answer. Reading this you are probably thinking one of 2 things. WOW he hates waiting in a line but loves waiting for prayer, or  this almost has no point it does I promise.

Waiting for prayer is different when you pray, I think God takes some time and sees what you really need and then gives it to you. When you conquer a sin that you have been praying for to end, praying for help, and praying for the grace to conquer it, then you do it feels much sweeter because you know God won't put you though anything you can't handle...and you handled it, with his help of course. I remember when I started playing guitar, and I just wanted to get to the being good part, I would try and play a B chord, which is a more advance barre chord,  and I would pray Jesus just make me good at playing the guitar, i want to serve you with music. Now I really started playing when I was a freshman.  I just finished my first year in college and I gave up trying to play the B, or any real adv advanced  chord. I would look at the chord charts and hear a voice in my head saying, my fingers don't bend that way,  that chord is impossible. I would just get discouraged and try to make it simple. One day I said you know what I am going for it, and I was able to play a B with no problem. I listened to a voice that was waiting. Waiting for me to fail, wanting me to turn my back and say no, i will just play 4 chord songs the rest of my life. Jim Beckman wrote a book, it is called "God, Help Me: How to Grow in Prayer". When I went to Stuby my senior and last year. He had just published this book. He was talking about these 3 voices we hear in prayer and life. Our voice, God's voice, and the Enemy's  voice. This last one bothers me but think about when you are praying. When I was praying after the open house for Core, to see if God is really calling me to be on Core. I heard all 3 voices, 

One said "You know, you are too young for this, no reason to do it now you have a lot of sins you need to work on before you can be that guy." 

Another said " Well you have wanted to for so long, you seem to know what you are doing, you might be good at it."

The other said "You are one of my beloved sons, I called you to this, this is my will, my plan, and do my work."

This isn't made up I was in adoration and this is what I heard.  It wasn't hard for me to figure out which one was which; and who to listen to, If you are a teen there is a few things you need to know about Core, we don't have all the answers, we sin, and we are just people. People who also have to ask question, Ms. Frizal on Magic School Bus said you have to ask questions to get answers, how true. 

~Afro-Bobby

 

The Fest

The Fest Sunday August 8th. It was really awesome. It was the 10 year aniversary for the fest and it is only gotten bigger, since it is a free event I am not surprised about that though.
 The sun was shining, had some great friends there, awesome teens, and great little kids, brothers and sisters! I spent almost all my time with mike tammy and there little girls (Bridget and Gretchen). I ended up holding them for a bulk of the time, which wasn't a bad thing, it was hot though so I couldn't do it all the time. The band line up was pretty awesome between the Afters, Matt Maher, and Newsboys. It was the most rockin' I have ever seen Matt Maher, it was amazing, it is the 3rd time I have seen him and this was in the top 3 
;-).  What else can I say besides that Mass was amazing also...over 15,000 people gathered to worship at the Mass. 


~Bobby

Who I am

A lot of times I seem to try and be a super hero. Mostly because I don't stop when I start on a project; I keep going until I have finsished. This past summer has been mostly spent either with Michelle, taking my dad places because he couldn't drive (he was really sick check back for blog on that), or working on life teen stuff.  When I say most of it spent on LT stuff I mean for the past 3 weeks, I have done 55 wmv files for praise and worship. I had the question asked why would this be important, can't you just click slides and yes you can. But our tech people aka Mike Boyea and I, like these better or at least I do. They are convenant. Any one can have the flash drive they are all on and click play and they are all ready to go. They worked great for the retreat this past spring. I thought "well I could tottally do these and we can have all Catholic artists singing the p&w, for the most part it is. But I also have an inate ablity to do ministry, as a teen I was very good at it and most of it dealt with the tools I used. I had 3 things, a bible, a guitar, and a open ear to listen. Though we had other teens beside me it some times seemed like new teens looked at me as some one that would listen. My last spring retreat I spent an extra hour when the guys couldn't sleep talking using my guitar being very real with other people about my faith and my faith walk.  I have so far seemed to do a good job of this as a CORE member. At the same time I got used to this persona as the go to teen, when a Core needed some thing I was the go to guy. Instead of a guy named Bobby I was Bobby "super teen core", when I was burnt out it was a role or persona. 

Some times when we would go off site for a retreat when it came time for the start of the retreat and we would get there at 3 right after a long day of school to setup. I would be drained, in the spring we gave so much as "teen core" that we were burnt and we spent the last 5 mins. either trying to be excited or faking it.  They would say "OK, remember what we talked about be excited and engergetic!"  But ussally more people spent more time going though the motions, this isn't just a Catholic thing this is a People thing. Every one puts on a face in some situation if it is at a family party or even a day of school. We walk in with a face, a persona. 

How do we change this and that is though prayer, when you pray, pray for a change in your sprirte and heart to be who God wants you to be, shake yourself and live as he intended. You have to not only trust yourself but trust God, that he will give you that person and it will be enough. the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila:

 Let nothing disturb you,

Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

God alone suffices in everything, he is enough he will give you enough, he is the giver of life!

Bobby