My last semester

Well folks, its time for my last semester here at the College. I've got a nice workload: 3 classes, a thesis, and the teaching practicum. I've got a whole bunch of movie things I want to do too. I'm working on another story, as well as tweeking one of my older ones. I haven't actually had my first class yet (its at 1) but I'm anxious to start. Its like a new adventure starting, a new day dawning.

Yesterday The Good Doctor, the college president, gave an amazingly awesome speech to rouse the student body to do their best this semester, the second in our 30th Anniversary celebration. he encouraged us to live Christian lives by first and foremost doing our school work (for you can not serve Christ if you cannot do your daily duties). He also expressed his disgust of recent incidents of students who were kicked out of the school after this past semester because of behavior. Its the kind of skeletons that no college likes to have in their closet, yet they all do. it is our job, The Good Doctor urged us, to tell our friends when they are doing something bad that what they are doing might not be a good thing, or that it might be a danger to themselves or others. One essential thing one must remember, however, is that we cannot be preachy. We must approach them as our friends, or better yet, as our brothers and sisters in Christ. That is our mission as students of the College. We are to Restore all things in Christ, even our daily lives, no matter how hard that may be.

Therefore, we march. A week from today is another anniversary, one less joyful than that of the college's founding. It is the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion. It is never a good sign of a society when immorality is legalized. Such was the case in the legalization of abortion. The arguments against abortion will not be presented here. This is not the reason for my mentioning it in this post. Rather, I mention the March for Life, what people call the organized protest to the ruling that occurs every year on January 22, because it is another avenue that we as members of the College, indeed as Catholics throughout this nation and the world, may use to restore the world to Christ. What better way to evangelize the faith than to live it? The March provides an opportunity for just that. Men and women of all faiths, even no faith at all, descend upon capital hill to protest the inhumanity that is abortion. There are Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Atheists, Agnostics, Muslims, Mormons, and everything in between. We overcome our religious differences to stand up for life, to protest something that needs to be stopped. In doing so we provide to those who do not know us, those who may be unfamiliar with the Catholic life, a clear portrait of what John Paul II, of happy memory, called "ordinary Christian living." Race, Creed, etc do not stop us from marching with each other. Maybe this year a young (or even not so young) Protestant or Atheist might see the Christendom banner and the chilled students underneath and behind it marching to the sound of the rosary, and think "hey, they seem to know what they're doing" and be inspired to investigate the faith. How many unknown converts are won each year by the witness in defense of life? We may never know, but the One who is greater than all of this, who gave life at the beginning of time, will know.

"And that has made all the difference."