When this is read we will be past the season of Confirmation and Graduation, a time of new beginnings.

Confirmation challenges us to “go forth and proclaim the Gospel,” to use well the gifts of the Spirit to make a difference in our Church and world.

Graduation challenges us to observe and learn from the past, look to the future while we work in the present, beginning a new chapter in our lives.

Neither of these events should be seen as an ending, rather beginning a new phase of being who God has called us to be.

Way back when I was a junior in high school, I served as a junior marshal for the class ahead of me for their graduation. The theme that they chose for the event was: “When you are through learning; you are through.” For some reason that has stuck with me all these years and I have used it often in the classroom when I taught and in speaking to students on various occasions. Think about what it challenges us to do. It calls us to realize that we have much to learn, to study; as we will never know all that there is to know about the world, our profession, how to deal with people or how to be in relationship with our God.

If we study the Scriptures, the Lives of the Saints, we will glean from each the realization that our relationship with God and the Church is a living thing, a reality that ebbs and flows, it is not nor should it be stagnant. It is only in our commitment to prayer and study that we will grow and deepen our relationship with God and our fellow travelers on the pilgrimage to the Kingdom.

The biggest task that comes to all of us who have been Baptized and Confirmed is to strengthen our relationship with Christ, to share it with others; to live the call of the Cursillo weekend, “make a friend, be a friend and bring that friend to Christ.”

May you have a peace-filled and glorious summer!

With prayers and blessings,

De Colores, Fr. Gary