by admin on December 18, 2011
By Ileana A.
This Friday, during our morning chapel service, Father Liz invited two students to reenact the scene where Gabriel tells Mary what is about to happen to her. The reenactment was a contemporary version. It ended with Gabriel saying, “God doesn’t want you to give Him your body, He wants you to give Him your yes.” Father Liz wanted us to ask ourselves if we would be able to give God our yes.
Imagine that. Having an angel appear before you and tell you that God has chosen you to have his son. In that situation, I would probably ask myself what people would think if I tried to tell them why I was pregnant. No one would believe me. In fact, I probably would not even believe that the person in front of me was an angel. I could see myself interrogating him and then making a phone call to the police. “Hello? Yeah, hi, there is a psycho in my house telling me he’s an angel and that I’m supposed to be pregnant. Come quick.”
Then I hear Jesus’ words in my head; “O you of little faith.” Obviously, Mary had such a strong faith that even though she might have been afraid of what could happen, she said yes without having one doubt that God would take care of her. If I never doubted, I would always be comforted and at peace with whatever situation happened in my life. I do not know if anybody in our day and age would take a man seriously if he told them he was an angel sent from God, but maybe that is why it happened when it did. So instead, I strive to be like Mary, and make my faith grow stronger every day.
by admin on October 30, 2011
By Ileana A.
On Monday, Father Liz read us a book called The Prince Mammoth Pumpkin. This book, written by James P. Adams, is a life parable. The book is about a farmer who has his own garden and plants many different kinds of fruits and vegetables but his most favorite thing to grow is pumpkins. One day, this farmer is flipping through a magazine and sees a new kind of pumpkin seed for sale. The picture shows a pumpkin next to its farmer and the farmer’s son, and lo, the pumpkin is bigger than the boy.
The seed comes in the mail and soon it is planted and cared for as if it were the farmer’s child. One morning the farmer wakes up and knows that the pumpkin would be fully grown to its mammoth size. However, when he goes to check on his prince, he finds it chopped to pieces. Angrily, the farmer plows under the rest of his pumpkin and all his fruits and vegetables. If he could not have his pumpkin, then there was no point in having a garden either.
Later, a boy knocks on the farmer’s door and asks for one of his pumpkins. What pumpkins, asks the farmer. When he had plowed under his pumpkin and his garden, the farmer had spread the pumpkin seeds all over his fields. Now there were hundreds of prince mammoth pumpkins.
What I heard in this story was a message of hope. Sometimes the things you love the most can be taken away faster than the time it took for you to get it. When that happens, you don’t know what to do. Even then, faith and trust can replace that despair with more than what you had before. I do not know how much faith the farmer had, but even if he had very little faith, God still provided for him.
Matthew 6:26 says, “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?”
