John Paul II | Plot Line and Sinker (Ellen Gable, Author)

Image copyright Ellen Gable Hrkach

Please join me and other Catholic bloggers at RAnn’s Place for Sunday Snippets, where we share our posts from the previous week and answer a common question. This week’s question: Share a family sacramental memory–the cute thing the kid said, the cake at the party, you in your wedding dress, the family gathered around the baby–anything is fair game as long as it at least sort of involved a sacrament.

I have two favorites: Most recently, when I embarked on a Sacramental Pilgrimage for the Year of Faith…and second, when we traveled to Toronto as a family for World Youth Day 2002 and attended the huge outdoor Mass with John Paul II. I do have photos somewhere, although not digitally. When JP II arrived in a helicopter, my then six-year-old son was so excited that he later drew a picture of the “Pope” arriving (helicopter and all) and asked me to send it to the Pope. A few months later, we were delighted to receive a lovely note back that the Holy Father had read his letter, enjoyed the picture and sent his blessings to our family.

And now for my only actual post this week. My blogging time has been limited as I’ve been focusing on three other projects:

7 Quick Takes Friday – Volume 90

Inspiring and beautiful words of John Paul II, spoken at World Youth Day, Rome, 2000:

“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 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 ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”