Still Alive

It's been busy. We've now officially began the promotion the "Discovering the Catholic Way of Life" Conference in Victoria with George Weigel. You can go to the Cathedral's website to obtain more information:

http://www.standrewscathedral.com/george.html

Yesterday was good. Marilyn Grant gave an amazingly awesome talk on prayer for which I am forever grateful for. Got some studying done and did some promoting for the Conference.

This morning I went to Mass, helped with conference promotions agai, and then went to brunch with some friends. It was really good and the company was great.

Afterwards Madeleine and I went to visit a friend in the hospital and then proceeded to her house where I got to eat a very good homemade dinner and I even tried something new! I tried the sweet potato pie and it was very delicious! I had a good time there and I finally got to see her dad's library :).

I won't be on very much this next week as I have 2 midterms that are huge this week. Life will be busy and the discipline will be necessary in order to survive through the studying (some of this stuff ain't exactly the most stimulating).

However, I would like to offer the following note before I get off the blogs for the evening...

A friend and I were discussing with each other on the way to Church about the necessity of experiencing the love of God and to love God in return. We were discussing how we need to understand, experience, and give love in order to understand God. Only when you do this with Him, do you come to understand in a fuller way and come to understand and appreciate all his teachings. You can't say "Do this because the Church says so" immediately. They haven't experience Christ's love in a more profound and intimately personal way. You only come to understand what someone says when you are in love with them. One is willing to listen to the One whom they love. So, we can't feed them with a firehose when they are only ready for a straw.

This made me reflect on the reasoning behind the Pope's first encyclical and the wonderment some people are in when he has not been "cracking down" as much as he did as Head of the CDF. It seems to me that he wants us to understand in a more profound way the meaning of God's love. Only then can we come to embrace the teachings of Christ through his Church. The Pope, to my expectations, will not be as he was in the CDF for obvious reasons of change of role. However, he may very well begin speaking in a more public and direct way about the truths of the faith in the future. This man is very smart and I think he sees the importance that, first and foremost, before we begin discussing various truths of the faith, with regards to theological and moral truths, one has to have that knowledge and experience of the love of God. He needs to set that basis, God's love is the foundation of all other truths in the Church. Love should always be at the root of everything we do, the Pope sees this, and this, to me, seems to be his reasoning behind his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est.

-Harrison