God gave to us the gift of Himself on the first Christmas over two thousand years ago and likewise every year since then. As a matter of fact, God gives Himself to us every day of the year (except on Good Friday and Holy Saturday) in the Sacrifice of the Altar at Masses the world over: The Holy Eucharist.

God has literally given us everything: all that we see, all that we are, all that we own… All of creation comes from Him. God has been giving since the beginning of time, and even before that. And all of this giving has culminated in the long-awaited prophesied birth of Jesus the Messiah. For those who did not know about the Jewish prophecy, God placed signs in the sky: shepherds saw the heavenly host of angels, and three wise men saw and followed the star all the way to Bethlehem.

I’ll end this article with a simple parting question:
Jesus came to this Earth to give us the gift above all gifts. What have we done to give back to Him?

God bless you, and Merry Christmas!

In our declaration of independence from the tyranny of the time, we profoundly stated that every human being is endowed with three unalienable rights — rights that cannot be touched or changed in any way: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  Abortion most obviously disregards the unborn child’s unalienable right to life, and, as a result, denies that child his or her liberty and his or her chance to obtain happiness.  Scientific evidence proves that an unborn child is 100% purely human from its start as a zygote, to its development into an embryo, or at its fetal stage before birth; the DNA of that child is already present and set in stone at the moment of conception.  Since when did America, the greatest country in the world, allow its citizens to legally murder their own children?  Why can’t we show the same shock for aborted babies that we do when newborn babies are discovered in trash cans?

While watching the news after the event, they claimed that police officers had to form a buffer between the pro-life crowd, the pro-choice crowd, and the capitol building.  This statement is false.  Police officers were present at the event, but they were on bicycles and only served to stop traffic for us as we marched through the streets.  We were not rowdy or violent at all; we did not have any buffer between us and the capitol even as Governor Rick Perry gave his speech about how he and the senators are working to pass pro-life bills.  I did see a small amount of pro-choice people, but they were scattered around throughout the pro-life crowd, not in a separate location.  We coexisted peacefully and were even talking with them!  We were not a mob as the news says we were.  Rather, we were a group of peaceful protesters wishing to make our motives known by following the examples of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi.

As a faithful Catholic, I do my best and let God handle the rest: We should embrace the challenges we face and use them as opportunities to grow in patience, humility, and faith.  I take pleasure in making myself a better person (which, in turn, makes the world a better place) because I know that I am becoming who I was meant to be–the best person I can become.  Therefore, I can proudly say that I enjoy English class because I enjoy making myself a better person, challenges give us the ability to better ourselves, and English is challenging to me.

I also like English because I never know what profound sermon Mr. Beeler is going to give.

I recently watched the following two movies and found them quite intriguing:

• The Last Sin Eater
• Knowing
• Hidalgo

Both movies are extremely good stories that describe humanity and its tendencies to stray from what God originally intended for Creation and his plans to make good come from the evil that we have twisted. I do not wish to give an in-depth analysis on the four layers of meaning (literal, figurative, tropological, and anagogical), but they are easy to interpret for one’s self.

I must warn you that Knowing offers a very skewed, but thought-provoking, view of the eschaton/apocalypse as foreseen by a young girl in 1959. Recall that Jesus tells us to, “stay awake, for [we] know neither the day nor the hour” (Mt 25:13, NAB). In the movie, a few chosen children are removed from the earth before it is destroyed and are taken to a different planet. This act of “rescue” from the tribulation is commonly referred to as the Rapture. However, the Rapture is never mentioned anywhere in the Bible, nor is it alluded to by any of the prophets, by Jesus, or in the Pauline epistles. The answer to why there will not be a Rapture can be found in reason: Human suffering is redemptive by nature if united with the sufferings of Christ as an offering. This is why euthanasia is wrong: it provides an “easy death” (from the Greek eu + thanatos) without any suffering and no chance at redemption. To suffer through the tribulation would be the ultimate sacrifice and the ultimate redemption. Would God really deprive us of that opportunity by taking us from it? The only human person who did not need redemption is Jesus: He came to be our redemption through is life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension and established His Kingdom on earth to guard the seed of faith and pass it down to all generations. Jesus’ dually human and divine nature (hypostatic union) explains that He was, in fact, God. His name literally means “God saves” and thus he is our savior; he does not need to be saved.

I believe I have written enough to provide plenty of fuel for thought: it seems that I have written an essay while trying to avoid writing an essay. Watch for how grace is at work in the movies, and I hope you will get as much out of them as I did.