Announcements• Ski Trip – Super Bowl Weekend (Feb 5th – 7th)

• Make a Difference Day – Oct. 24th (next Saturday) meet here at 8 am.

• Time and Talent weekend, next weekend here at Church. Need volunteers to run the registration table.

• Halloween Party!! Sign up now

Life??

Why?• Who am I?

• Am I missing something?

• What am I supposed to do with my life?

• Who is God and what does He have to do with me?

• And who put this God guy in charge anyways?

What if there are answers?

• God shaped hole

• Man has always searched for God.– Every ancient culture believed in some sort of

religion or higher power.

– We all (everybody, now and in the past) are looking for the same thing.

Psalm 63

• Look it up

• This is the cry of every human person

Everybody is looking for God. FACT.

• “You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.”– St. Augustine

What your heart says.• “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. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and fraternal.”

Who said that?

• Answer: Pope John Paul II, in his address at World Youth Day, 2000.

Wait a second

• So what our hearts are telling us is also what Jesus tells us?

–YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Vocations

• What does this word, vocation, mean?

• Your calling in life. What you are meant to do. God’s plan for you.

• Its really living from your heart.

Vocations

• Examples?

• Remember, Priests and Nuns are NOT the only ones who have vocations, we all do too. In fact, everybody does.

Universal Call to Holiness

• What does this mean?

• We are all called to be holy.

• Everybody’s most important vocation.

How do you get holy?

• Jesus tells his disciples, “be you therefore perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

• So we need to be like God, like Jesus.

• And we do that by doing what He wants us to do.

• Sounds so very simple, doesn’t it?

The How-to guide to Holiness

• When does God call us to be holy?

• Where does God want us to be holy?

The How-to guide to Holiness

• What God wants (His Will) will make us holy.

• We live out our Vocation. And God will begin to fill up our God shaped hole. We become holy.

The How-to guide to Holiness

• The problem is we often don’t know what God wants us to do.

• So we pray.

The How-to guide to Holiness

• Through prayer:– We get to know God. Its like a friendship.– We learn to hear him. God speaks in silence.– He transforms us. – We become like Him.

The Sacraments

• Gifts from God• Sustain our Souls• Lead us to Holiness

The How-to guide to Holiness

• Baptism

The How-to guide to Holiness

• The Eucharist

The How-to guide to Holiness

• Confession

Vocations

• Self-Gift what does this mean?

Small Group Questions• What is the best gift you have received?• What is the best gift you have given?• If you could only get one more gift for the rest of

your life, what would it be?• What do you think that St. Augustine meant

when he said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You”?

• What does it mean to you to be a self-gift?• What are a few ways you can be a better gift to

God? To family? To peers?