Happy Easter! On this special day, I went to mass at Our Lady of Good Counsel in the East Side on Manhattan, a very beautiful church with great music. The priest delivered a wonderful homily that was a little too long. However, it was funny and interesting how some of his main points had to do with people needing to come to mass every Sunday instead of just on Easter and Christmas.

For me and to many of you, the reasoning behind this is painfully obvious. However, to others, I suspect, it’s not so lucid. In any case, here it is. On Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and such an event is one of the cornerstones (if not the cornerstone) of Christianity. Without His resurrection of both body and soul, the father reasoned, it is impossible for a Christian to believe in the resurrection of our own bodies and souls “when He comes again”; it is impossible to believe in “heaven” as normally defined. Easter falls on a Sunday, because we believe Christ died on a Friday afternoon. Good Friday celebrates this. Three days later, that is, days being measured from sunset to sunset in accord with Jewish tradition, He rose— on a Sunday. And so, every Sunday is sacred because it celebrates (among other things, like the Eucharist) the supreme event in the history of Christianity, Christ’s victory over death.

And that is why people should go to mass at least once on Sunday. You usually don’t think about things like that when you plainly go to mass. So, it follows that you definitely wouldn’t think about His resurrection and, thus, the institution of our faith, if you didn’t even go to mass on Sunday. If you call yourself Christian, then, just do it! It’s not hard.

Just wanted to reiterate some logic for those in need.

In other news, I’m writing this post on the way home on an airplane (although obviously I can’t submit this on an airplane). On this flight, I’ve gotten a bunch of good reading done from Code v2.0 by Lawrence Lessig. Great book. More on that later.

Anyway… It’s been a great first trip over Easter break to New York to visit my brother Michael (wow, a lot of prepositions). I’ve visited a bunch of cool places, including (“and not limited to”) previously mentioned places as well as Carnegie Hall, which I visited today. It’s been cold (yet worth it!), but it’s apparently been cold at home too. In any case, I definitely look forward to nice spring weather in Texas. Ahhh.

Quickly, for your information, the first part of this article discusses JFL, FFF, and Bible study, whereas the second part delves into something I found really worthwhile from the passage used in said Bible study.

Yesterday night, I led a Bible study for our weekly youth group FFF (Friday Night Fellowship, sic), since we are now switching over to completely officer-run programs this semester due to much complaining. I think I did okay. No, it was not that great, but I think I’ve learned from it, and it’s a nice, somewhat fun thing to do. So, hopefully, I’ll do a better job next time. Hopefully, also, to keep things exciting, someone else will pick up the job next time we’re having Bible study for FFF. But really, it’s pretty cool. It’s neat doing stuff like this, and I encourage others to try the same.

However, there’s still a component of Bible study that I think is really good that I couldn’t really draw out of people. Maybe I just didn’t select a good enough passage, but I thought people weren’t thinking deeply enough about it. Some did, which I thought was good, but when one runs a Bible study, it’s nice when more than just a few people really put some thought into their reading of it and offer excellent commentary and inquiries of their own. For example, I chose Galatians 6:1-10, and Ben pointed out that verses 6-8 were pretty interesting and somewhat confusing ones that needed deeper thinking. I thought it was pretty cool that we both came to the same confusion (for lack of a better word) in the passage. I wish more people probed the passage like that though, since it helps develop understanding of the Bible and God’s Word in general (and also thinking, logic, and comprehension skills). I suppose I can re-emphasize it next time.

Oh well. I think of this FFF programming by JFL officers as a work in progress, which we’ll try to improve throughout the year.

Well, in any case, by chance, in this passage we studied that I randomly came across while digging around the epistles, I found something extremely relevant to my life:

Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up. (Gal 6:9)

I think this is a call by St. Paul to optimism in doing good things. That is, even if we do good things and see no immediate benefits, we should continue doing good things because, at least, eventually, there will be benefits— eventually, we’ll “reap our harvest,” after “sow[ing] for the spirit” (Gal 6:8). And so, all the good we do is truly meaningful, and we should never be disappointed and “give up” if good seemingly comes to nothing, because it never comes to simply nothing.

Indirectly, this is somewhat like saying that we should keep our faith strong, no matter what, that even if good doesn’t appear because of our goodness, we should still believe strongly in God. And I think strong belief in God is a great deterrance to sinfulness, because believing in God and all things associated with him will and should make one value loving others (and fearing hell). So, in just a few verses, St. Paul rather beautifully encourages the early Christians of around 54 AD to avoid all evil, by proactively continually doing good things and remaining strong in God. This is, of course, easily applicable to “modern” people, including you, the reader, and me, and I think this is a great starting point and tenet for the new year, at least for me. Happy new year! =)

Church is great. JFL is great. Nonetheless, somehow it all feels different. But why?

Let’s think about it. Chinese school had always been a major part of my life, but I’m the only one left from my old class who’s actively involved in JFL now. Others have moved on to college or are simply unable to make it to JFL things, whether it’s extreme senior year busy-ness, transportation issues, or a combination of both. I remember when a nice percentage of JFL was our actual class. Now, in JFL I spend time with people I didn’t really grow up with— although there are some exceptions to this, but even so, none of them were in my Chinese class for years. (Please note that this doesn’t mean that I’m unhappy with the people active now. It’s just that I don’t happen to know them as well, although I am certainly trying my best to do so.) And so, I miss these people.

I believe George once talked about how SHINE, ye olde youth group at MSHJ, gradually disappeared as all its members moved on, since there was no one to fill in the gap in generations before JFL and even WAC were organized. He said that it was only natural that eventually JFL would, one day, meet the same fate. Is this what I’m seeing here? Am I feeling this way because the twelfth grade (or maybe even with the eleventh grade) at church is the final, dying flicker of the candle flame of our generation there? I think this is possible.

But at the same time, although my generation at church may be dying out, JFL itself may not be, at least for now. I think we currently have enough people to keep it going. We may not have all grown up together in the same way as it used to be for me, and so we may just have to work harder towards unity. This needs to be done, but it’s not impossible. However, whether or not JFL will survive its upcoming trials, as the whole original generation of JFL completely fades out, is still to be seen. I definitely pray and hope that it will indeed successfully survive.

Wannie also suggested another explanation for everything being different. Maybe it was moving to a new church building in a completely different area (to some extent) without a Wendy’s right next to it, nor a Lollicup or Taiwan Café. We used to always walk to Wendy’s after CCD and before Chinese school. Always. Well, sometimes we walked for around ten minutes to Lollicup and ate there instead. But in any case, the old church in itself was a source of unity. Many of us had grown up going there every week since we were very little. And, again, there was Chinese school, which was likewise jostled around as a result of moving to a new location. Sources of unity that used to be commonly present have become nonexistent for us, other than residing nostalgically in our memories. Add to this that students as well as— I almost forgot— awesome adult leaders have gotten older and can no longer be with us or devote all their time to guide us like they used to.

Thus, it’s become hard for JFL to keep moving on, yet we keep trying.

On a related note, it’s been a little awkward as senior at church because I still remember when I would listen and learn from the first JFL officer meetings, years ago, and now, suddenly I’m up here, and that’s me, and I need to do the same good job…

Ah, well, I need to wake up early tomorrow morning to go to church as I always do, and so I need to sleep. Good night. =)