Good Friday 2012

"And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?' which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' When some of those who stood by heard this, they said, 'Listen, he is calling on Elijah.' Someone ran and soaked a sponge in vinegar and, putting it on a reed, gave it to him to drink saying, 'Wait! And see if Elijah will come to take him down.' But Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the veil of the Sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. The centurion, who was standing in front of him, had seen how he had died, and he said, 'In truth this man was Son of God.' "

Why is it that the Son of God would give such a cry of despair--"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" 

Dontcha think that perhaps if He had been calling Elijah, he might've addressed him by name? Unless "My God" is some weird nickname for Elijah.....

..no, I think not. Nor is He blaming God. Nor is He giving up. 

If He had given up, he would have only had to said the word, and all this pain and suffering could have ceased. But it wasn't the nails that held Him up on that cross: It was love.

And if this sacrifice was one of complete love, why would he be blaming the Father?

Two thousand years ago, when the scriptures were taught and passed down orally, the psalms weren't numbered. They wouldn't say "Psalm 22"; they would use the first lines to refer to the whole psalm. 

And so, when Christ was up on that cross with His arms outstretched over the whole world, when He cried out "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?", it wasn't a cry of despair he uttered, but one of hope.

With these few words, He not only spoke of His complete and utter forsakenness, but also called each of us to praise God.

"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

You are far from my plea and the cry of my distress.

O my God, I call by day and you give no reply;

I call by night and I find no peace. [...]

All who see my deride me. 

They curl their lips, they toss their heads.

'He trusted in the Lord, let him save him;

let him release him if this is his friend.' [...]

O Lord, do not leave me alone,

my strength, make haste to help me! [...]

I will tell of your name to my brethren

and praise you where they are assembled.

You who fear the Lord, give Him praise! All sons of Jacob, give Him glory. Revere him, Israel's sons!" - Psalm 22 

pro-lifers unite!

On Saturday, I recited the pledge of allegiance to the United States for the first time in--er, I dunno--years?

(first swim meet evah that I've been to that's replaced the national anthem with the pledge of allegiance. ah, well. We spent most of it looking for the flag anyways [never found it].)

So we were reciting it, and you know how it goes...

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America [on second thought, if you're homeschooled, perhaps you instead recited the ten commandments or fruits of the spirit or something like we did], and to the republic for which it stands--one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Hm--"liberty and justice for all"? That's not how I would put it.

(evidence of our country's "liberty and justice for all")

Dear fellow pro-lifers,

Pray for babies! 

Pray that God will open the eyes of America to this horrible injustice! 

Pray to end abortion!

 { Oh, how I wish I was marchin' today... }

post first-week-of-classes report

After more than a month of break, classes *finally* started up again on Tuesday,
and they. were. awesome.

MTH 164
For Precalc II I got the sweetest teacher ever (probably explained by the fact that she's Mr. Willis's daughter and has red hair)! We started by reviewing the properties of logarithms (easyyy), but hey--at least we're not into trigonometry yet. *Yet*...

CSC 110
We spent almost the whole class on Tuesday staring at our computer screens, making no eye-to-eye contact, but interacting with each other over the internet through a discussion board.
Well, I suppose it *is* a computer class.
This is how my online "introduction" went:

Me: Dear everyone, I'm Gab: This is my second semester here (quite excited that classes are finally starting again), and I'm thinking about going into Engineering (it's either that or English--can't decide). This will be my first course in computer science.

Other than that, I like to swim and sing; I'm hoping to get into UVA; and I *can't wait* for Easter!!

Guy 1: Hi, what happens at Easter?

Me: Everything! Christ died for us on the cross and rose from the dead on the third day--liberating us from sin, conquering death, restoring our hope, opening for us the way to a new life. O truly blessed night!

Guy 2: I almost wanna say amen, but that sounds kinda weird, so..... um..... cool post.

Guy 3 : Amen would be OK in this context, I think; it's something good to keep in mind, in any case.

Well....I guess they know who I am now ("so, um, cool post"). :P
Anyway, I had to finish the CSC reading yesterday before my 2nd class this morning, and it was kinda tricky! Binary digits, circuits, transistors, Boolean operations, hexadecimal notation (<--ok, well *that* was easy)... but then we got to create circuits online with, you know, the AND/OR/XOR/NOT/NAND/NOR gates, and that was funnn. (hey, you can try it for yourself here, but I'm not sure it works for Safari or Firefox [I did it in the computer lab at the college, but then couldn't get it to open on my macbook at home], and to get it to open you have to right-click and then open in a new window)


EGR 120
How to start....(*thinking*)
Yesterday morning I went straight from swim practice to the community college, so I got there a half hour early. Turns out, so did my friend, and so did another guy from our EGR class. This "other guy" held some very interesting views on people and life. He spent that whole half hour before class lecturing us on how "if x is high enough, you'll eventually do y" (for example, 'if you pay me this amount of money, I will give you this information'. Or something like... a person who commits crimes because someone has threatened him. Or something like... a person who renounces his faith so that he won't be killed). Apparently, we all like to think we're "nice people", but again "if x is high enough, you'll eventually do y".
Um, No, Mr. Creepy. You're wrong.
What about all those who've died for their faith? (*he starts going on about all the violence in history*...blahblahblah)
No, seriously. What about the martyrs?
They gave up their lives for their faith. Their example is proof that what you say is wrong. Perhaps you don't understand: I'll fit it into your own terms...here's what they said. "I don't care what x is. I will not do y." And I hope and pray that if ever someone threatens to kill me if I do not renounce my faith, that God will give me the courage to stand firm and be killed.

Anyway, now that I've got *that* out of the way...the rest of the class was pretty good (although I practically had nightmares--er, no--*day-mares* about being paired up with Mr. Creepy for a lab partner until my teacher said we could choose our own. *thank goodness*).

I told my friend afterwards, though, that I think engineering is so *flat*. But more on that later. I've already talked enough.

So how did *your* first days of classes go? Any unusual conversations with strangers or teacher-stalking-sessions-that-we-shall-not-explain-in-detail?

Merry Christmas!

“And an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them.  And the angel said to them, ‘Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord.”  – Luke 2:10

my goals for Christmas break:

1. Finish up my Algebra 2/Trigonometry by January 17th....

I decided last month that I am not going to take another semester of biology, but instead I will take engineering, computer science, and Pre-Calc II (EGR 120, CSC 110, and MTH 164 for all of you fellow PVCC-goers). Pre-Calc II is one of the co-rec's for engineering, so even though I haven't done 163, I've got to take 164. I think I'll be ok, though, if I can finish the textbook I'm currently using before the spring semester starts.

2. Finish driver's ed.

I'm sure others of you have done driversed.com, so please...any sympathy would be quite welcome.
For those of you who *haven't*, it's just about the most boring thing in the world; they make you wait on each slide a certain number of seconds before you move on. I'd rather write a 10-page persuasive essay on why they should let me get my license. It'd be faster, at least.

3. Memorize this completely.

I might play it for a competition in January...
Not too worried about this, though, cause I've got most of it memorized already without trying...my teacher is always shocked at how quickly I memorize stuff. :P

4. Confirmation prep

Well....for those of you who don't know, I'm getting confirmed on April 28th!!!! Sooo excited...I've been waiting to get confirmed for (*counting*...2, 3, 4) 5 years, but in our diocese you get confirmed in 10th grade.
Anyway, as part of the confirmation program at our church, we have large groups and small groups once a month throughout the year; we also had a retreat in early November. But....a lady from our church (who also just happens to be my sponsor) suggested some books for us to go through.
Hopefully, I'll do a post on Confirmation soon.

5. Sleep

(self-explanatory, I think)


Aaaaand....that's all! That's enough, dontcha think?

P.S.
Next week there are no early morning swim practices, sooooo I don't have to wake up at 5!! :D

P.P.S.
My bio 106 gave me a 4.0 GPA to start off my "life at college" (well, ya know....life as high schooler at college)! Let's just hope I can keep it that way... :P

P.P.P.S.
There hasn't been a single time in the past three months that I *haven't* gotten sick the week before I've had to cantor (yes, I'm implying that I'm cantoring [I don't think that's a word] tomorrow)... thankfully, God's always taken care of it.

P.P.P.S.
Speaking of singing, dis here soprano is singing for our Christmas Eve Midnight Mass and THEN getting up the next morning to cantor for the 8am mass 'cause there wasn't anyone else. I'm just praying I don't look like a zombie all Christmas day.

P.P.P.P.S.
To all of you who may have watched Cars 2: Am I starting to sound a bit like Mater? (<--that's funny right thar)

Ok, clearly it's time for me to go to bed, soo....

gab--over and out.

because all you need is a little more school in your lives...

I've survived three Sundays of Advent, a bio exam, a technical research paper on how an MRI works (of all things, why did I choose this topic?), the Aztecs, and half of Martin Luther....

....and *today* begins my Christmas break.

la la la la la la! sing a happy song!!!

In celebration I have a little clip from my literature class (ok, maybe it's not quite a celebratory clip. It's a little sad.).

It's from Henry V by William Shakespeare--starting Act III, scene 8. (*Note: this *is* a war; there *will* be blood.)
Henry, King of England, has led the English into a war agains the French. They're outnumbered five to one, but they don't surrender: King Henry presses them on.

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; / For he today that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother [...]." (4. 3. 63-65.)

In the end, England defeats France, with only 29 men who have died.
The English, though, have lost ten thousand men. And so King Henry praises God, giving Him all the glory gained from this war.

Disturbing? yes. How can war glorify God?

However, this clip shows King Henry not as a bloodthirsty tyrant, but as a compassionate king who loves his people and thanks God that no more than 29 men were killed (even though Shakespeare wasn't exactly the holiest guy).

Perhaps he knew that murder never glorifies God, but war almost always glorifies men.
Perhaps he meant that none of this temporal glory should go to men, but that every man's eyes turned to God so that he can marvel at what God did with this small English army.
However, both England and France were mainly Christian nations, so I'm not sure what was going through Shakespeare's head then.

This scene takes place right after the battle has ended when the King learns the number of men who died on both sides. He carries that one poor boy through the battlefield--the whole way.
Don't ask me why a 16-yr.-old girl suddenly got so interested in war and stuff; this scene just gave me goosebumps. :P

Non nobis, non nobis Domine,

sed nomini tuo da gloriam.

Not unto us, not unto us, O Lord,

but only unto Thy name give glory.

Who knew that soldiers could *sing*?

birthday miracles

Happy Feast of Christ the King!!!

I will *never* be able to think of my birthday again without thinking also of Christ the King.

Mom says it's a good problem to have.

It was a wonderful day for a sixteenth birthday.

...I cantored at mass

...and my mom took me and my sis to "go get jeans" at Old Navy, where there were *akshully* friends waiting there to go to lunch with us (sometimes I just feel really gullible)

...and my friend offered a mass for me (he gets the prize for 1st-person-to-give-me-a-mass-as-a-birthday-present)

...and *tons* of people wished me a Happy Birthday throughout the day

...and then I went to a rehearsal for our Christmas Eve Midnight Mass and sang my heart out.

I secretly know that part of the wonderfulness of today is because God showered down extra grace since it is the Feast of Christ the King.

But don't tell anyone I said that.

'Cause they'll think of the times I believe that angels light the votive candles in our living room.

Or how I prayed yesterday that God would heal me enough so that I could cantor at mass this morning, and how he DID.

Or how I believe that every time I go up to the altar, God gives me a special grace to be able to sing in front of all those hundreds of people--because normally in a situation like that, I would get so nervous I would start shaking.

Akshully, tell them this: I believe in miracles--*especially* on the Feast of Christ the King.