Free. Total. Faithful. Fruitful.

So, I have been co-leading a high school girls' small group with my friend Alicia at St Cecilia. We are currently studying Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body. Basically John Paul II did a massive amount of teaching on marriage, sex, the family, and how God ties into all of that. We are using the book "Theology of the Body for Beginners" by Christopher West.





For those of you who have read/heard/studied anything about Theology of the Body, you probably know how much potential it has to change peoples' lives. For those of you who haven't studied any Theology of the Body, I highly reccomend it - especially if you are married or are preparing for marriage.

John Paul II shows through his teaching that the meaning of life is to love others as Christ loves us - through a total donation of self, through agape love. Agape love is always free, total, faithful, and fruitful. He shows us how our body, when we use it the way that God intended us to, makes this mystery of love visible to the world.

The girls in my small group are, in a word, AMAZING. I have learned so much from them. The picture is of our group presenting/giving their testimonies to a youth group who is starting Theology of the Body for teens. They are passionate about sharing God's original plan for love with others. How refreshing! These women of God are truly the future of the church - I believe that their evangelization will change people's hearts for Christ. Praise God for the way that he is working in them!

"It is Jesus in fact 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 provokes you with that thirst for fulness 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 hearts 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 grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal."

- John Paul II The Great