Stations in the Village

Yesterday was Good Friday.  I spent the day at St. Patrick's Cathedral at a three-hour long reflection on the seven last words of Christ with Father Robert Barron followed by a Good Friday Liturgy with Cardinal Dolan (I love living in New York!).

The coolest part of the day was still to come, though.  The Vocations department for Archdiocese organized a Stations of the Cross through the southern part of Manhattan.  On a Friday night that is nothing special to someone who isn't Christian, it must have been strange to outsiders to see a large group of people led by a guy in a purple cape and a crucifix, singing hymns of praise in Latin, while walking through the streets of one of the most liberal areas of one of the most liberal cities in the world.

But that's exactly what we did.  We made our way from church to church or landmark to landmark, stopping at each to pray and reflect on a different moment in Christ's passion or pray a decade of the rosary.  It took four hours, concluding finally at 1am, and we must have walked about 6-8 miles, but it was awesome.

On a street corner in Greenwich Village, by NYU

Washington Square Park

Some people supported what we were doing, some people didn't, but most just stared for a second and then ignored us.

The hardest moment for me what at the very beginning - our first stop.  When the organizers originally planned the route a few years ago, they made this the first stop, not knowing it was directly in front of Planned Parenthood.  In the past, people have thrown eggs at the group from their windows above, but this year that didn't happen.  Instead, as we were singing, a woman started screaming at us our her window- not profanities, but rather something much sadder, and very true.  "Jesus. forgave. everyone!" she pleaded.  Everyone.  She screamed it over and over and over and over again.  She is so right.  And it pained me so much to hear her anger and sadness geared toward us, and to know how wrong her impression of us was, but not be able to make it right.

Jesus died to forgive everyone.  We were standing there last night to condemn, but rather to ask that He do just that.  That He have mercy on those who have had abortions and to heal them.

My heart broke a little at that moment.  How much misconception there is out there about the Church and what She stands for.  I hope I can do my part now and always to make it right, at least a little.

There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen

Article

Hi!  Happy Advent!  Team Columbia was recently featured in Catholic NYC, the city-wide Catholic newspaper.  To see the article, click here.

Hello, again

Oops!  I forgot about this thing!

Actually, it's just been rather busy.  Lots of this:

And lots of this:

pretty

Hiking with the CFRs and some other young adults

Tough life, I know.

This is probably my favorite:

Jesus

Also, this last night:

 

Michelle, Ninoska (a missionary at George Mason), and Julia

We made caramel apples.  Yummy.  And messy.

Not to mention donor events, concerts with students (my friend Emily is on tour with Jars of Clay!), a new graduate student study, bike riding in Central Park, rosary vigils, Sunday brunches, blah blah blah.

I hope you are doing well, too!

Curtis and fleas

Last Tuesday Curtis Martin (our Founder and President) was in NYC for a brief development visit, so Father Dan invited him to come give a talk at Columbia.  And of course, he agreed.

Me, Justin, Curtis, and Leah

It was a great chance to share more with our students about why and how FOCUS works.  He shared our model with the students and asked them what they wanted to see happen at Columbia.  He challenged them to see the campus through the eyes of Christ and talked about what it really means to know God.  It was great!  It got the students thinking.

Yesterday, I got to spend some quality time with two students as we explored the HUGE two story parking-garage-turned-flea-market just a couple blocks from my apartment.  There was some pretty neat and random stuff, but it seems one can never escape New York prices!

Jen and Julia exploring the first flea market we found.

That's all for now, folks.  Happy Monday!

Hurricane Irene

Bad weather follows me around.  Katrina senior year of high school, the Great May Floods of Nashville senior year of college, and now... and earthquake AND a hurricane.  Irene hit the city early Sunday morning.  It was crazy!  Not the hurricane itself, but the hype all around it.  Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated the city, the Subway shut down Saturday at noon until Monday morning (that is unheard of), the streets were completely empty, and nothing was open!  It felt like post-Katrina New Orleans for a day, just with much less water and not as hot.  All the craziness caused Columbia to change their orientation week schedule, which led to the cancellation of our first official event on campus - the activities fair.  So instead of standing by a table with 14 other religious organizations yesterday like we were originally supposed to, our team instead mingled around with the freshman first-years new students (seriously, this place is more particular than Vandy!) as they unloaded their cars and got acquainted with the campus.  It was fun, but definitely a challenge for me.  Today we go back to campus for round two.  Pray for us and all the students we will meet!

NYC

Well, I'm here!  I've been in NYC since Monday, and already I think I'm going to like it.  A lot.  At least for now.  It's been great fun getting to hang out a lot with my team and spending time with our very knowledgeable chaplain, Father Dan.  This guy knows the ins and outs of all things New York.  He showed us around Columbia yesterday!  Our apartment is not to small and quite nice (at least compared to the standards I had set in my head beforehand), but nothing compared to the boys' five story palace with a rooftop patio.  The view from our living room window looks something like this:

 

Not too shabby, eh?  Today the team made a list of all the places we want to see and things we want to do in NYC sometime this year, and tomorrow we are going to begin to tackle it.  Hopefully someone will bring a camera, because I seem to have misplaced mine (don't tell my mom).  If so, I will try to post some pics!

Oh, I was kidding about the view.  We do, however, have a great view of the Empire State Building, which is quite nice at night.