Faith Journey
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St. Thérèse Relics
The relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux were on a national tour in honor of the 100th anniversary of her canonization and the Jubilee Year of Hope. On Saturday, November 22, I went up to D.C. with my family and a friend to see the relics on the last day of their visit at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Public Transportation My family took the Amtrak from Richmond, and my friend and I joined them from the Fredericksburg stop. This was only my second time being on a train since I was six-years-old, and it was interesting to ride public transit again. Once we got to…
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CCM Leadership Experience during the Fall Semester
This school year I have the honor of being on the CCM leadership team. Specifically, I’m in charge of the Liturgy. Every Thursday afternoon I meet with a campus minister (shoutout Ashleigh) and we go over things for the upcoming week. My main responsibilities are scheduling the weekly altar servers and lectors, writing the weekly pre-Mass announcements, and making sure we have people to bring up the gifts each Sunday. The pre-Mass announcements are actually a new thing we started this year at my suggestion, so it’s been neat to see an idea of mine come to fruition. We rotate which leader gives the announcements each week so that everyone…
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Lent 2025
I had a really good Lent this year! It was probably the most reflective and spiritual yet for me. This year I decided to give up music; I deleted Spotify off my phone and computer and refused to listen to any music on YouTube or the radio. Now I couldn’t control whether or not I heard music all the time because both of my campus jobs would play music and I can’t exert my will over others. So on the days when I had accidentally consumed a lot of music (almost every day), I also gave up gum. Which might not seem like that big of a deal, but I…
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One of My First Real Attempts at Fasting
Well, as the title says, I tried to actually, intentionally fast for one of the first times in my life. Okay so here me out. I was raised to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and all Fridays during Lent. However, I didn’t fully realize the Catholic obligation to fast as well until some years down the road. The way Catholic fasting works is this: on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, we are only allowed to eat one regular meal and then two smaller meals which, when added together, may not equal another full meal. So basically two snacks throughout the day and one regular meal (I usually choose dinner).…
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Richmond College Summit Recap
Salutations! From February 7th to February 8th I was at the Richmond College Summit with the University of Mary Washington. It was hosted by the Office for Evangelization in the Greater Richmond Convention Center at the same time as the Diocesan Youth Conference (DYC), which is basically the high school version of Summit. (I went to DYC last year and had an absolute blast.) Even though Mary Wash is in the Diocese of Arlington and not Richmond, we were kindly invited to attend! This short conference was much-needed and allowed me to refocus my priorities and remember what this life is all about: glorifying the Lord. I had a fun…
