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.