From our session leader Christina
Suffering Conquered by Love
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever
believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." ~John 3:16
This week, through a video on Pope John Paul II's encyclical, "On the
Christian Meaning of Human Suffering," we can discuss the topics of love,
redemption and suffering and how they all fit together. Fr. Stan Fortuna
-- the hip-hop priest -- narrates the video in an entertaining way and is
the main performer in the music video titled "Everybody Got 2 Suffer."
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Saturday Meeting 05/17/2008
From our session leader Chad:
Hey guys!!
I hope everything is going well with you guys!!
Well, we will be having our fellowship meeting tomorrow at 5 pm in the Newman
Center, and I will be leading. It feels good to lead again after a little
hiatus!!
For the meeting tomorrow, we will be talking about a topic that is deep to my
heart: Christian Love. Think about the following questions:
1. What does it mean to say that God "loves" us? We have heard this statement
throughout our entire lives, but what does it really mean? Is the context of
"love" that Jesus was talking about in Jewish times different than our modern
context of "love", or is it really not all that different? After all, "love",
although it changes in context, has an eternal meaning.
2. What did Jesus mean in the bible when he said that we should all "love" one
another as Christian brothers and sisters? Does this mean we should always go
all out 100% for our brothers and sisters? Even the pan-handlers that we pass
in Oakland? In other words, how far should we go? Should we actually treat
complete strangers in life like actual brothers and sisters if they need help?
3. In Catholic theology, how does God express his love to us? What is the
ultimate show of this love?
Alllllrightyyy, I think this is a great topic and I look forward to discussing
it tomorrow! I already have lots to say on this topic. In case you forget,
our meetings are at 5 pm in the Newman Center, and we would love to see new
faces!!
Also, as I have been promising, I will have at-least two new Praise and Worship
songs for all of us to sing tomorrow. Fun times!!!
See you all tomorrow!!
Chad
Hey guys!!
I hope everything is going well with you guys!!
Well, we will be having our fellowship meeting tomorrow at 5 pm in the Newman
Center, and I will be leading. It feels good to lead again after a little
hiatus!!
For the meeting tomorrow, we will be talking about a topic that is deep to my
heart: Christian Love. Think about the following questions:
1. What does it mean to say that God "loves" us? We have heard this statement
throughout our entire lives, but what does it really mean? Is the context of
"love" that Jesus was talking about in Jewish times different than our modern
context of "love", or is it really not all that different? After all, "love",
although it changes in context, has an eternal meaning.
2. What did Jesus mean in the bible when he said that we should all "love" one
another as Christian brothers and sisters? Does this mean we should always go
all out 100% for our brothers and sisters? Even the pan-handlers that we pass
in Oakland? In other words, how far should we go? Should we actually treat
complete strangers in life like actual brothers and sisters if they need help?
3. In Catholic theology, how does God express his love to us? What is the
ultimate show of this love?
Alllllrightyyy, I think this is a great topic and I look forward to discussing
it tomorrow! I already have lots to say on this topic. In case you forget,
our meetings are at 5 pm in the Newman Center, and we would love to see new
faces!!
Also, as I have been promising, I will have at-least two new Praise and Worship
songs for all of us to sing tomorrow. Fun times!!!
See you all tomorrow!!
Chad
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Saturday Meeting 05/10/2008
We are having a meeting again this Saturday, 5pm, in the Recreation Room of the Newman Center.
We will continue meditating on the Lord's Prayer (thanks to Jonathan for the suggestion). The opening line, "Our Father", means our self-recognition as a community, and the shared bond among all humans of being children of God. However, we are sometimes so self-absorbed in our daily lives that we forget to make a stronger community. Do we usually recognize and are able to find God in others? Do we treat everyone as a sibling? Even the people that we don't like? Do we reach to new people and make them feel comfortable and help them adapt when they come into our lives (i.e., classroom, job, neighborhood)? Are we usually "too busy" to make new friends or hang out with old ones? Just a couple questions to warm up for the session.
We will also pray the Novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, and set some time aside to plan some social activities we can do as a group outside of the meeting setting.
We will continue meditating on the Lord's Prayer (thanks to Jonathan for the suggestion). The opening line, "Our Father", means our self-recognition as a community, and the shared bond among all humans of being children of God. However, we are sometimes so self-absorbed in our daily lives that we forget to make a stronger community. Do we usually recognize and are able to find God in others? Do we treat everyone as a sibling? Even the people that we don't like? Do we reach to new people and make them feel comfortable and help them adapt when they come into our lives (i.e., classroom, job, neighborhood)? Are we usually "too busy" to make new friends or hang out with old ones? Just a couple questions to warm up for the session.
We will also pray the Novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, and set some time aside to plan some social activities we can do as a group outside of the meeting setting.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Babies' pictures
These are recent pictures of the Hilgenberg's babies.
Please, keep praying for the success of Jaydlin Jo's treatment and surgeries.
Please, keep praying for the success of Jaydlin Jo's treatment and surgeries.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
The “Wednesday” or “Mahim” Novena
Native Bombayites (or “Mumbaiites” if you prefer the official appellation, which I obviously don’t) know the novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour as either the “Wednesday” novena, since that is the day on which the services are held, or the “Mahim” novena, because services are held at St. Michael’s Church, Mahim (a Bombay neighborhood).
The keen-eyed among you would have noticed that I used the term “native Bombayites” which is more general than say Bombay Catholics. And therein lies the rub. Everyone in Bombay, Catholic or otherwise knows about the novena. Since in Pittsburgh, or anywhere in the world for that matter, it is hard for anyone to be more than one handshake away from a Bombayite, test this out: ask them, whatever their faith, whether they have heard of the Wednesday or Mahim novena, and if they haven’t, I will buy you a beverage of your choice!
Not only has the whole of Bombay heard of the novena, devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour has transcended the Catholic flock and draws large numbers of people of all faiths. I have seen Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians there, on a regular basis. In fact, it appears from visual inspection (very unscientific no doubt) that the majority of those attending the novena services are non-Catholic (and since in India, most Christians are Catholic, non-Christian as well).
To really appreciate how much faith people of all faiths have in Our Lady as intercessor, one must consider that Bombay has 2 seasons, hot and humid, and extremely hot and humid, and the human cattle cart (also called “Western” and “Central” railway) has two periods, peak and superpeak.
Most Bombayites, (like in other major metropolitan areas, no, Pittsburgh does not qualify) commute from North to South in the morning and from South to North in the evening, the afore-mentioned “superpeak” periods, when individual bodies in train compartments merge into contiguous gloms of hot, sweaty, smelly, sticky human flesh. It is under these circumstances that the teeming millions who love Mother Mary, after a hard’s day work, break their journey home, fight their way out of the train compartments, and negotiate the crowds on the sidewalk to enter the extremely over-crowded premises of St. Michael’s Church to attend the 30 minute long novena service, after which they will have to negotiate the crowds once again, make their way to Mahim station, wait for the train, insinuate themselves back into the fleshy glom, and then proceed home where they will have to cook, clean, attend to their kids and whatnot.
What strange force compels ordinary folks (not tri-athletes) to repeat this gruelling ordeal every week? Faith in a mother’s love. Our Lady is not just the Mother of Jesus, but to the non-Catholics, their mother, a universal mother, who most persuasively presents her children’s needs to God. To see thousands of people, at each of the 16 services (4 of which are in Indian languages) every Wednesday, clutching their novena booklets for dear life, and praying and singing lustily is uplifting, not just spiritually, but almost literally… you expect the roof of St. Michael’s to fly off with the power of the agglomerated fervour.
The beginning of my faith in the Mahim novena is unique yet perhaps not atypical. I used to take piano lessons with Mrs. Aida Francis (“Aunty Aida”) whose apartment building has a common wall with St. Michael’s church. In general, because of the novena-related traffic complications, she avoided having students who did not live within walking distance of her place, take their lessons on Wednesdays. But for reasons that I cannot recall, I was an exception and iron-manned it out to Mahim from Dadar, either by bus or taxicab (splurging my parents’ hard-earned money of course!). This was circa 1988-89. I had been going to Mass daily, more or less, for around 4-5 years and I thought I had faith and spirituality all figured out. (I still do!) So every Wednesday when I saw the throngs pouring out of St. Michael’s I would think, “Silly people. They think God is a shop-keeeper and will give them what they want in exchange for nine visits to the services. Don’t they know that the Christ’s words were ask, and you will receive? I don’t recall Him saying, ask my mother nine times and you will receive.”
And I continued to be content, smug, and condescending, till… Lo! And behold! The seed of a new idea began to germinate. What if I am wrong? What if there is something here that keeps these people coming back week after week?
After weeks of puzzling over this to no satisfactory conclusion, I decided to put the novena, and Our Lady to the test. I had just come off one of my most disappointing years. I had applied to the top 4 business schools in India and had been rejected by all 4. Not only that, gauging from my peers who had been accepted, I knew that my credentials were not strong enough to ever warrant admission to any of the top schools. So if Our Lady could get me admission, I would believe. And no, not admission to any of the top schools… that would not convince me, but to the #1 school in the country, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). (According to a 2002 study by The Economist 2002 the hardest b-school to get admitted into, in the world with around 250 applicants per accepted student.) Founded in collaboration with Harvard Business School, and with a campus designed by the famed Chicago architect Louis Kahn, the school had an aura that far outshone its nearest rival, IIM Calcutta.
So that was my deal with Our Lady. You get me into IIMA and I will believe.
And as the rest, as they say, is history. Not only did IIMA admit me, none of the other top schools did! Go figure!
So 20 years later, here I am, thousands of miles away from Mahim, still praying the Wednesday novena, every Saturday with the rest of my fellowship buddies, and on other days of the week, individually in my office. I call it my “heavy artillery”. When I feel especially needy and daily Mass is not providing adequate strength, I turn to the little book that is my big gun, that fires my petition so strongly and compellingly that it has never failed to get results.
Thanks Mom.
Jonathan.
The keen-eyed among you would have noticed that I used the term “native Bombayites” which is more general than say Bombay Catholics. And therein lies the rub. Everyone in Bombay, Catholic or otherwise knows about the novena. Since in Pittsburgh, or anywhere in the world for that matter, it is hard for anyone to be more than one handshake away from a Bombayite, test this out: ask them, whatever their faith, whether they have heard of the Wednesday or Mahim novena, and if they haven’t, I will buy you a beverage of your choice!
Not only has the whole of Bombay heard of the novena, devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour has transcended the Catholic flock and draws large numbers of people of all faiths. I have seen Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians there, on a regular basis. In fact, it appears from visual inspection (very unscientific no doubt) that the majority of those attending the novena services are non-Catholic (and since in India, most Christians are Catholic, non-Christian as well).
To really appreciate how much faith people of all faiths have in Our Lady as intercessor, one must consider that Bombay has 2 seasons, hot and humid, and extremely hot and humid, and the human cattle cart (also called “Western” and “Central” railway) has two periods, peak and superpeak.
Most Bombayites, (like in other major metropolitan areas, no, Pittsburgh does not qualify) commute from North to South in the morning and from South to North in the evening, the afore-mentioned “superpeak” periods, when individual bodies in train compartments merge into contiguous gloms of hot, sweaty, smelly, sticky human flesh. It is under these circumstances that the teeming millions who love Mother Mary, after a hard’s day work, break their journey home, fight their way out of the train compartments, and negotiate the crowds on the sidewalk to enter the extremely over-crowded premises of St. Michael’s Church to attend the 30 minute long novena service, after which they will have to negotiate the crowds once again, make their way to Mahim station, wait for the train, insinuate themselves back into the fleshy glom, and then proceed home where they will have to cook, clean, attend to their kids and whatnot.
What strange force compels ordinary folks (not tri-athletes) to repeat this gruelling ordeal every week? Faith in a mother’s love. Our Lady is not just the Mother of Jesus, but to the non-Catholics, their mother, a universal mother, who most persuasively presents her children’s needs to God. To see thousands of people, at each of the 16 services (4 of which are in Indian languages) every Wednesday, clutching their novena booklets for dear life, and praying and singing lustily is uplifting, not just spiritually, but almost literally… you expect the roof of St. Michael’s to fly off with the power of the agglomerated fervour.
The beginning of my faith in the Mahim novena is unique yet perhaps not atypical. I used to take piano lessons with Mrs. Aida Francis (“Aunty Aida”) whose apartment building has a common wall with St. Michael’s church. In general, because of the novena-related traffic complications, she avoided having students who did not live within walking distance of her place, take their lessons on Wednesdays. But for reasons that I cannot recall, I was an exception and iron-manned it out to Mahim from Dadar, either by bus or taxicab (splurging my parents’ hard-earned money of course!). This was circa 1988-89. I had been going to Mass daily, more or less, for around 4-5 years and I thought I had faith and spirituality all figured out. (I still do!) So every Wednesday when I saw the throngs pouring out of St. Michael’s I would think, “Silly people. They think God is a shop-keeeper and will give them what they want in exchange for nine visits to the services. Don’t they know that the Christ’s words were ask, and you will receive? I don’t recall Him saying, ask my mother nine times and you will receive.”
And I continued to be content, smug, and condescending, till… Lo! And behold! The seed of a new idea began to germinate. What if I am wrong? What if there is something here that keeps these people coming back week after week?
After weeks of puzzling over this to no satisfactory conclusion, I decided to put the novena, and Our Lady to the test. I had just come off one of my most disappointing years. I had applied to the top 4 business schools in India and had been rejected by all 4. Not only that, gauging from my peers who had been accepted, I knew that my credentials were not strong enough to ever warrant admission to any of the top schools. So if Our Lady could get me admission, I would believe. And no, not admission to any of the top schools… that would not convince me, but to the #1 school in the country, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). (According to a 2002 study by The Economist 2002 the hardest b-school to get admitted into, in the world with around 250 applicants per accepted student.) Founded in collaboration with Harvard Business School, and with a campus designed by the famed Chicago architect Louis Kahn, the school had an aura that far outshone its nearest rival, IIM Calcutta.
So that was my deal with Our Lady. You get me into IIMA and I will believe.
And as the rest, as they say, is history. Not only did IIMA admit me, none of the other top schools did! Go figure!
So 20 years later, here I am, thousands of miles away from Mahim, still praying the Wednesday novena, every Saturday with the rest of my fellowship buddies, and on other days of the week, individually in my office. I call it my “heavy artillery”. When I feel especially needy and daily Mass is not providing adequate strength, I turn to the little book that is my big gun, that fires my petition so strongly and compellingly that it has never failed to get results.
Thanks Mom.
Jonathan.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Special Prayer Request
Please keep them in your prayers!
The picture shows new-born (just a couple of days old) twins Braxton Bruce (top) and Jaydlyn Jo Hilgenberg (bottom). One of them is suffering from spina bifida.
Jadlyn Jo needs cardiac surgery, but she is yet too small. So they want to put a temporary tube in the heart to funnel blood the right way as the lungs are getting overloaded. However, the doctors are not able to decide what they need to fix first, i.e., the heart or the diaphram and liver. So we need to pray for guidance.
The family has thanked everyone for their prayers.
The picture shows new-born (just a couple of days old) twins Braxton Bruce (top) and Jaydlyn Jo Hilgenberg (bottom). One of them is suffering from spina bifida.
Jadlyn Jo needs cardiac surgery, but she is yet too small. So they want to put a temporary tube in the heart to funnel blood the right way as the lungs are getting overloaded. However, the doctors are not able to decide what they need to fix first, i.e., the heart or the diaphram and liver. So we need to pray for guidance.
The family has thanked everyone for their prayers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)