Mike Landry: Catholic speaker, writer, & music minister in Alberta, Canada HomepageMike Landry: Catholic speaker, writer, & music minister in Alberta, Canada

Youth Ministry

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(Be)Loved by the Father

(This is the first of a three part reflection on what it means to be loved by God.)

Being third is all about getting your priorities in line with the Gospel: to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love your neighbor as yourself (see above).  Jesus flips around the “thou shalt nots” of the ten commandments to a pair of affirmative statements which center on our duty to love.

We aren’t, however, being asked to love God and to love others on our own; this invitation comes because He has loved us first.  At the last supper, Jesus encouraged His apostles saying: “as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love” (John 15:29). Spend time in 1 Corinthians 13 or 1 John 4 and you get descriptions of what that the Father’s love is like, and all of these ought to lead us to one inescapable conclusion: that we are loved by God.

The trouble for many of us is that the phrases God is love or God loves you have been repeated so often, they’ve lost a  little of their meaning.  We might equate them with the fairy tale ending and they lived happily ever after… it makes a nice story, but doesn’t happen in real life.

This is why I want you to take a closer look at what is meant when we read or hear about God’s love, so we can discover or re-discover this fundamental truth of our faith: that you and I are each uniquely and wholly loved by God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Let’s begin by taking a look at what it means to be loved by God the Father. [Read more…] about (Be)Loved by the Father

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Is God Really out there?

It’s one of the questions I get asked most often in class, so I’ve put together my three best answers to one of the basic questions of our faith… is God really out there?

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Stuck in a Rut

Photo Credit: ducdao / 123RF Stock Photo

Learning to drive in a winter climate is a unique challenge.  You need to know how to handle slippery conditions, make sure your washer fluid is topped up when the white stuff starts melting, and on those occasions where we get a large dump of snow, you have to learn to navigate the ruts that form in the streets.  Residential areas are particularly unique, because they don’t get road maintenance as often as the major routes do.  This means that when you drive a small car like mine in a neighborhood filled with trucks, the ruts can often dictate where you’re headed (whether you like it or not).

We had one of those significant snowfalls recently – likely one of the last of the year – and it got me thinking about something St. Paul wrote:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. -Romans 7:15

As I try to navigate my little Honda through these snowy ruts through our long Alberta winter , I’ve started to wonder if this is precisely what St. Paul meant about the moral life.  After all, on many of these days I’m not driving the places I want to, but the ruts are pulling me to the places I don’t want to go. [Read more…] about Stuck in a Rut

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Star Trek’s Borg & the gift of Free Will

One of the most dangerous villains the heroes of Star Trek: The Next Generation ever encountered was a cybernetic race simply called “the Borg,” who saw great danger in human free will.  Thankfully, that’s not how God sees us – and my newest video offers a few reflections as to why.

 

 

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Lessons From Star Wars: The Stony Heart

Photo Credit: James Jordan on Flickr (CC-BY-ND)
Photo Credit: James Jordan on Flickr (CC-BY-ND)

“…show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” -2 Corinthians 3:3

One of the first large youth ministry events I organized was a youth rally meant to bring together the young people from several parishes in the Edmonton area.  We titled it “Hearts of Stone and Flesh” in reference to the above scripture passage.  Among other exciting things, we promised to give out free t-shirts to all who registered for this rally, and we wound up having 250 shirts printed with the following emblazoned across the front of the shirt in big, bold letters:

“ARE  YOU STONE?”

This, of course, looked an awful lot like “are you stoned,” and reflects the first and last time I was ever allowed to design youth event t-shirts.  In spite of these t-shirts, the rally was a great success (and is now headed into its thirteenth year) – and the theme is one that has stayed close to me in the years that have passed.  Simply put,  someone with a stony heart, is someone who, for a variety of reasons (usually sin or pain) has closed themselves off from loving others and being loved by them.  Ezekiel explains that God intends to heal us of this condition:

“A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” -Ezekiel 36:26

There is perhaps no place we see this play out more quickly than in the story of Luke Skywalker and his father, Darth Vader, in the original Star Wars trilogy.
[Read more…] about Lessons From Star Wars: The Stony Heart