Friends and fellows,
Welcome to all the new and returning students of Elon! I can’t wait to meet you all.
Friends from home,
I miss you all. I’m having a great time here at Elon and I love it! Fr. Gerry, my boss, is awesome. Tons of delicious food. Tons of great people. I can really tell that God is working in my life. I can’t wait to see what he does in my life this year. I’ll keep you updated!
Yours in Christ,
Matt Merry
Hello friends,
It’s been a week since I moved into the Newman center at Elon. I’ve had a lot of fun already and am almost ready to take on the challenge of college ministry. There is so much stuff about my job that is grey area, so it’s very exciting to be able to make my own hours and work from my own ideas. What a blessing!
I was welcomed into my new home parish today (Blessed Sacrament, Burlington, NC) at the end of Mass. My good friend Mitchell so kindly told the congregation of my new position at Elon. It wasn’t too out of place though since the priest leads a short period during which the congregation shares their joys, birthdays, and new members. I feel more and more at home each day, although it’s still a very new and different environment.
Last night, I was watching some tv in Newman when the door behind me started to open. The students haven’t moved in yet and my boss was packing for his trip to NY so I knew it wasn’t him. I turned around, a bit uneasy, to hear a little voice say “hello?”. It was a student seeking the haven of the air conditioned Newman Center because apparently hers hadn’t been turned on yet. Needless to say, I made a new friend, played a little foozball, and had someone to sit with at Mass today. God sends me little blessings everyday.
Oh, and also, I have a wonderful family. Two very loving parents and the BEST SISTER IN THE WORLD!! no joke.
With all the love of Christ,
Matt Merry
Hey friends!
I’m writing to you from the Newman Center at Elon University!!! This is the start of something big. This job is the perfect fit for me right out of college. What a blessing! God is good!!!
A few things I have learned…
Elon is GORGEOUS! This is one of the most beautiful campuses I have ever seen. So many beautiful brick buildings and well landscaped lawns and gardens. The insides of the buildings are full of crisp, clean, colorful design and plenty of places to hang out with students. I can’t wait until the students get here I can start getting to know them! Can’t wait to experience the Maroon Platoon’s culture.
The surrounding area of burlington is covered in awesome restaurants and plenty of shopping centers, power shopping like target and quaint little boutiques. I found out that if you’re traveling via bicycle in 100 degree weather and you poke your sweaty head in the door, people make some pretty funny faces. However, the locals are all friendly and continue to welcome me with much hospitality.
Fr. Gerry has been such a fantastic boss and has shown me around Elon and kept my belly full. Everyone I’ve been introduced to has been super nice and seem delighted to meet me. I love it! A local manager named Max has provided me with homemade Persian food twice in the past 3 days. What a blessing! I feel like I’m on a mission and God is watching over my every move. Ask and you shall receive, knock and the door will be opened! Praise Jesus!
Needless to say, I’m thrilled with my situation right now and I’ll be posting more soon. Thanks for reading :)
Check out this awesome video that a friend found. I like to watch it before I start my day as it reminds me how we are all fighting a real battle, daily. Spiritual warfare.
Armor of God <—-CLICK THIS AWESOME VIDEO TO BE INSPIRED!!
Matt
Steve Carell Spoof of Lebron Special
If you saw the Lebron special, you’ll understand why this is so hilarious. That special was such a waste of an hour. Enjoy.
Here’s an article sent to me by a good bioethics friend over in Rome. If you’re interested in receiving more articles dealing with bioethics, please let me know. He sends lots.
David Quinn: Language is everything in the abortion debate (The Irish Independent/Irlanda)
The Irish Independent, 11.06.2010
By David Quinn
One of the hit movies of 2007 was ‘Knocked Up’, about a rising TV presenter who discovers she’s pregnant after a one-night stand. She is an ideal candidate to have an abortion. She’s young and single with a promising career in front of her. And if books can be judged by their covers, there is no way the man who impregnated her is going to stand by her and their child. But despite pressure from her mother and her friends she decides to have the baby and it turns out the man will stand by his responsibilities after all.
The turning point is when she sees a ultrasound of her baby. She knows she can’t abort it.
‘Knocked Up’ manages to be thoroughly pro-life without being in the least preachy. The movie is much more compelling than any direct pro-life argument because the central character is likeable and lots of women can relate to her. But it is also pro-life because it humanises the baby she’s carrying. First and foremost, it’s the scan that has this effect. There is no way the child in her womb isn’t human.
Secondly, the language used to describe the baby isn’t dehumanising. It isn’t referred to by the central characters as a ‘foetus’ or an ‘embryo’, any more than we call newborn babies ‘neonates’ — which is what some scientists call them. This week there was an interesting shift in the usual language the media use when describing unborn babies. Reports about the women wrongly told by doctors that their unborn children were dead were, as you would expect, fully sympathetic in tone. The language used to describe the children they were carrying was warm and humanising. They were called unborn ‘babies’, and not ‘foetuses’ or ‘embryos’, let alone ‘blobs of jelly’, the preferred term of choice of some pro-abortion campaigners. For example, a report in one paper on Wednesday said: “Details of a further case in which a woman was wrongly told she had miscarried her baby when in fact she was still pregnant emerged yesterday.” Note how the word ‘baby’ was used even though the child, at this point, was still in the early stages of its development and, therefore, would normally be called an ‘embryo’. It is much harder to care about the fate of an ‘embryo’ than it is about a baby. The mother in this case told newspapers: “I thought I’d lost my baby.” No mother ever talks about the ‘embryo’ she’s carrying, or how she can feel her ‘foetus’ kicking.
This shows the extreme importance of language.
Positive or negative words can be used to describe the exact same reality and make us feel entirely differently towards that reality. The word ‘embryo’ is cold, impersonal and unsympathetic. The word ‘baby’ is intimate, warm and sympathetic. We care about babies. We don’t care about embryos. The reason sympathetic words are appearing in the reporting of the baby scan errors is because in these cases the women wanted their babies.When women opt for abortion, or when the media have the knives out for pro-lifers, that’s when the dehumanising, unsympathetic language gets used.
In 2007, another movie was released that was also, de facto, pro-life. This one was called ‘Juno’. In ‘Juno’, a teenager of that name becomes pregnant. She is even more of a candidate for an abortion than the central character in ‘Knocked Up’. But like the character in ‘Knocked Up’ she decides not to have an abortion. She decides to have her baby adopted. There are two key moments in her decision-making process. The first is when she goes to an abortion clinic but finds it to be grim, unfriendly and utilitarian. She leaves. The second is when she receives a scan. Just like in ‘Knocked Up’, it is clear she is carrying a human being and not a ‘thing’. Baby scans are the secret weapon of the pro-life movement. They are vastly more effective than the best-made pro-life arguments.
As the pro-abortion movement long ago discovered, emotion wins arguments, not logic.
Seeing a living, kicking baby in your womb elicits an emotional response, and almost every time that emotion will be love. Love is pro-life. Fear and panic are pro-choice. If the scans make it increasingly undeniable that the child in the womb is a human being, the social sciences are proving that large numbers of women are hurt by abortion. Abortion providers like Marie Stopes can pretend till the cows come home that abortion doesn’t hurt women, but it does.
For example, one study published in the ‘British Journal of Psychiatry’ in 2008 found that women who have abortions are 30pc more likely than other women to develop mental health problems. The stories this week about the baby scan errors, like the movies ‘Knocked Up’ and ‘Juno’, were pro-life in effect. They humanise unborn children. They help to do away with the dehumanising effects of pro-abortion propaganda. It’s no wonder Irish abortion figures are on the slide.
As an aspiring youth minister, I do not yet claim to have fantastic realizations or claims to greatness, therefore, I will quote those wiser than I, Mark Hart and Todd Lemieux. In their book called “100 Things Every Catholic Teen Should Know”, one of the 100 is about the meaning of revelation, why God revealed himself, and is it really helpful?
Man was created in the image of God. As a result, there are things we can know about God from simply reflecting on our lives and the world around us: Being good is better than being evil, so God must be good. Beauty is better than ugliness, so God must be beautiful. Love is the greatest thing to which man can aspire and the source of all peace in the world, so God must be love.
But we are limited. When we consider how little we can actually know about God, it is easy to see how many pagan religions came to the surface at the beginning of humankind. C.S. Lewis made the point that we are far below understanding God – like a flea trying to understand a man. The difference between God and ourselves is even more, since God is infinite and we are not.
How are we to understand this God? He must reveal Himself to us. That is the only way – there is no way we can grasp or comprehend something with our minds when that “something” created our minds!
Throughout the history of man, God has revealed himself. The most obvious ways are through Scripture and Tradition, as He makes himself known to us through a gradual unwrapping of who He is before all of mankind. When all of this comes together, we have a revealed picture of who God is. The picture is incomplete, because He is still infinite and we are not, but is a more complete picture than what we would have without His help.
(Ref: 1 Sm. 3:1, Ps. 119:130, Lk. 2:32, Rv. 1:1, CCC#238-242, 54-67)
This weekend has been a fantastic one! My sister graduated on Friday. My friends got married on Saturday, where I attended my first Catholic wedding… BEAUTIFUL! I spent some time with old friends from school and I picked up an old hobby, art. I’m practicing drawing portraits. It’s extremely complicated! I was reminded of the beauty of classical music by an old friend, which brings me to the point of this blog.
Truth is beauty.
It’s not necessarily the type of beauty we think of, but an incomprehensible beauty. My sister is growing up and going on to college. What a beautiful gift! We are so blessed in the US with so many opportunities. Two college friends got married on Saturday. I cannot even begin to describe how beautiful the ceremony was. Phenomenal sacrament that can only begin to be understood in the lens of divinity. The trinity coming down to unite two into one flesh… beautiful.
Classical music, while complicated and intricate, is beautiful. It may not be the catchy, cheap new type of music that pops up on the charts for a few weeks. It has a lasting beauty that is more fulfilling than an instant beat made with a computer and put rhyming lyrics. Don’t get me wrong, I like the chart toppers now and again, but I feel at peace when listening to classical music. I feel a presence of the divine almost, a contemplative nature arises within.
The subject of my sketch work today has been the female portrait. I haven’t moved to the male portrait yet. For some reason the female face contains much more beauty than the male… In order to draw a human face, one has to pay attention to every detail to transfer it to paper. There are a number of variables; the steadiness of the artist’s hand, the understanding of the subject’s character and contours, the medium, the tools. It makes the artist truly appreciate the intricacies of the human body.
During the classical era of Church architecture, the architects used the human body as the basis for their buildings because the human body is known as having the “Golden Ratio” or the most perfect form. This form is made in the image and likeness of God.
The last point in regards to beauty for this post is the message from today’s readings; forgiveness. Another thing that is hard for human beings to understand, forgiveness, is not a foreign concept of our Savior. He came to save us, to wash away what we have done. He came to give us forgiveness, to share His mercy. What a beautiful thing!
The Way, the Truth, and the Life cares about us. Truth is beauty. Look for it in your daily lives and you will see that we live an extraordinary existence, not a mundane one.
Keep your eye peeled for a more comprehensive site that my friend is making for me. It will have more quotes, more blogs, videos, links, photos, and I will make it a point to keep it updated much more than this blog. It’s going to look better and run smoother as well with fresh new music for you to listen to. www.agapeadvocate.com