How to Pray

I know that sometimes there are teens out there that are struggling on how to pray. Sometimes I feel the same way and I don't know what to say or pray for. I have learned over the years that when you pray you need to talk to him like you were talking to a really close friend of yours. That's what i do now and it actually feels like I am talking to my friend, but something that you should not do is pray to him only when you want something from him. Think of it as one of your friends only talks to you when he wants to get homework answers right before class starts or when he needs to borrow money. Well, that is how you are treating God when you pray to him only when you want something. So all you have to do is pray for at least five minutes a day and talk to God like hes is one of your friends.

The Mass

Let's start simply. The first thing that most teenagers think of when people say something related to the Church is how boring and long the Mass is. However, if you were to truly know and believe what happens in the Mass, you would want to go every day and partake in the true nature of the Mass.

At the beginning of the Mass, Scripture is read, usually a reading from the Old Testament, a Psalm, and two from the New Testament. I hope that all of us have aspirations to end up in heaven after we die. Imagine that you are being talked to by God in heaven and He is telling you his life story. That is exactly what you are experiencing when you listen to Scripture in the Liturgy of the Word in the Mass. After the end of the Gospel, The priest or deacon gives a homily on the Scripture that you just listened to. The homily translates the scripture (which can sometimes be hard to understand considering it was written thousands of years ago) and puts it into your native language at the current time so that you can understand it more fully. Then comes the heart of and soul of the Mass (no pun intended), a reenactment. We reenact the Last Supper that Jesus performed thousands of years ago. So after all these thousands of years, the priest says the exact same words that Jesus said at the supper before he died. The priest proceeds to transform, right in front of your eyes, the bread into the actual body of Jesus. After this takes place he turns the wine into the actual blood of Jesus. When we go up to eat the body and blood of Christ, we literally eat Jesus' body and drink His blood. After Communion, the final blessing is said, and we get to go back to our home and do whatever it is that we do on Sunday's but we try to abstain from excessive work.

Summing it all up, if you like hearing stories about superheroes that have every superpower that ever was, if you like it when stories about superheroes are sometimes confusing and people simplify them for you so that you can understand them better, if you happen to like history and you like present day reenactments of historical events, if you like magic (except this time its not a trick) where something actually transforms into something else, then the Mass is for you!

Purpose

The focus of this blog is to help teenagers understand more fully the Catholic faith. We will try to relate to problems you may be facing in relation to the faith in order to allow you to fully connect.