Love Island: What got us all hooked?

By Daisy Vanderputt

‘Do you wanna hang out tonight?’

‘sorry I can’t, Love Island’s on at 9.’

Sound familiar? The ITV2 summer show Love Island completely blew up the internet and had well over 1 million viewers every night.

The show saw a group of single islanders in a Mallorca villa for a summer of ‘love’. Weekly recouplings saw the girls and boys debate who they were going to pair up with and who they would be sharing a bed with for the next few nights. After hours, bed - hopping antics are a huge part of the show, watching the islanders fall in and out of love within days, if not hours of meeting and coupling up with each other. New islanders sneak into the villa occasionally over the summer to add a dash of drama and to test the strength of the couples loyalties to each other. Viewers voted for their ‘favourite couples’ leaving the ones with the fewest votes booted out of the beautiful Spanish island and fans of the show were frequently left heartbroken for their favourite contestants when their other half would leave.

Put as plainly as that, why did this show capture the hour of 9pm for the nation? Before we get started on this, I just want to clarify that this is not a blog to condemn your choice of evening entertainment by any means, but maybe an invitation for you to question a little more deeply what about it had you hooked.

This years Love Island compared to previous years was a much bigger hit, and the differences in the show compared to previous years was that it focused a lot more on the relationships that people had with each other in the Villa. Just typing Love Island into google will show you a multitude of articles on who the favourite couple of the week is and why. Reasons would include: the possibility of a committed relationship off of the show, meaningful glances caught on camera, and straight up real talk about where they are at. We love it. We love it enough to watch 6 weeks of it and to cancel plans with important people in our lives!

Not too long ago I was having a conversation with a 5 year old girl about why she loved fairytales so much, she simply told me it makes her feel fluttery inside. Whilst we’re not five anymore, and don't read fairytales, the desire for love, for adventure is still in our hearts and is stirred up in many of us during the hour of Love Island each night. But more than this, we want true, authentic sacrificial love.

Watching the show and seeing headlines, fake people are not welcome or wanted. Wasn’t it funny how quickly everyone turned on Gabby when she failed the lie detector test and questioned about where she was really at. We are yearning for true love, and to see that it exists. Every single day we are bombarded with the message that lust is more important than love and whilst it’s somewhat appealing because of how available and easy it is to find, we know deep down that it’s not satisfying us or the people around us. We’re seeing our friends in broken relationships or even in broken relationships ourselves, the LGBT community fighting for acceptance, abortion and euthanasia on the uprise, and well, I know for me personally, I’m left questioning if this whole ‘real love’ thing is real and find myself seeking it out in a reality TV Show on ITV2.

It’s just so so easy. Couple up, exchange a few meaningful glances and we think we are sorted for love. The show is appealing because that’s what we see. Let’s be honest, we wouldn’t watch 7 weeks of Olivia and Chris fighting, however, we know that there is more to be found than a few empty and romantic gestures. Unfortunately, a large proportion of the world hasn’t heard the memo that there is more out there and so we settle for whatever we can find. Even I, after hearing nearly every day that there is more, am inclined to settle for less. Pope John Paul II writes:

“Genuine love … is demanding. But its beauty lies precisely in the demands it makes. Only those able to make demands on themselves in the name of love can then demand love from others.”

All I want is to do is be complacent and take the easy option but I know that it’s not enough for me because I crave genuine, authentic love. And this, my friends, is what we were made for. People have forgotten that the Bible is the deepest, most perfect love story that we could ever experience in our lives. In her book ‘Captivating’ Stasi Eldredge says:

"The vast desire and capacity that we have for intimate relationships tells us of God's vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships. In fact, this may be The most important thing we ever learn about God--the He yearns for relationship with us. "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God" (John 17:3). The whole story of the Bible is a love story between God and His people. He yearns for us. He cares. He has a tender heart.”

He yearns for our hearts just as much, in fact infinitely more than what we crave so much from watching Love Island and he yearns for it because he can fulfil it in our hearts.

He is offering you something more perfect, more extraordinary than you can ever find in this world. So as the Love Island blues hit you find comfort in another bomb quote from JP2. (A master in real love):

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle."

A Leap of Faith: My First Experience of Youth 2000 at Walsingham

By Anna Jordan 

Last summer was THE summer of faith. Along with around 3 million other young people from around the world, I attended World Youth Day. Meeting so many young Catholics from every corner of the earth was so inspiring and really gave my faith a much-needed boost. However, after being back home for a few days, these feelings started to wear off. I needed something to not only bring these feelings back, but to make them stay for longer!

I had heard about Youth 2000 before, but to be completely honest, five days of camping in a field with no phone signal wasn’t particularly appealing at first. But once I put my reservations aside, I realised that maybe a leap of faith (quite literally, in this case!) was exactly what I needed to rekindle that joy for my faith I had discovered at World Youth Day. 

And I am so glad I took that leap! I was so nervous, especially because I only knew a handful of people going, and I’d also never been camping before! However, as one of my friends told me, “once you meet a few people, you’ll soon get to know everyone”, and that couldn’t have been more true! As soon as we arrived, the friends I had travelled with were soon introducing people to me, and it wasn’t long before we’d set everything up and I was feeling relaxed.

When we finally stepped foot in the main tent, I was completely amazed. Although from the outside, it seems like just a massive tent, when you step inside, it is so much more. Jesus is present with us for adoration at all times over the five day festival. His presence completely transforms the tent into a place where I felt closer to Him than ever before. When things are going wrong, or I have good news, I turn to my friends. Sometimes it can be difficult to remember that God is there all the time, especially when He isn’t right there in front of us in the Eucharist. But having His physical presence with us all weekend reminded me that my relationship with Him should be like that – He should be the first I run to in times of sorrow or joy.

The highlight of the whole festival was the healing service. It is based on the Gospel where the woman suffering from a haemorrhage is healed by touching Jesus’ cloak; so during the service, Jesus in the monstrance is brought around the room and we are invited to touch the priest’s cloak and pray for healing. Beforehand, I’d had absolutely no idea what to expect, but being sat at the back of the room waiting for our time with Jesus, we were able to watch and pray for everyone as He was brought before each individual. 

When the priest stopped in front of me, I can’t begin to describe how I felt. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more emotions in one go, but I was just completely in awe, and filled with love for our God, who was right there in front of me. After Jesus was taken to the next person, I realised that those intense feelings of joy and love for God I had experienced, should be there when I go to Mass every weekend. When we receive communion, Jesus’ body goes into our body – as was said during the festival, our body becomes a tabernacle! 

This was what had the biggest impact on me out of everything that happened over the five days. This new appreciation and awareness of the importance of being excited every time I go to Mass – because not only is God right there in front of me, but when I receive the Eucharist, He enters my body, and becomes a part of me. That was a pretty faith-changing realisation for me.

So, I guess you could say that those five days at Walsingham were pretty incredible! Spending five days the presence of God and with nearly 2000 young people who are so in love with their faith inspired and really strengthened my own. There really are no friends like Catholic friends, and meeting so many amazing people made the festival even more enjoyable. I can’t wait to go back this year! 

Find out more about Inheritance, Youth 2000's 2017's Summer Prayer Festival, and book your place now at: http://www.youth2000.org/  

We can't wait to see you!

The Commission: Realising Your Purpose at University

By Eleanor Hill

Maybe you’re a sixth former who’s relieved to have finally made it through A levels, anxiously awaiting results but excited at the prospect that in September you’ll have moved away from home with a new sense of freedom, friends, and studying something you actually care about. Or maybe you’re a uni student who rejoices in your £2.17 because you know it will get you through pre-drinks courtesy of Lidl, you know the 3am fire alarm is a given, the sense of freedom you anticipated at uni is in reality you having to do your own washing, cooking and cleaning (who knew that a freezer needed to be defrosted in the first place), and you spend most of your time writing passive aggressive notes on the milk carton because your flatmates keep stealing your milk. Wherever you’re at, certain things don’t change our constant search for purpose, the need for friendships and support, the craving for somewhere you can call home, and the desire to love and to be loved.

I had a conversation with my friend the other day, and I asked him how uni was going and he responded ‘El, I gotta be honest, university is the most average thing to happen to me’. It’s true, university can be so average. You spend the whole of first year trying to fit in, not really understanding what you’re doing. You have no sense of purpose (because let’s face it all you need is 40%), you’re more confused than ever about what you want to do with life, and feelings of anxiety, loneliness and stress start to creep in. University is a time where we need our faith more than ever, where we need authentic friendships to help us through, where need to pursue Jesus and his Truth rather than the relativism thrown in front of us. University is also the perfect opportunity to start again, to be the person who you want to be, to join the societies you want, you have the time to invest in what you want to invest in and the freedom to pursue the things that sets your heart alive. 

Last week, over 80 university students from across the UK, FOCUS American missionaries, and priests and chaplains gathered in Twickenham for our second student leadership summit, to be equipped, inspired and challenged to pursue Jesus’ call to all university students. We were each challenged to be disciples on our university campus, to take university evangelism to the next level, and to live this ‘great commission’ that Jesus gave to us. FOCUS helped us to realise that university doesn’t have to be average, that Jesus wants us to share our faith with every single flat mate and that it can be done simply and joyfully. I asked just a few of the students to share their experience of The Commission with us, and this is what they said:

Chris Bird, 1st Year Student, University of Nottingham

I had two highlights - the people and the prayer. That may sound strange because the purpose of The Commission was to equip us students to evangelise at university and it was delivered by some of the Catholic world’s best speakers. And yes the commission gave me some amazingly useful tools, yet the times we spent forming deeper friendships stick out to me as part of that equipping. After all Jesus never sent the disciples out alone, always in two's or more. Whether it was during small group times, or learning traditional French dances, or playing ultimate frisbee, The Commission gave me a sense of Catholic community among university students in Britain that I hope will continue on into university life with different Catholic societies working together.

Mary Palmer, 2nd Year Student, University of Birmingham

Well, writing only one paragraph about these incredible four days will indeed be a challenge – I can hardly believe it was only four days as so much happened in such a relatively short time! We were fired up, fuelled and ready to go as Christ’s disciples on our university campuses through the keynote speakers, the discussions we had as new friends, Holy Mass, Adoration, and prayer. 

Whilst university culture may dictate constant competition and career progression, we were challenged to entirely and completely trust God as the master builder, the architect and designer of our lives - anything we can try to build alone will not compare to the plans that God has for us, and who are we to doubt that. We were reminded that God desired to draw ALL people to himself and to let this change how we see our sisters and brothers. This was reiterated in the “Women’s breakout session”: a woman (or man!) at peace and rest in their identity as a child of God will allow others the “grace to be and the room to become” by recognising both the beauty within others and how much more they could be if they knew God’s love for them. Curtis Martin, founder of FOCUS, spoke with such authenticity and a heart-felt desire that each individual truly heard every word God was giving him to say – it was a powerful commissioning which left me feeling electric, in awe of our loving God, His hand in my life and the lives of friends around me, and SO excited for what He’ll do through each of us as we return to university and beyond!

Daisy Vanderputt, NET Missionary

To be around like minded people striving to love the Lord and serve his people was so refreshing. A real highlight for me was the Women's session led by Shannon Zurcher and Emily Runyan. Over the past year I've been reflecting on and reading the book 'Captivating' by Stasi Eldridge, and this was the basis for women's session (win.) Shannon and Emily unpacked the meaning of what it means to be a 'woman at rest' showing us first by example and secondly giving us practicals on how to live this out. The simple message that a 'woman at rest' is a woman who rests in her identity as a daughter of God and allows the people around her to be themselves whilst becoming more of who they are meant to be was so powerful and edifying to hear in a society which is so confused about what it means to be men and women.

If you couldn’t come to the commission, we prayed for you, we prayed for your university, for your families and friends and for your chaplains and cath socs. We prayed that universities won’t be a place of loneliness, anxiety and purposeless wondering but a place of truth, passion, courageousness and firm identity. Will you accept the call? 

"When light shines, darkness has no ability to maintain itself. Go out and be that light!"

- Jeff Runyan, The Commission 2017

From Serving to Served

By Megan James

Just a few weeks ago, when on retreat in Scotland, I had a minor trip on a mountain that ended in a major trip to hospital, some emergency surgery, and two broken bones in my ankle (I’m a very graceful and nimble human). Throughout the whole ordeal, I kept relatively high spirited, with my family motto of ‘if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry’ being my inner mantra, and me just realising that it was a fairly hilarious and dramatic story I could tell one day (not everyone can say they had to have mountain rescue called out while they were on Catholic retreat… #Wild). But what I found is that the pain on that mountain, and the fear and pain of that surgery were not the big hurdles I thought they would be, and actually, it’s the aftermath, the calm after the (literal) storm, that is so much more difficult to deal with. 

My doctor warned me that this process of healing would not only be a long physical journey, but also an emotional one, and they really weren’t wrong (I suppose 5 years in medical school does that to you). The last few weeks have really challenged me; stripping me of my independence, and in some ways, my sense of identity and purpose. 

For as long as I can remember, I have had a real heart for service. I remember being knee high and running into the living room with a tiny notebook and pen to take my nan and grandad’s ‘orders’ for the kitchen, playing waitress and cook, over-the-moon to give them whatever I could (imaginary or not). And as I grew up, this game turned into reality, with me taking on the new role of carer for my nan as she became less and less mobile, caring for her as she had always cared for me.

But this isn’t unusual or extraordinary, this is what all of us as Christian’s have been called to do; we have each been called to serve. Jesus led by example, showing us the way of true service, teaching each of us how to love one another selflessly and actively through everything we do. I grew up watching my family truly live by this example, and I think it was this witnessing of great service that shaped me into who I am.

So, what happens when we can’t serve as we once would? What happens when the server is suddenly the one in need of service? As I have found out recently, it doesn’t come as naturally to us all when the shoe is on the other foot (no pun intended), and we can begin to feel a little lost and purposeless when we’re no longer able to bend over backwards for those around us.  

Suddenly, I cannot serve as I always have. I can’t even serve myself, let alone those around me. Every part of my day takes so much more thought, and so much more effort. I can’t even shower (praise the Lord for good friends who will wash your hair in the sink, they’re the real keepers in this lifetime). I am having to learn a whole new basic day-to-day routine, and most of it includes a whole lot of help, which as blessed as I am to have, still feels uncomfortable and restrictive.

So why is it, as people who serve so freely and joyfully, we find it so hard to let others serve us? I have asked myself this so many times as I have sat stubbornly desperate for a drink but not wanting to bother my housemate to ask for a cup of tea, or sat for 20 minutes trying to do something that would have just taken a second if I had just asked my mum. 

This whole experience has been humbling and eye opening. Suddenly, I understand my nan in a way I never could when she was alive. I cared for her for so long, so eager to love her and repay her for the years of service she had given me as I grew up, but at times it felt as though I was helping someone who did not want to be helped, and it was difficult. It felt as though she was just being stubborn and hard work (which she sometimes was, qualities that some may say I have inherited…) But I now find myself saying (or maybe just thinking) the words she would once say to me, “I just want to do it for myself”, “this isn’t your job”, and the one that would sting the most, “let me have some dignity”.

But when I speak of dignity, what do I really mean? Recently, I was in a Chris Stefanick talk and he played a really beautiful video he made for his YouTube channel. The video is called ‘Death with Dignity’ and is a message written by his close friend, Liz, who suffered with terminal cancer. Now, I know that a broken ankle is not terminal, but the video really struck me because of Liz’s beautiful words about suffering in front of others, stating that dignity is not suffering in private, but instead, ‘dignity is love’. This spoke to me and made me realise that for me, I often got my pride confused with this idea of dignity, and I think maybe so did my nan. I think I often attach my dignity to tasks that I accomplish (whether they are for myself or for others), but this injury has completely challenged that. Am I undignified now that I rely on others? Am I less worthy? No, of course not. Dignity is love; I know how much love I felt for my nan and how much love I poured into every small act of service I could offer her. This knowledge reminds me that when I cannot do something and accept help from others, I am not any less dignified or valuable as a person, I am merely letting that person love me. When I feel uncomfortable or frustrated, that is not my dignity screaming out 'let me be free', it is my pride.

As much as we are called to serve, it is important to remember that we are not defined by what we can offer others; we are defined by our identity as sons and daughters of God, and how much we can or cannot do will not change that. For so long I have felt defined as ‘the girl who would do absolutely anything for anyone’, and the ‘nice girl’ in school and uni, (and I probably will revert to that, so someone please remind me of this blog when I am walking again). The word ‘no’ just did not exist in my vocabulary because if I say no, am I still ‘nice’? And if I’m not ‘nice’, then who am I? I realise now, my abilities do not define me or define my worth. Before I was even formed in the womb, God decided I was worth the life of His only Son. Before I took my first steps, Jesus decided I was worth the pain and humiliation of the cross. I cannot create or alter my worth, my worth is created by and dependent on God (who luckily for me is constant and unchanging).

Yes, we are all called to serve, but we are also called to rest in Christ. We can physically rest in Him when we, I don’t know, fall down a mountain…And we can also rest emotionally, injury or no injury, knowing that no matter what, He gave us an identity and worth that has no terms or conditions. Dignity is love, and He is love Himself, meaning that our dignity and our worth, they are found in Him and nothing less.

"Nowhere other than looking at himself in the mirror of the cross can man better understand how much he is worth."

 - St. Anthony of Padua

There's a Time: Graduations, Kairos and Change

By Isaac Withers

Yesterday (by the time this goes out) I graduated from uni (waey) but as I write this, I’m still an undergrad. I don’t know how I’ll feel then/yesterday, but I imagine the same thing will bug me about it then as it does now: finality, change, goodbyes etc. The stuff that always feels fairly weird and bittersweet. That’s the gut feeling.

Moving out of somewhere definitely gets to me the most. Sifting through papers, taking posters down, trying to disguise blue tack damage to walls to get that deposit back, the mould at the bottom of the bin... Of course leaving the place behind is sad because you're leaving the people, but I'd also find myself worrying about the pace of life, the speed of it. After moving out in first year, I realised that if I didn’t figure out a way of processing change, I’d be pretty stuck. This was the best thing my uni life taught me, unintentionally, not in a 9am lecture, this one was free (take that tuition fees).

To tell this story, I’d like to take you to a bygone age, November 2015, the beginnings of my second year. Everything was on the up. I was living with guys I got along with, I was president of the Catholic Society and we were having an amazing time creating a home for loads of freshers. And of course, there was this girl who I’d liked for ages, and we’d just been on a date (my first) and it hadn’t been a disaster, in fact I was pretty sure it’d gone well. I was also spiritually coming off of one of the best summers ever and was in an oasis faith wise. It was bonkers. I have this bad habit of projecting ahead of me though, and my mind already had this picture perfect end of term, where by Christmas, this was all tied up like a movie. Things were so good, I was suspicious at how good they were, I distinctly remember thinking, ‘something bad’s got to happen soon’ and it did.

Within a week, two things happened: the girl I was head over heels for backed away in the nicest way possible, and a guy I’d been in the same seminar with for all of my first year, a friend who I’d sat next to in a lecture maybe a week before, died in a plane crash over Devon with his family.

I can’t really describe what that next week and month or two really felt like. I was kind of in shock and didn’t really know what I was feeling or how to process it, which led me to some really rubbish coping mechanisms. Eventually though, it also led me to a good one, my uni chaplain, a priest I’d become good friends with, Fr Patrick. I went to him and we had a long conversation, but it was something he said much later on that became a bit of a lifeline.

One day I randomly went along to a weekday mass on campus, and the reading that day was Ecclesiastes 3, you probably know it, it’s pretty famous (scripture famous). It goes like this:

‘There is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven.

A time for giving birth, a time for dying,

a time for planting, a time for uprooting what has been planted.

A time for killing, a time for healing;

a time for knocking down, a time for building.

A time for tears, a time for laughter;

a time for mourning, a time for dancing.

A time for throwing stones away, a time for gathering them up;

a time for embracing, a time to refrain from embracing.

A time for searching, a time for losing;

a time for keeping, a time for throwing away.

A time for tearing, a time for sewing;

a time for keeping silent, a time for speaking.

A time for loving, a time for hating.

A time for war, a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3: 1- 8

And then, Fr P preached on it. He’s a biblical languages guy, so he stared to open up old Jewish ideas about time for us. It turns out, there are two Greek words for time, Cronos and Kairos. I can’t remember his exact words, so I direct you to another scholar, Wikipedia:

‘Kairos is an Ancient Greek word meaning the right, critical or opportune moment. The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies a proper or opportune time for action. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative, permanent nature.’

I’m used to the idea of chronological time, but I had never heard of Kairos before. Fr P explained it as, ‘the time’ for something to happen, and it was the clearest I ever felt scripture speaking to me. I was struggling with the image of God that I had held up to then, one that couldn't surprise me, one who I didn’t think would let the bad happen to me. But these things, external to me, these changes that I desperately didn’t like, had come out of nowhere. And yet, I felt I was being told, ‘there’s a time’ for what I was in, even if that was grief and confusion. That way of thinking didn’t try and functionalise anything, it just seemed to point out to me that these times would always have come at some point in life, and that November 2015 was the time for them.

Recently, I’ve been reading Questions of Life by Nicky Gumbel’s (the founder of Alpha) and just the other night I reached the page of his own Kairos moment. He was playing squash with a good friend, a father of six, when his friend suddenly had a fatal heart attack. He writes this:

I have never cried out to God more than I did on that occasion: asking him to heal him, restore him, and praying that the heart attack would not be fatal. I do not know why he died.

That night, I couldn’t sleep, so I got up at about 5 o’clock in the morning. I went out for a walk and said to the Lord, ‘I don’t understand why Mick died. He was such an amazing person such a wonderful husband and father. I don’t understand…’. Then I realised I had a choice. I could say, ‘I am going to stop believing.’ However, the alternative was to say, ‘I am going to go on believing in spite of the fact that I don’t understand and I am going to trust you, Lord, even though I don’t think I will ever understand – in this life- why this happened.’

There may be times when we will have to wait until we meet God face to face to understand what his will was and why our prayer did not get the answer we hoped for.’

Questions of Life, Nicky Gumbel

So why bring all this up in the context of graduations and change? This has all got a bit deep hasn’t it? Well, since that time, I kind of took Kairos on as a way of approaching life, that whatever happened, I would take it as the given time and that there is a time for everything. The good, the bad, the uncomfortable, the really good, the tragic, and the gut feeling of ‘I don’t like moving on’. Sometimes that can all just be a really big week. But these are times that we are called to live in, and one day we'll know why.

Some things never feel right, moving on is always bittersweet, and that’s ok. (Now that I think about it, I think this is also sort of the moral of Inside Out. Hell of a movie.) And right now, is the time for a big change. Beyond that there’s also time for a really big summer, an incredible festival (Inheritance plug) and a long journey. And if reading all of the above felt like the cheesy commencement speech you didn’t ask for, then there’s also a time for that. Basically, that’s my gist: There’s a time.