Being the example God wants you to be

Hello, my name is Joseph Marak and I am a senior at Sacred Heart High School in Salina Kansas.  It is a 2A school with about 50 people in each class, so everyone knows each other. I stay busy during the school year with sports, choir things, and our musical we put on once a year. My faith is a very big part of my busy life.  I have participated in totus tuus and prayer and action throughout my high school career and have grown in my faith over the years as well. I have grown up in a very Catholic family which has helped me a lot in my life so far.

Like I said, my faith is a big part of my life, so I want people to know that about me. Obviously my friends know that I take my faith seriously but I try to make the fact that I love Jesus known to others who do not know me very well, but know who I am. I don't do this by running around yelling I love Jesus and always preaching the gospel to everyone I talk to, but by doing the little things. There are lots of little things you can do that will make a difference in someone's day in a good way. Opening doors for others, talking to the person who annoys everyone at school and does not have very many friends, and just showing kindness in general to everyone is the best thing you can do.

Being an upperclassmen, underclassmen seem to look up to me, along with the other upperclassmen. So doing the little nice things that could make someone's day can affect more than just the person you did something nice for. Lets say I see someone who is down and I go to see what is wrong and try to comfort them and it makes a positive difference in their day and a freshman who looks up to me happens to see the whole thing. So that freshman helps someone who dropped their books and their friend sees them and does something nice for someone else and so on. I unknowingly made a difference in several people's lives all because I cared for someone else. Lets say instead of talking to the person who was down I walked by and pretended like they were not there and the freshman saw this. Later when the person drops their books and the freshman just walks by and that person happens to be late for class and gets a detention. All because I was too cool to ask what was bothering the first person.

Being a good example in Mass and school is important too. If I screw around with my friends during Mass and everyone thinks it is funny, that will lead to a lot of people screwing around in Mass and not having respect for Jesus in the Eucharist. But if I sing in Mass and pay a attention, that might lead an underclassmen to realize that participating in Mass is not as lame as his friends like to tell him it is. Then he may wander what it is that makes me so interested and look more deeply into his faith and realize how awesome it is. Not screwing around in class is important to being a good example as well because it shows the people who look up to you that you have respect for authority and they should too.

So in conclusion, you should always live out your Catholic faith to the best of your abilities because you never know who is watching, and you may not think it, but someone always is. So do good things in Mass and in day to day life and people will notice. Hopefully they will follow your example and deepen their faith and try to make the world a better place.

How To Go From Pride To Humility

Hey Jesus lovers!My name is Samantha Hollerich and I am a Jr. at TCHS in Tipton, Ks. I am excited to get to meet more and more of the youth this year as I begin my first year of participation on the Diocesan Youth Council! I am definitely what you think of when you say “social butterfly”! I participate in just about every sport that i am offered at TCHS since we have a small school count this year with only 22 total students! Being successful is always one of my top priorities but so is maintaining my own humble faith life. I want to encourage you all to work everyday on taking your pride, and turning it into HUMILITY! I hope that with our leadership in the diocese that we can encourage more teens to go out and be fully active in doing God’s work! Pope Francis told the youth at WYD- MAKE A MESS! So when I get messy, I make sure we go all out! Not just a little smudge, we go diving through the mud!

In my life, staying humble can be one of my biggest challenges. Pride is always knocking on my doorstep! I have learned that the pride that you have in you continually tries to pull you away and separate you from the world. Losing friends because you can’t get past the fact that you aren't always going to be on top, is going to be a consequence until you can find within yourself to mature in the sight of HUMILITY.  HUMILITY is being open to the world, and seeing oneself in a much larger context. Humility is closer to reality.

Now here are 4 QUICK AND EASY steps to follow if you wanna be humble within minutes!!...... Oh, just kidding! Humility isn't something that is going to come to you over night, you have to take many months, days, and hours, maybe even years, before you can be satisfied with your own humble self. It will take practice. It is not an easy task. But have confidence in yourself that you can achieve this goal. I have faith in you. 

 You should really start to see yourself as 1 in 7.125 Billion people on this Earth. It takes more than you to make the world go round. We cannot function alone. You have a very unique role here on Earth! Instead of thinking about how what always makes you happy, sacrifice every moment you can to make someone else smile! Go out of your way to show someone a simple act of random kindness! To me, sacrificing has become my new tool to making myself happy. Seeing the smile I can put onto another’s face makes me feel like I am doing the right thing, like I really am loving the way we were taught to love. Many teens these days really try to focus on “being happy”. I see it everyday. They have a sight in their minds of real happiness. For example: Cute boyfriend or Girlfriend, money to spend on cute clothes, or even simply having an iPhone to show off to friends. The key to being happy is none of those, it is to be completely humble of oneself. Once you reach this, you are set.

C. S. Lewis – “Humility is not thinking less of oneself but to think of one’s self less.”

Pope Francis is a prime example of the type of leader you want to be. He leads by humility. Have you ever seen him take all the glory onto himself? Or has he given it to someone who put in just the same if not more effort? My point is, we should seek to lead by encouraging and praising others for their deeds instead of taking the credit for just "coaching". When others see you being God's humble servant, they look and wish to be like that. They see the peacefulness in your heart. If you can be humble and be a leader by example, many more will begin to follow in line. If you ever need someone to look up to, or to compare yourself to, just look to Pope Francis. He is one of the greatest examples of Humility. 

If you consider yourself a leader when it comes to most group activities you are involved with, humility is extremely difficult to maintain! How many times have argued with your peers about a topic that you are being stubborn about, and not even listening to their input or ideas?  How sure are you that everyone else’s ideas are wrong? You do not always have to be right. To me this is the hardest thing for me to accomplish. I love too much to be right all the time and to take credit for great ideas and accomplishments. I have argued with my friends only to leave the conversation angry and feeling like i am in the wrong. This is where i had to learn to step back from my high podium and see that the world doesn't revolve around me. I always ended up going back and apologizing and compromising and it always seemed to be more fun and to work better that way! Who knew?!  To be humble means to be appreciative of other’s opinion. Learn to listen first before you speak. Step back, and be apart of the group and try to be “among” them instead of “on top” of them. I always think that my ideas are the best way to go about things. I assume that I should always take the leadership position, but now seeing how it doesn't work so great, I am helping myself become humble by listening and being thankful that I have others around me with great ideas and gifts to offer! Really be thankful! Respect what others can do for you!

Being humble takes a lot of practice, so you might as well start trying hard now that way it only can get easier! 

The key to humility is to focus less on yourself, and focus more on others and how you relate with them.

A humble heart, will be rewarded with happiness. 
Cant wait to see you all at Convention this year!! Have a blessed year! Stay Humble! :)

"New Year's" Resolutions

My name is Anna Hegarty, and I am from the East Vicariate. I was born and raised in Manhattan and have gone to St. Thomas More Parish all my life. From Kindergarten to 8^th grade, I attended Manhattan Catholic Schools, and freshman year I transitioned to the public high school. The most difficult part was going from my little class of 20, who were practically my second family, to a class of over 400. It was also hard not being able to practice my faith openly every day. But I joined the youth group at St. Thomas More, and found some new friends, along with some old ones too, who I could count on to be good influences to myself and our peers. Going to public schools has also allowed me to find new ways to show my faith in ways without even trying. I love coaching Special Olympics and helping out with the special education kids at my school whenever I can. When I am having a bad day, I can look to them and see God’s love in their smile and know I can count on him to take care of everything.

With a new year, comes those dreaded “New Year’s Resolutions”. Even though we may not express our goals out loud to others, we all have something in mind that we want to accomplish or change in our lives. Some are better than others at following through on their resolutions, and I can tell you from experience, I am not one of the better ones. I always mess up or forget about my goals and then tell myself, “maybe next year”, but I realized it’s called a “new year’s resolution," not because you are supposed to accomplish it on January 1^st, but because we have all year to do it. If you mess up, just start over and try again. It’s just like with our faith, if we mess up or falter, just start again. God doesn’t just want us to give up when it gets hard or when we fail, he wants us to keep going and strive to be the best WE can be.

Hebrews 3:13

"Encourage yourselves daily while it is still "today," so that none of you may grow hardened by sin"