Mat-Su resident Sharon Lasselle knew her Catholic Relief Services trip to Ethiopia wouldn’t be a luxury vacation. “We would be walking a lot, we would be traveling on very bumpy roads, it would be very hot,” she remembers the application stating.
At a recent Mass our Sunday reading was from 1 Peter 3:15-18, and included this line: “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” The homilist that day told us we should spend time thinking about what our explanation would be. Hope defines a Christian. Hope is the noisy and exuberant, sometimes somber and diligent, antithesis to quiet desperation. Hope is what gets us out of bed in the morning, albeit occasionally reluctantly.
Human trafficking continues to be a concern for Alaska’s most vulnerable, especially homeless youth, according to a recent study by Loyola University’s Modern Slavery Research Project. The study focused on clients of Covenant House Alaska as well as nine other Covenant Houses across the U.S and Canada.
Dorothy Day writes: “We cannot love God unless we love each other. We know him in the breaking of the bread, and we are not alone anymore … We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”
St. Therese’s Camp in Wasilla will launch its fourth summer with an extended season for area youngsters. Everything from team sports to archery, kayaking, swimming, volleyball and arts and crafts are offered. The camp also maintains a strong faith-based environment with a team of talented camp counselors. There’s even a priest who serves full-time for at least two of the five weeklong sessions.
The class at Lumen Christi, a 7-12th grade school, which is a ministry of St. Benedict Church, included 11 Catholics, one Lutheran and one Armenian Orthodox. Principal Brian Ross said his students were a particularly generous and community-minded group, contributing a notable number of service hours, far above the school requirement.
This spring, during Lent, I viewed Martin Scorsese’s film “Silence,” and it was more than just that word in the title that led me to remember those monks. “Silence” also carries a profoundly religious theme. And it’s also long, something about which critics and friends have complained but which I did not find troubling.
On June 7 the Archbishop’s Golf Tournament will support the ongoing efforts of the Seminarian Endowment Challenge, a fund which helps cover the expenses of Alaskans pursuing the priesthood to serve the archdiocese.
As we head into April, we enter what sometimes feels like the “dog days” of Lent. That phrase often describes the hottest, weariest days of summer, but it also refers to a time of sluggishness.
“This is nonsense,” quipped the 84-year-old Oblate of Mary Immaculate, with characteristic humility and humor. He went on to say, according to parishioner Debbie Collins, that he couldn’t believe the love he saw in the room at the event — and he good-naturedly pointed to all the babies in the audience as proof of that assertion.