"The Universal Church of Christ, and therefore each particular Church, exists in order to pray. In prayer the human person expresses his or her nature; the community expresses its vocation; the Church reaches out to God." - St. John Paul II

I'm praying for you!

:)

I'm praying for you!

:)

The nation doesn’t simply need what we have. It needs what we are.
-St. Teresia Benedicta

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“It is strange that we should not realize that no enemy could be more dangerous to us than the hatred with which we hate him, and that by our efforts we do less damage to our enemy than is wrought in our own heart.”

— Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book One, XVIII

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“Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.” - St. Therese of Lisieux

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Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.
—C. S. Lewis

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:)

Oh my goodness, I'm getting bad at this blogging thing. 

Grad school is crazy hectic, with tons of reading and papers and field trips (yes, you read that right). 

We talk a lot about public policy and how research can inform it, and today we were talking about the 100,000 Homes campaign, which set out to get 100,000 people off the streets. Research shows that it's easier to tend to people's other needs once they're housed and that subsidizing housing costs less in taxes than paying for emergency room visits and other services for the homeless, so they decided to just get them off the streets and worry about everything else later. In Nashville, they went out, found all the chronically homeless people they could in the city, interviewed them about their health, then ranked them according to who was at most risk for dying and got as many as possible off the streets immediately and into housing. The program overall has housed more than 101,000 people and after it ends at the end of July, they're starting a new zero campaign to target individual cities one at a time to end homelessness completely in each city. It sounds really promising, and 85% of the people they get into housing stay there successfully, which is a higher success rate than just about any program ever. 

Of course, people in my class started arguing about what the neighbors would think and whether we should be helping people who are only on the streets because they are ex-cons with substance abuse problems. And one girl said that they almost certainly had troubled childhoods, so those problems really weren't their fault.

I said it didn't matter whether it was their fault. They were human beings and if they were willing to accept help and we are able to give help (which it seems we are, given the effectiveness so far of this program), then we should help them. Regardless of their past. We shouldn't abandon anyone to die on the streets if we have the means to prevent it.

And my professor fussed at me for making an impassioned speech and told me that we had to consider science and leave feelings out of it.

My only question is, "Why can't we have both? Why can't we be compassionate and be guided by science in terms of what works?" A lot of policy makers want science to give us the answers to not just what we should do but why we should do it. Housing people is an economically sound decision. It saves taxpayer dollars. It makes the streets safer, promotes cohesiveness, reduces crime, etc. But what if we just stopped and said, people are people. And we should love human beings and promote their overall well-being no matter what. People should be our first priority (second only to God). We can use science to determine some of the ways in which people's brains work and how situations affect people's abilities to use their proper judgment or to exercise their free will. We can look at risk factors. We can find solutions. We can develop programs that work. But to try to throw out love and human empathy as motivators is insane. Public policy guided only by science does not help people. It ignores people and categorizes them as statistics or variables. And in today's world, we desperately need love.

I'm praying for you!

:)

Here's a bio of St. Margaret of Scotland:

Margaret was an English princess. She and her mother sailed to Scotland to escape from the king who had conquered their land. King Malcolm of Scotland welcomed them and fell in love with the beautiful princess. Margaret and Malcolm were married before too long.

As Queen, Margaret changed her husband and the country for the better. Malcolm was good, but he and his court were very rough. When he saw how wise his beloved wife was, he listened to her good advice. She softened his temper and led him to practice great virtue. She made the court beautiful and civilized. Soon all the princes had better manners, and the ladies copied her purity and devotion. The king and queen gave wonderful example to everyone by the way they prayed together and fed crowds of poor people with their own hands. They seemed to have only one desire: to make everyone happy and good.

Margaret was a blessing for all the people of Scotland. Before she came, there was great ignorance and many bad habits among them. Margaret worked hard to obtain good teachers, to correct the evil practices, and to have new churches built. She loved to make these churches beautiful for God's glory, and she embroidered the priest's vestments herself.

God sent this holy Queen six sons and two daughters. She loved them dearly and raised them well. The youngest boy became St. David. But Margaret had sorrows, too. In her last illness, she learned that both her husband and her son, Edward, had been killed in battle. Yet she prayed: "I thank You, Almighty God, for sending me so great a sorrow to purify me from my sins."

Let us take this saintly Queen for our example. While we do our duties, let us keep in mind the joys that God will give us in Heaven. Her feast day is November 16th.

Bio obtained from http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=304.

I'm praying for you!

:)

I moved out of my parents' house! Crazy, I know. And my lease on my new apartment starts Thursday, so I actually am crashing at Stephanie's apartment until then. Her roommates are pretty cool. One of them took us to her Bible study yesterday, where our group resolution, broadly speaking at least, was to pray for "the soil" and to be better soil. We read next week's Gospel, in which Jesus tells the parable of the seeds that fall on the rocky soil and the good soil and the thorns. I had always read that passage thinking of myself as the seed, but we are also the soil for others. We can provide people with a good, loving foundation in the Truth, or we can get them excited about Jesus without any real understanding, or we can actively discourage their faith or choke their faith right out of them. So my prayer is that we can all be better soil for others, especially because we don't even always know when someone needs us to be soil. I hope that makes sense :P

I'm praying for you!

:)

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

— G.K. Chesterton

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:)

“The world, the devil and the flesh are a band of adventurers who take advantage of the weakness of that savage you have within you. In exchange for the poor bauble of pleasure, which is worth nothing, they want you to hand over to them the pure gold and the pearls, the diamonds and the rubies, drenched in the living and redeeming blood of your God - the price and the treasure of your eternity.”

— St. Josemaria Escriva

I'm praying for you!

:)