Pray, Eat, Party: Postponed...but no worries...

Join us on the North Campus for an informational night on our alternative spring break trip. Come and find out all you need to know to attend the trip in NEW YORK CITY.

Thursday Night at the brand spanking new Newman Center @6PM. Free food and information on the trip which includes the Mike Hayes "poor man's tour of NYC" and a tour of the facilities at Sirius Satellite Radio's Catholic Channel. Plus a week long of service with Covenant House, Mercy Center, Midnight Subway Runs and a whole lot more.

Thursday Night@ 6PM: Pray, Eat, Party

Join us for our first installment of Pray, Eat, Party: a Thursday evening, social event with students exploring faith.

Our first evening will include:

A free and simple pasta supper
A discussion of what Catholics have called discernment, a method of decision making for each of us in our everyday life.
We'll end the meeting with a trip to Starbucks for socializing.

Here's all the information you'll need:

PRAY EAT PARTY

DAY AND TIME: 6PM on Thursday, Jan 28

PLACE: Parish Center Library (enter through the door to the left of the community room doors)

Need more information: mike.hayes@stjosephbuffalo.com

Thanks to All

Our after-mass icebreaker was a great success! Lots of people enjoyed an opportunity to get to know one another, including a lot of new faces and a great diversity of people.

We'll have another opportunity next month for some more intentional faith building.

Thanks especially to our student-leaders and most especially to Karena Johnson who organized the event.

After-Mass Icebreaker

Join us for our after-mass icebreaker where we can get to know someone new who comes to the 8PM mass. We'll do a couple of different icebreaker exercises and follow them up with "conversation starter" questions over some pizza.

So join us for "The 8" a Sunday Mass that speaks to your experience.

Help Haiti: Text "HAITI" to "90999."

I'm listening to President Obama talk about the incomprehensible 7.0 earthquake in Haiti. I'm glad that he has dedicated the full support of the United States to a people who are, as he just said, "no stranger to hardship."

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (Nicaragua and Haiti flip back and forth in the unfortunate top spot). 80% of the country lives in poverty and most Haitians live on less than $2 a day. 66% work in small scale subsistence farming and the government is always listed as one of the most corrupt.

President Obama suggested going to the White House website which I did. Here is the link to donate to Haiti but the server is extremely busy and I found it hard to get onto the site.

They provided an even easier solution: You can donate $10 to be charged to your cell phone bill by texting "HAITI" to "90999."

I did it. So should you. It goes to the Red Cross Int'l Response Fund. You have the option of getting additional alerts on Haiti via text as well.

In a precarious world where madmen fly planes into buildings and people shoot up college campuses the saddest of all disasters are those that don't even require an action by a human being. They are unexplainable, frustrating and they stretch our belief in a loving God.

We all want a God who saves us from disaster. But God doesn't save us and when we go looking for our savior we find Him hanging on a cross. Indeed the wood of the manger has become the wood of the cross today and we find the sufferings of Christ united with the people of Haiti and with our own sadness for the lives that have been lost. Our God is the God who suffers with us, who intimately knows our pain and more importantly, our death.

Our prayers go especially to children who have lost their parents today and for all of the Haitian people. I found this video on You Tube from a mission trip to Haiti. The pictures are of Haiti BEFORE the earthquake. This gives you an idea of the devistating poverty that people experience in Haiti.

Welcome Back to Campus

A hearty welcome back to campus and best wishes for the New Year! May God's grace continue to be with you during your studies.

Some upcoming events:

Sunday January 17: Come to 8PM Mass and bring a can of food:
St Joe's is collecting their regular monthly allotment of canned goods for the poor. So bring canned goods to mass and start out the new semester by feeding the hungry in Buffalo.

Sunday: January 24: 8PM: Sunday Mass + After-Mass Icebreaker: Get to know your Sunday mass community. We'll share some food and get to know one another over a meal and some exercises that help us to get to know one another better.

Thursday: Jan 28: 7 PM: Pray, Eat, Party: We begin a cycle of regular Thursday meetings where we gather for a small pasta meal along with what we'll call "faith programming" (which will change each week--one week it will be scripture, one week a social justice activity, one week Eucharistic Adoration, and one week meditation--as examples). We'll head out to a local establishment or another activity afterwards.

Sunday: January 31: 8PM: Sunday Mass + Spiritual Book Club

More details will follow on events for the entire semester next week!

Best Advent Calendar Ever...

What Are You Waiting For? The BustedHalo® Daily Jolt Advent Calendar has arrived and is chock full of great advent quotes surrounding the theme of waiting.

The reality for most of us however is that Advent simply becomes the anxious weeks of shopping and holiday planning that precede Christmas Day. In the bustle of the holiday season, it is usually difficult to keep in mind what we are actually waiting for before Christmas. While many of us won’t be able to completely avoid the Christmas onslaught, it is still possible to maintain some connection to the spiritual foundation of the season. Our 2009 Advent Surprise Calendar is based on our popular Daily Jolt feature in which we offer readers a small bit of contemplation/inspiration and couple it with a “microChallenge” that encourages them to put these spiritual moments into action in their daily lives.

In traditional Advent Calendars, children open different calendar windows throughout the season to reveal special surprises. Busted Halo’s® Advent Calendar combines that sense of surprise with the opportunity for reflection and action found in our Daily Jolt feature the rest of the year.

Daily reflection, action and prizes
Each day of Advent, the calendar will open a new link to a chance at winning a great prize, an opportunity for reflection and a microChallenge. Like our Daily Jolt, the reflections chosen for the Advent Calendar come from some very unlikely sources, and the microChallenges help you to act on your spiritual inspiration in simple — usually very small — ways you’d probably never considered.

So check it out and come back each day to try to win something great.