Hello everyone, I’m just posting this here on the off-chance anyone feels as lost without /rel/ and /cult/ as I do and might be lurking. I’d hoped to post this on FB but left it too late in the end. Rather than get caught up in shitposting with you legends I’d like to know more about your Christian lives and any works you are involved in, charitable or otherwise and hopefully we can inspire each other to try a few things to keep our faith active and fulfilling.
I’ve been part of a lay apostolic group for young men established by The Order of Knights of Saint Columbanus here in Northern Ireland as part of the Catholic Chaplaincy at my former University.
We currently have quite a few apostolic endeavours on the go including:
preparing food for distribution to the homeless in our city
forming marathon teams to raise money for church associated charities
-“sleep-out” nights to raise awareness of homelessness in our country
putting together schoolbags and toiletries for less affluent members of the community
Advent food collections for the poor
hosting suicide prevention talks by guest speakers to name a few.
Organising Catechesis study groups for students using the new YOUCAT programme
supporting our local Churches and Chaplaincy with everyday duties
dedicated shifts for attending Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
I’ve been wondering what more we could be doing and am just wondering if any of you are in similar groups or even parish women’s or men’s groups? If so, what sort of things do you take part in? Even if it’s just prayer retreats and the like, I’d like to hear about them
I’ll have to admit that I’m not nearly as involved as I should be, but one thing that I do partake in is my churchs’ Scouting Group. I’m a senior scout and a leader for the 11-13 y/o scouts. I find it to be a great way to teach the kids values and skills that might be lost otherwise. It’s a pretty mundane thing, and hardly apostolic, but at one of the meetings I was hosting a paper plane activity (i was running late and just had to make something up on the spot) and it turned out that most of them couldn’t make paper planes. It frankly blew my mind that anyone above 10 don’t know this, so besides all the bigger things, like how to make fires, survival skills, tool handling, etc, keeping the little things alive. And of course, being a church scouting chapter we do have a focus on the faith, teaching them to value the world that God has given us, and to be virtuous in the world and towards others.
There is only so serious you can get with the faith in the face of 10-20 hyperactive 10 year old, but I hope that I’m atleast laying the foundation for them to be able to grow spiritually by engaging with them when I can.
Yeah, my work is quite hectic and I’m away from home a lot on business, so it’s as-good-as-impossible for me to put down roots locally beyond turning up at Mass wherever I happen to be on a Sunday.
That said, the internet is a blessing in some important ways. In what free time I can scratch together I work supporting a prayer group for other Catholics in my organisation. It’s pretty cool stuff. For anyone in a big organisation, I can definitely recommend undertaking this kind of activity.
We used to have the Young Order of Malta here in Sydney, however, the chaplain was shafted by the senior branch of the order for his celebration of the traditional sacraments. The senior branch does no visible apostolic work, the youth branch used to distribute health packs, new clothes, and volunteer in soup kitchens etc. To my knowledge, in terms of apostolic work, there’s Young Vinnies (St Vincent de Paul Society), but they seem to have moved away from their Catholic identity, which is sad.
Thanks for the input guys. Since I made this thread I’ve since been involved in a few other apostolic initiatives with more in the works if anyone would be interested in trying something along these lines.
Assisting our City Council with litter picking in student areas after major party events (St Patrick’s Day being a big one here) which went very well despite our low numbers. Non-student residents were very pleased to see ordinary people out helping the community and we took the opportunity to tell them why we were doing it and just namedropping the faith like chads :)
Street evangelisation on the campus to hand out specially made prayerbooks and to exercise our finesse in Apologetics (turns out I’m not great at confronting Mormons, Born Agains and JW’s on the spot ) but we’ve had a few instances of people reaching out to the chaplaincy here after speaking with us so small victories and possible conversions keep up our morale.
We’re going to be hosting games nights and pizza nights in conjunction with a local homeless charity at one of their shelters (on the condition that we do not try to evangelise unless the homeless youths there specifically ask us anything ) in order to better reach out to those in need by bonding with them and extend olive branches to charities that perhaps don’t look to kindly on Christianity as a whole. They’ve offered to train us in how best to work with the homeless so we might do better in our old initiatives focused on the issue.
Hoping that the holy spirit blesses us with a few more ideas before the Autumn/Fall semester and I hope maybe there’s something here that someone in LC might take away from it. I’d like to keep this thread going as long as we can, so feel free to update us on anything you might have been up to in your parish or mission etc.
) but we’ve had a few instances of people reaching out to the chaplaincy here after speaking with us so small victories and possible conversions keep up our morale.