Jambo Youth Issue 87

For A Lighter Side of Life

An Initiative of Jesus Youth A Missionary Movement at the Service of the Church

The Sin of Lying A minister told his congregation, "Next week I plan to preach about the sin of lying. To help you understand my sermon, I want you all to read Mark 17." The following Sunday, as he prepared to deliver his sermon, the minister asked for a show of hands. He wanted to know how many had read Mark 17. Every hand went up. The minister smiled and said, "Mark has only 16 chapters. I will now proceed with my sermon on the sin of lying."

Jambo You(th) is a weekly news letter aimed at helping the Youth in moulding their daily lives in Christ. Our vision is expressed in just two phrases: GOOD CHRISTIANS and

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RESPONSIBLE CITIZENS.

Last Drop The Difference I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day; I had so much to accomplish that I didn't have time to pray. Problems just tumbled about me, and heavier came each task. "Why doesn't God help me ?" I wondered. He answered, "You didn't ask." I wanted to see joy and beauty, but the day toiled on grey and bleak; I wondered why God didn't show me. He said, "But you didn't seek." I tried to come into God's presence; I used all my keys at the lock. God gently and lovingly chided, "My child, you didn't knock." I woke up early this morning, and paused before entering the day; I had so much to accomplish that I had to take time to pray. NB: Send your questions, comments or feedback to [email protected] For further information and back issues of Jambo You(th) please check on our website: www.jamboyouth.multiply.com For Jambo You(th) in PDF log on to www.esnips.com/web/JamboYouth

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Jambo You(th) 2009

Features

Repaint! Jock, the painter, often would thin his paint so it would go further. So when the Church decided to do some deferred maintenance, Jock was able to put in the low bid, and got the job. As always, he thinned his paint way down with turpentine. One day while he was up on the scaffolding -- the job almost finished -- he heard a dreadful clap of thunder, and the sky opened. The downpour washed the thinned paint off the church and knocked Jock off his scaffold and onto the lawn among the gravestones and puddles of thinned and worthless paint. Jock knew this was a warning from the Almighty, so he got on his knees and cried: “Oh, God! Forgive me! What should I do?” And from the thunder, he heard a mighty voice: “REPAINT! REPAINT! AND THIN NO MORE!”

March 22, Sunday: Issue 87

Don Bosco Utume

Pep-up To the Young Points to Ponder Saint of the Week Jokes Last Drop

: Stories for Reflection : Message from Pope Benedict XVI : Questions About Lent : St. Margaret Clitherow : For A Lighter Side of Life : The Difference

Mistaken for Jesus! A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night’s dinner. In their rush, with tickets and brief-cases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of baskets of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding. All but one. He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned. He told his buddies to go on without him, waved goodbye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight. Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor. He was glad he did. The 16 year old girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping, and no one to care for her plight. The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them into the baskets, and helped set the display up once more. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket. When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, “Here, please take this $20 for the damage we did. Are you okay?” She nodded through her tears. He continued on with, I hope we didn’t spoil your day too badly. As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, “Mister” He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes. She continued, “Are you Jesus?” He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: “Are you Jesus?”

Do people mistake you for Jesus?

www.jesusyouth.org Editor: Shyjan Sdb

Jambo You(th) 2009

40 Thoughts for Lent from Pope Benedict XVI Questions About Lent

(Continued form J Y 86) 26. Lent is a favourable time to learn to stay with Mary and John, the beloved disciple, close to him who on the Cross, consummated for all mankind the sacrifice of his life (cf. Jn 19: 25). (2007) 27. It is in the mystery of the Cross that the overwhelming power of the Heavenly Father’s mercy is revealed in all of its fullness. (2007) 28. Let us look at Christ pierced on the Cross! He is the unsurpassing revelation of God’s love…On the Cross, it is God himself who begs the love of His creature: He is thirsty for the love of every one of us. (2007) 29. The Almighty awaits the "yes" of His creatures just as a young husband awaits that of his wife. 30. Only the love that unites the free gift of oneself with the impassioned desire for reciprocity instills a joy that eases the heaviest of burdens. (2007) 31. The response the Lord ardently desires of us is above all that we welcome his love and allow ourselves to be drawn to him. (2007) 32. Let us live Lent, then, as a Eucharistic time in which, welcoming the love of Jesus, we learn to spread it around us with every word and deed. (2007) 33. May Lent be for every Christian a renewed experience of God’s love given to us in Christ, a love that each day we, in turn, must "re-give" to our neighbour, especially to the one who suffers most and is in need. (2007) 34. On the Cross, it is God himself who begs the love of His creature: He is thirsty for the love of every one of us. The Apostle Thomas recognized Jesus as "Lord and God" when he put his hand into the wound of His side. Not surprisingly, many of the saints found in the Heart of Jesus the deepest expression of this mystery of love. (2007) 35. The Church knows that if we are to promote development in its fullness, our own "gaze" upon mankind has to be measured against that of Christ. In fact, it is quite impossible to separate the response to people’s material and social needs from the fulfillment of the profound desires of their hearts. (2006) 36. We must help others to find God in the merciful face of Christ. Without this perspective, civilization lacks a solid foundation. (2006) 37. Those who act according to the logic of the Gospel live the faith as friendship with God Incarnate and, like Him, bear the burden of the material and spiritual needs of their neighbours. They see it as an inexhaustible mystery, worthy of infinite care and attention. They know that he who does not give God gives too little; as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta frequently observed, the worst poverty is not to know Christ. (2006) 38. Even in the "valley of darkness" of which the Psalmist speaks (Ps 23:4), while the tempter prompts us to despair or to place a vain hope in the work of our own hands, God is there to guard us and sustain us. (2006) 39. Lent is a privileged time of interior pilgrimage towards Him Who is the fount of mercy. It is a pilgrimage in which He Himself accompanies us through the desert of our poverty, sustaining us on our way towards the intense joy of Easter. (2006) 40. Throughout history, even when hate seems to prevail, the luminous testimony of His love is never lacking. To Mary, "the living fount of hope" (Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, XXXIII, 12), we entrust our Lenten journey, so that she may lead us to her Son. (2006)

Early on, Lent was a time of preparation for those about to be baptized at Easter. The whole Church was invited to prepare with them for the greatest of all feasts, and this preparation included acts of mortification, such as fasting, a very old way of reaching out to God. Later, those who had sinned seriously and were doing public penance would observe Lent in this way and be reconciled on Holy Thursday (rejoining the table at Mass). Lent has been observed in different ways at different times, so it is hard to say when it started. St. Cyril of Jerusalem seems to point to some kind of Lenten observance in some of his homilies to catechumen (those preparing for baptism) around 360 or so, but doesn't address it directly. Quasten's Patrology says there was a tradition in his time of the bishops of major cities writing to the smaller ones about Lent. St. Athanasius writes (in 332): "The beginning of the fast of forty days is on the fifth of Phamenoth [March 1]; and when, as I have said, we have first been purified and prepared by these days, we begin the holy week of the great Easter on the tenth of Pharmuthi [April 1]..." He goes on to set the date of Easter for that year at April 11. This was apparently a custom of long standing, so we would have to put the observance as starting before this. The earliest reference we can find is in writings of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria from 248 - 265. His letter to Basilides answers the latter's questions about the duration of Lent. By the way, there is more than one Basilides, so make sure it is the letter of Dionysius to Basilides. Other ancient writers on Lent are: St. Basil the Great (d. 379), St. John Chrysostom (d. 407), Severian of Gabala (d. 408).

March 25

SAINT for the WEEK St. Margaret Clitherow

She was a butcher’s wife in the famous street known as the Shambles in York, she was brought up in the reformed religion, to which her husband also conformed (they were married in 1571). In 1574, however, she was reconciled to the Catholic church and allowed her house to be used for the shelter of priests and as lodging for a Catholic schoolteacher for her own children and those of neighbours. She kept this up for twelve years, during which time she was arrested on several occasions and spent a total of three years in prison. Eventually her house was searched, and, under threat, one of the pupils revealed where the Mass vestments were hidden. She refused to plead at her trial, wishing, she said, to spare the jury’s conscience; the penalty for this refusal was to be pressed naked beneath a heavy stone and left for three days without proper food or drink. The sentence was not fully applied, but she was crushed to death under a weight at the Tollbooth on the Ouse Bridge in York on the feast of the Annunciation in 1586. Her husband never returned to the Catholic faith, but one daughter became a nun, at Louvain in the Low Countries.

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What is the deal with Lent? When did it start?

Jambo You(th) 2009

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Jambo You(th) 2009