you know that I could use someBODY

"Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink." (John 6:53-56)

"On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" (John 6:60)

"As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him." (John 6:66)

 

Jesus tells us that his flesh is REAL food, his blood REAL drink. We can read in black in white that Jesus makes no mention of a metaphor from here we can understand that if what He said was merely symbolic and all we had to do was eat some bread and drink some wine to gain eternal life, well that would be easy and everybody would sign up for this kind of salvation. But His disciples, people who knew Jesus, who had left literally everything they had ever known to follow Him, family, friends, a job, said to Him "this is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" These people didn't just show up for one day to hang out with Jesus they knew Him and trusted Him with their welfare. If all the disciples had to do was eat bread and drink some wine then it wouldn’t be hard. Jesus tells his followers eat my FLESH and drink my BLOOD and because of this "many of his disciples returned to their former way of life." These people knew Jesus meant what he said (either that or thought he was insane) regardless they knew he MEANT what he was saying. Men who left all they'd ever known, possibly miles from their homes, maybe even had to sever ties with family to be with Jesus left him because of this teaching and Jesus let them go. Jesus let them go because he knew that if they couldn’t accept this teaching then they would miss out on so much more, that this was one of the most important things he was offering to us, His people on earth and ultimately when they rejected his body and blood, they rejected Jesus.

 

Jesus is REAL body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist and thank God for that gift. I was really inspired today during prayer listening to a podcast from Father Michael Schmitz on the Eucharist so I just thought I'd share with you all.

 

AMDG

 

 

 

Looking Back.

Looking back on my year on NET, the simplest statement about it I can make is “it was an adventure.” It certainly had its many ups and downs but now, sitting here with the year all done and dusted I can hands down say it was the best year of my life. For me personally, my year, even though I didn’t intend on this being the case, was about my growth and learning who I am, growing into an adult and coming to see myself the way that God sees me. Learning about who I am, outside of the name I created for myself at High School and in my community which in itself was a HUGE challenge. One I want to pose to you, whoever you are that is reading this; remove yourself from your achievements, be it academic, sporting or cultural, take away the opinions your friends and family have of you whether you’re the ‘funny one’, ‘nice one’, ‘trustworthy one’ or whatever else, forget about the people you hang out with or the activities you participate it and then reflect. At the core of who you are what kind of person are you, is it who you want to be? How does God see you at the very core of your being and is it how you want him to view you? This is what my year has been, reflecting on who I am. Constantly striving to be a woman of integrity, which of course is who you are when no one else is around to see.

As for a day in the life since I was on the National team we were CONSTANTLY on the move, in the 10 months I was on NET our team went to approximately 72, yes 72!! Places, some of them were double ups true, but we went all over Australia, a truly amazing country, we went to every state or territory, excluding Tasmania and ministered to over 7000 young people. From Brisbane to Darwin, From Perth to Adelaide and just about everything in between. We stayed in large cities like Sydney and tiny ‘towns’ like Theodore population of only 600 including the surrounding area. We ministered to a large array of ages from young adults to year 4 students. God worked in us and we worked for God, without Him at the centre of everything there is no way we would have been able to accomplish everything we did this year.

This year was incredible, inspiring, challenging, scary, tough, fun, crazy, silly, awesome and so much more that can simply not be put into words.

So here is my year in pictures, well a few anyway.

 

 

 

No longer a NETter

It's official, NET is OVER! Well technically speaking it’s been over since Saturday, that’s when we were officially “released” from our titles as NETters. We ended the year with a thanksgiving Mass followed by a banquet and then… nothing. We’ll not quite nothing but that was of any formal NET duties. We all still hung out with each other until the very end made the most of the few days between banquet and heading home. It’s very weird sitting in my home back in New Zealand and no longer being a NETter. I’m of very mixed emotion about my current place in life but for now it’s nice to have a bit of a break in comfortable surroundings. I’m sorry this isn’t a more interesting update but….
 
AMDG