Where is Jesus in my Suffering & what is he teaching me?

5 Ways Jesus isn't just 'another Nice Guy'

9 Ways of Getting the most out of your Uni experience

Let Yourself be Conquered by Christ

By Megan James

For months leading up to the Youth 2000 summer festival, I'd seen those kind of wild flyers exclaiming Conquerors probably hundreds of times. And, time and time again, I would read the line ‘Do not weep, see the lion of the tribe of Judah…has conquered’ (Rev 5:5). But, to be honest with you, I really struggled to connect with the image and with that piece of scripture; for me it was just a pretty Gryffindor-esque lion, and an epic name for a festival.

However, when Walsingham finally came around, I found that 5 days in a field gave me plenty of time to reflect about what being a conqueror really means to me.

I think I found the idea of being a ‘conqueror’ so hard to relate to because, quite frankly, I don’t always feel that… conquer-y… ? Sometimes I feel downright defeated.  To be a conqueror, I thought, meant you really had to have your stuff together; you were winning, you were confident and sure of yourself, and sure of your life; and for me, that’s rarely the case. More often than not, I feel conquered rather than like a conqueror. So I took this to prayer, I lay it all out before the Blessed Sacrament every day of the festival and soon a few things became clear.

Surrender

The first thing I realised was that to be a conqueror, I must first be prepared to be conquered. To be a conqueror, I must allow Christ to conquer me. As Fr Christopher Joseph CFR said on the first night of Conquerors:

‘who wants to be conquered? Nobody likes being conquered. We don’t set out to be conquered.’

We don’t want to hand over the reins, our life, our desires. Personally, I know that I can be such a control freak and am a massive planner, so surrendering them is always a struggle for me. But, the beauty of God is the paradox that whenever we surrender, it is then that we are truly free. It is when we make ourselves small that God makes us big, that he makes us conquerors.

‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’ 

John 3:30

Trust

Sometimes I kid myself and tell myself that I've handed a situation over to God in prayer. Yet, I still feel defeated, and that's because no matter how much I pray for God's will in my life , I am still expecting the results to be in my time, or on my terms, or in my way. I cling to my expectations of what He can do, and how I want Him to do it.

                Yet I realised that to be a conqueror, you can't partially surrender your will. You can't say you trust someone and yet still be holding your fingers crossed behind your back, so to speak.  And so often, the ways of the Lion of Judah are pretty wild, and way off of our expectations. Caging him into what we think He can do limits Him and what He, in turn, can do. I learnt that I need to trust in Him, and let Him go free.

‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the Lord.

As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.’

Isiah 55:8 - 9

Persevere

God will not just conquer you once and be done with you, that first surrendering of will is a step. No, everyday is a choice; a choice to surrender, a choice to be conquered. But, he will hand us every weapon and every piece of armour for the battles we face.

We are going to fall sometimes, but that’s ok, and it doesn’t make us any less conquerors. Jesus fell three times when He carried his cross. Let that sink in. The ultimate conqueror, the one who was (and is) fully God and fully man needed help to carry His cross too. He too fell down. Even for him, it took immense perseverance, but what a victory. He conquered humiliation, fear, shame, sin, suffering, and above all, He conquered death. And through all of that, He conquered us. Do not weep, He has already conquered everything this world has to throw at us, and He conquered it for us.

‘O death, where is your victory?

O death where is your sting?

But thanks be to god, who gives us victory through our lord Jesus Christ’

1 Corinthians 15:55, 57

Conquer

Sometimes, it can feel like these struggles that continue to conquer us will go on forever. But, there’s seriously good foundations for our hope. Jesus has already bared it all on the cross for us and won. As Paschal said on the opening night of the festival, 

‘Jesus conquered, and it’s through our relationship with him, that we in turn are conquerors.’ 

There is nothing He cannot conquer for us, but to do so, we have to hand it over to Him; we have to carry our cross to Him and place it at His feet, place it on the altar. And when we place our struggles there before Him, we need to just let go. Because His plan is so much greater than ours; He plans for us to prosper, He plans for us to conquer.

‘No, in all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither death, nor life,

nor angels, nor principalities,

nor things present, nor things to come,

nor powers, no heights, nor depth,

nor anything else in all creation,

will be able to separate us

from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

Romans 8:37 – 39

3 Ways of Fighting the Post-Walsingham Blues

By Isaac Withers

Heading down the mountain from a peak spiritual experience always feels slightly strange. Especially if it’s as good a retreat as the Youth 2000 Summer prayer festival.

You feel as if you’ve just seen how the world could be, if everyone was their best self. You've uncovered a little slice of heaven, in the far corner of England they call Walsingham. A peak behind the veil. You’ve met people who want God with a passion, who enter into mass with a sincerity and a fixation. And you’ve been part of many great choruses of praise. The stuff we were made for.

And then, over the journey, you revel in the memories, chew your service station takeaway of choice, and before you know it, you wake up at home for the first time, and you’re back. Stood in your kitchen, looking at your parents. And it feels fresh and good… and fresh and… bad? Because who knows how far you will make it… before life bores you again? Or before you fall into the stuff you just found freedom from in a field?

Let’s call this the Post-Walsingham Blues (PWB). As someone who’s been there a few times, here’s a few words, as much to myself as to you, on how to face them.

1. Figure out what on Earth just happened

When I was in A-level, I’d just come back from the prayer festival and was in a car with friends going to a house party. One of them had seen photos of me at the festival and had asked me what it was. I wasn’t ready for that question, so I talked about music and talks and camping and friends. All pretty unspectacular things you can find elsewhere.

And then one of them dealt it the death blow. ‘”Oh, so like bible camp?”’ And that was it. I cringed. Bible camp. That wasn’t Youth 2000. I’d barely looked at a bible, and yet that was the closest I had got them. Wordlessly, it was sectioned off into the weird pile of conversation topics. Because I wasn’t ready for that simply curious question from genuine friends.

Being prepared for ‘what did you do last weekend?’ is important. It’s so easy to dodge or downplay, but it’s maybe our only opportunity for someone to prompt you into telling them about our faith. Keep it simple. If you felt free after confession, tell them that (they’ve seen that in films before). If you thought the praise (‘music’ is no big deal) was great, tell them about it. If you loved seeing so many other young Catholics, say that. They’re simple lines, and they bring the world of the retreat, and your home into the same reality. Sharing is a great way of beating PWB.

                

 'Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.’ 

1 Peter 3:15

2. Get a rhythm of prayer

Often, my prayers can take place in that final seconds of the day, in bed. That thought flies in, ‘I forgot to pray’. So in that semi awake state, I make it a couple of lines into a conversation with God, and then I’m out. Which isn’t really good enough. If I treated my mum that way, she'd have reason to be annoyed.

Walsingham was the ‘social media desert’, the distractions were minimal (there’s only so much football you can play, and only so many coffees you can go for). So at home, prayer becomes the challenge, and it really is the only way of keeping that spark alive. The advice I’ve always been given, is to bookend your day with it, before the distractions even start in the morning, or when everything’s done and Facebook is suddenly empty of interesting stuff, before bed. Being in perpetual struggle with the hours before 10 am, one of those has always been harder for me, but it’s still my aim.

It's the rhythm of the retreat you can take home. If only we could all live in a monastery with a nice bell, huh?

3. Don't let shame get to you

Matt Maher, the Catholic worship leader (writer of ‘Your Grace is Enough’) begins a song with the lyric, ‘let no one caught in sin remain, inside the lie of inward shame’. It sounds better with the melody, but it was a ground breaking lyric for me. The struggles are still out there, and we are all definitely going to return to the festival next year, as sinners.  Definitely. It’s sadly part of life and us. 

And eventually comes the moment when I feel furthest away from the mountain top experience. It's peak PWB. When you fall back into one of those ways that you shrugged off with a victory at Conquerors. That moment is the Devil’s playground. It’s when it’s easy to think we were foolish for trying, that staying down is better, that the call to holiness is impossible. And this is the most important thing to take with you home: that’s. Not. True.

My favourite thing said at the whole retreat was from Monseigneur John Armitage:

”’It’s impossible for me to forgive my brother’, no it’s not, it’s just hard.

It’s impossible for me to stay chaste.' no it’s not, but by god it’s hard.

Hard means we can’t do it without the help of God. 

Hard means we turn to the God who loves us.”’

               
So I'm also not saying that that moment is inevitable, if we can remember to seek that grace out. The grace that is always there, the sacraments that are always there. And all those people you met at Walsingham? They're just a message away. We can’t go this alone.

If you can’t make it to a retreat throughout the year, then from all the team, God bless your seeking and your pilgrimage forward. God go with you. And take courage in the Lion of Judah.

'Do not weep. See the lion of the tribe of Judah… has conquered!’ Revelation 5:5