Tiger Print Senior Column: ‘No matter what I end up doing, love is all that matters.’

Senior Column: ‘No matter what I end up doing, love is all that matters.’

Jordan McEntee, Sports Editor

I remember when I was a little eighth grader.
I was 4 feet 9 inches tall. I wore my light blue KC Chaos soccer jacket and jeans just about every day.
My hair was always in a ponytail with different colored headbands, and I just scooted on through my days with a smile.
Hey, sounds like senior me, too (except, thank goodness, I grew a few inches).
But I specifically remember sitting in the computer lab at Blue Valley Middle, enrolling in my classes for freshman year.
With every click of the mouse, I felt like I was one step closer to discovering what in the world I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
Well, it’s senior year now — in fact, we’re graduating in 16 days — and I have more questions about my future than I did when I first walked into BV.
I do know that I’ll be rockin’ the crimson and blue at the University of Kansas next year.
And I do know that I’ll be studying journalism and hopefully doing some work for the University Daily Kansan newspaper.
But I don’t entirely know where I’m going to go from there.
Considering I’ve basically fallen in love with writing and designing for the Tiger Print, I would love to be a journalist. And since I spend close to every waking moment (when I’m not at school) up at St. Michael’s, I’d be thrilled to be a youth minister. But who knows what else I’ll discover.
I’ve spent the past four years in this school trying to figure out my future, yet I’m still in the dark.
But I’m perfectly okay with that, and this is why:
“Wherever God has put you, that is your vocation. It is not what we do, but how much love we put into it.”
Mother Teresa said that. What a genius.
So all this time I’ve spent stressing about what I’m going to do, all I needed to do was trust — trust that God has some amazing plan for my life, and that when I’m ready to figure it out, He’ll clue me in.
No matter what I end up doing, love is all that matters.
In the meantime, I’m going to continue living by my other favorite Mother Teresa quote: “Let no one come to you without leaving better and happier.”
Because, for us seniors, we only have a few more days until we graduate and are thrown out into the real world — a world that needs each and every one of us. All of us will find something we’re good at, something that makes us happy and something that we love to do.
It’s through that vocation that each of us can bring a little bit more joy into this beautiful world.

PURE LOVE

Last night and all day today, a few of my best friends and I went to the Youth for Truth conference. On our way there, we were kind of hoping that it wouldn't be the same as all the chastity talks we'd already heard... Little did we know that we would be blown away by how much new stuff we would learn and how much we would be influenced by all the talks. Throughout the weekend, we heard talks from Sara Sheerin, Chelsea Schmidt, Chris Walters, and Kyle Kuckelman, Alli Donohue, Molly Sanborn (aka The Cheeseball Chick), and the legendary Jason Evert. AMAAAAAZINGGG.

So, let's start with Jason's talk: "Finding Love in a World of Lust." This guy is absolutely hilarious. He talked all about how everything and everyone in our world pressure us to live unchaste lives, and they tell us that if you don't give into society's temptations, that you're the weird one. But Jason says that amidst our lustful society, it really is possible to find true, pure love. If we live out the virtue of chastity by saving ourselves for our future spouses, we are actually gaining freedom, not giving it up like many people think. We gain the freedom to have the most beautiful, Christ-filled love once we find the person God planned for us to be with forever. We have to be patient and wait it out so we don't miss that person, though. This idea led to my favorite quote of the entire weekend from Jason, "High school isn't for finding your husband. It's for finding your bridesmaids." This is the time in our lives that we should be forming friendships that will last for years and years and years. Jason also focused on the idea that we can always be forgiven in Christ for what we've done. We can't just cram our feelings down and put on masks for people to think we're just fine. He said, "If anything comes up, down just stuff it back down; push it up even further to the Lord." Offer everything up to Him. Another thing that I really took away from this talk is the idea of writing letters to my future husband. Any time you're tempted to do something, or any time you think there's no chance for love, write a letter to your future spouse. Pray for them, know they're out there somewhere. God's just waiting for the pefect opportunity for you two to meet.

Another talk of the weekend was Chris and Kyle's "Manimal: The Call of Duty." This talk was hysterical, mostly because it was Kyle and Chris. But these guys actually know a lot about the way guys think and the "call of duty" (haha duty....) that God wants all of us to answer. Chris started it off with a fantastic quote from Blessed John Paul II: "The duty of every man is to protect the dignity of every woman." Holy shnikeys. That pretty much sums it all up right there. Kyle and C-Dub used the analogy that guys can be like vikings or knights. The vikings just go around taking whatever they want and dumping it once it isn't useful to them anymore. Then there are the knights who would stand up for their beautiful princess, protect her, and even die for her. Kyle told all of us girls, "Every single one of you girls are princesses, and you deserve absolutely nothing less than a knight." Kind of amazing. Chris then went on to say that we need to protect ourselves from the vikings out there, but that we can't over-guard our hearts. He says "a guy can't be your knight in shining armor if you're the one wearing all the armor." True that, true that.

The next great talk was Sara, Chelsea, and Alli's "You are More than a Victoria's Secret Model." These ladies split this talk into three main sections: Beauty, strength, and mystery. For the beauty part, Alli focused on how dressing modestly is more attractive than those Victoria's Secret models who wear pretty close to nothing. Dressing modestly shows guys that we want them to look inside us at our personalities, not just our bodies on the outside. Then Chelsea talked about mystery. She said our bodies are beautifully and wonderfully made in the image and likeness of God, and that God wants us to share ourselves with only one person once we're married. We can't be flaunting ourselves like those Victoria's Secret models, because where's the mystery in that? What is going to be left for our future husbands if we've already shown all that to the rest of the world? We are special, and can't let anyone tell us differently. Then Sara focused on strength. She talked about how we have to be strong in our decisions of living chastity, but even more importantly, we have to be strong in letting the men be men. Many people say that chivalry has died in our society, but Sara says that's because we ladies killed it. We live in a society that tells us we need to be indepent and that we should do everything ourselves. But we need to let the guys answer the call of duty. Sara said, "If the guys want to be that knight on on their little white cartoon horse, let them."

The last talk was Molly's "Lies About Guys." This is what every girl hears all the time. All the lies that we hear about he we have to act and what will make us more beautiful. The lies that Molly dicussed were: 1. If he doesn't glace, get some tighter pants. LIE. Dressing modestly will attract the kind of attention you want -- a guy who won't just look at you, but look into your personality. 2) If you're not making out, you're missing out. LIE. There are so many better things we can be doing with our high school years than hooking up. Am I right? And 3) You need a boy to have joy. LIE. No guy will ever be able to complete us and make us fully happy. Only Jesus can do that. He's kind of a big deal... And my favorite thing about Molly is her motto: "Spreading joy to the world one cheese ball at a time."

This was a FANTASTIC weekend full of love, learning, and life lessons. If strongggggly suggest going next year, if you missed this one. I pinky promise it will rock your world, and get you thinking about pure love.

So for chastity, cheeseballs, and true love... GOD IS GREAT.

#SaveTheBabies #March4Life2012

36 hours on a bus from KC to DC.
22 hours back home.
58 total hours on a bus.
All of that for the the most amazing 36 hours of our lives in Washington DC.


On Friday afternoon, we all met for a send-off mass with everyone from the Archdiocese of KCK. Fr. Gary's homily pertained specifically to the fact that when we do good things for the world, people and other forces are going to oppose us. After seeing the effects of driving straight into a huge snow and ice storm on the bus, we realized that truer words have never been said. Satan obviously knows the impact that the March for Life has on so many people, so he tried to stop us. Several times. Stopping the busses for the ice storm, getting us kicked out of a mall and left trying to find somewhere for food, and stopping our busses at yet another wreck on the highway. But did Satan stop us from saving those babies? Absolutely not. Satan's got nothing on us.


The first full day we were DC, Kyle found something on Twitter that totally changed our outlook on the entire march. The tweet said that the March for Life wasn't just a pilgrimage, it is the front line of battle. That hit all of us like a ton of bricks. Standing up against Roe v. Wade and the killing of 1.3 million babies per year is not something that we should take lightly. This is spiritual warfare we're dealing with here. That's intense stuff. So from that point on, we referred to all of our actions as preparing for the battle. The battle between life and death. And as Archbishop Naumann always says, "Vitae Victoria Erit" -- LIFE WILL BE VICTORIOUS. We will pray, fight, and march until our side, the side of LIFE, claims victory.


Another thing I realized on this fantastic trip: The power of PRAYER. Prayer is our number one weapon going into battle. It's peaceful, purposeful, and powerful. One of the first times we saw this power on the trip was when our bus was stopped for three and a half hours on the highway. Someone suggested that we pray a Rosary while we waited. Literally, the second we all picked up our Rosaries, the traffic began moving and the bus started inching forward. That moment definitely called for an "Ohhh yeahhhh, Virgin Mary, yeahhh!" But it all seriousness, we realized that God had his hand in every little thing that happened that weekend, as he always does. Prayer is our way of knowing that he's there all the time, watching our backs, and getting us through. Praying to St. Michael was another method of prayer that we found really helpful. The St. Michael prayer is absolutely fitting for our battle for LIFE, considering that it begins with "St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil." With St. Michael, Mary, all the saints and angels, and of course Jesus on our side, how could we not be confident going onto the front lines?


The actual march itself was mind-blowing. Over 300,000 people marched the streets of our nation's capitol, and those people ranged anywhere from newborn babies to toddlers to teenagers to college students to middle aged people to the elderly. This is a fight for everyone. Why? Because it affects each and every one of us on a personal level. Because we all have life... Seeing all of these people marching for one cause was life-changing. Especially because the media totally downplays it, in fact, they don't really cover it at all. But that's alright, because we don't do it for the media, we don't do it for attention. We do it to save lives. If even one woman decides to keep her baby instead of abort it, because of our efforts, then we've done well. At first, I had this mindset of "Yes! Let's go save the world!" And this isn't totally impossible, but we have to change the world little by little, one person at a time. Like Mother Teresa said, "There are no great things, only small things with great love."


The final big idea I have to share about what changed me at the March for Life is the idea that our generation has so much power. The youth of church has sooooo much potential to do so much good for this world. “Let no one have contempt for your youth, but set an example for those who believe in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity” (1 Timothy 5:12). We can be leaders. Especially through all the technology we have available. On the march, we realized that if we want young people around us to care about being pro-life, we had to bring this pilgrimage to them, through Twitter especially. Everyday, we all tweeted hundreds of times using #savethebabies. So simple, yet so impactful. Technology can be our friend if we use it correctly.


So overall, it was an absolutely fantastic trip. It opened our eyes, hearts, and minds to the thing we should all be fighting for -- LIFE.


#March4Life #savethebabies

Marriage. WOAH BABY.

The past few weeks, I had the pleasure of helping set up a bunch of stuff for a wedding. No, not just any wedding... Sara and Michael Sheerin's wedding (aka, basically the coolest people I know). So the suspense was building... We were making place cards for the reception, decorating centerpieces for the tables, tying bows on the worship aids, and other fun stuff. I started getting caught up in the craziness, but then I took and step back and I was like, "Holy crap and a half. They're getting MARRIED."

Marriage is pretty much the coolest thing of all time. When you say "I do," you commit yourself to that other person FOREVER. Forever is a reallllllllly long time. You promise to always be there for that person through all the highs and lows, and to love them no matter what. Unconditional love. That's where it's at.

Oh, speaking of unconditional love. Coolest thing I've ever seen... A couple girls and I got to the wedding early to pass out worship aids and we were going to talk to Michael, but he was like, "Hold on, I'm going to confession really quick!" Um.... WOW. Getting his soul all clean for his beautiful bride. That's a man right there. And that's unconditional love.

Later, at the reception, there was an old couple who had been married for 48 years. Dang. And they were giving advice to Sara and Michael... The man said, "My advice is: She's always number one, and I'm number two." Then the woman followed by saying, "My advice is: He's always number one, and I'm number two." Sacrificial, unconditional love yet again.

So congratulations to Sara and Michael. I love you both, and I know you guys are going to do amazing things for this world... And you already have. I'll be praying for you guys.

For the beautiful sacrament of marriage, for Sara and Michael, and for unconditional love... GOD IS GREAT.

The Extravaganza... We do it for Jesus.

A bunch of hilarious, weird, amazing, inspiring people gathered in the St. Michael's youthroom for the Prayer and Action Extravaganza on Sunday night. I think we might have beaten the record for most obnoxious people in one room at the same time. (In a good way!) On one side of the room, you've got Kyle, who strikes up random coversations about poop ("the call of duty"). Then you've got Chris, who adds "Get it? Prayer and Action? Like prayer and then action!" to every conversation. Then you've got a whole group of high schoolers playing some noodle ball, smacking a wiffle ball with pool noodles. And finally you've got a group throwing Nerf darts at the windows, then tracing the outlines to make pictures.

Yeah, we're obnoxious. But that's what youth ministry is all about -- acting like complete fools for Jesus. All those Nerf darts we threw? We threw them for Jesus. Every time we smacked that ball with the noodles? That was for Jesus. Every time Chris found a way to incorporate Prayer and Action into a coversation? He did that for Jesus. And, somehow, everytime Kyle talked about poop... That was for Jesus too.

This is idea of doing everything in the name of the Lord is what Prayer & Action is all about. Through painting houses, pulling weeds, getting to know the hearts of the people we're working for, or even squirting eachother with water guns for a week, we learned how to incorprate Jesus into all of that. It's all for Him.

Bringing everyone from Prayer and Action back together -- all the seminarians, leaders, youth ministers, priests, singers, and students -- just brought all of those amazing memories and feelings back. It reminded me that it really is all for Him. And especially as the youth of our Diocese, we might think that we're just the teenagers who everyone sees as obnoxious (which, I guess, is partially true), but we play such a huge role in the church. We are the future of the church, insane, I know. "Let no one have contempt for your youth, but set an example for those who believe, in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity." (1 Timothy 5:12).

So let's keep rocking this world. In everything we do. Through Prayer AND Action.

Live the Fourth

I had heard stories about how fantastic Kairos was, how I had to go, and how my life would be changed forever. I'm not gonna lie. I was a little skeptical. Really? One weekend at a retreat was going to change my life? Must be some retreat........

But it was. No doubt about it. Everything I experienced actually exceeded the great comments I had previously heard about it. I actually am a changed person -- the new and improved Jordan McEntee. :]

So what did I really get out of those three days away from society? Everything. Well, I can't tell you a whole lot because I don't want to spoil any surprises for you if you go on Kairos. But here's a few of the big ideas that I've brought home with me:

1) While setting specific time aside to form my relationship with God is important, what is even more crucial is incorporating prayer into EVERY SINGLE that I do. It's not about one experience. My whole life is my "God Moment."

2) Little things have BIG impacts. Just saying hi to someone, or waving to someone, or even just smiling at someone could be the difference. Make someone's day by doing something small! That's something that I've been trying realy hard to work on since Kairos.

3) SHMILY. This one stands for "See How Much I Love You." It's so easy to show people that we love them and that we care about them, whether it be through prayer, doing a favor for them, smiling at them, writing them a little happy note, or just being with them. And SHMILYs are a cycle! You get one, and you share it. Over, and over, and over, and over again. The circle of life, baby.

The weekend was full of spiritual, inspiring, deep, conversations. But, of course, you can't put 28 high school kids together with hilarious youth ministers and not expect to have some hysterically funny moments. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the retreat:

"Smiles are infectious!" -Greg Alba

"There's a cloud of witnesses praying for you ALL the time, sending you a billion SHMILYs through prayer channels." -Joe Passantino

"Do you really think you're a better artist than God?" -Joe Turner

"We're all HIS. It's beautiful, just beautiful!" -Kyle Kuckelman

"If you could see yourself the way God sees you, you would believe that you are AMAZING." -Chelsea Schmidt

"No matter what you've done, He would die on that cross again, just for you. Only you." -Mitchell Cardin

"I think God chooses a few people to support the rest, and it is a mystery tome how the whole prayer things works, all I know is that it does. I would be NOWHERE if people hadn't prayed for me. I know that the sacrifices my friends and family made for me are all that sustain me sometimes, especially when prayer is difficult." -Jared Michael Cheek (retold by Rick Cheek)

"He might not get you to YOUR ideal situation, but THE ideal situation." -Jennifer Summers

"The sure sign that God is active in your life is that you will be led where you did not plan to go." -Brent Rempe

"You're the prized posession on God's shelf, a picture on his refridgerator." -Maggie Crabtree

Instead of root them on... "Pray them on." -Rick Cheek


Doesn't this just make you want to go sign your papers and head off to Kairos right now?? Me too. All I can say is that it really was a life changing experience -- and not one that's only going to last a few weeks. I met so many fannnnntastic people who are really going to hold me accountable in my faith, and I will do the same for them. We're all in it together, because the rest of our lives are God's time, KAIROS.

Wait, God sees my crumbled soul as crisp, clean and pure? Dang, He's Cool.

The suspense was building. Flock in general is stinkin' awesome, but when Sara posts "So, FLOCK tonight will potentially have multiple special guests....holla!!" on the Flock Rocks facebook page, you know it's gonna have an extra side of EPIC.

Now I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat, wondering who in the world these special guests might be! ... (Drum roll, please) ... Michael Sheerin and Andrew Rockers! Woohoo! For anyone who doesn't know these two fabulous men of God, here's a quick intro -- Michael is Sara's fiance who plays the guitar, sings songs about smoking meat, gives really good advice about sales techniques, cracks the best jokes ever, and is one of the coolest guys I've ever met. And Andrew is an amazing seminarian from the Diocese of Salina, was involved in changing our lives at Prayer and Action, eats weird sandwiches, rocks (just like his last name, Rockers), and has the coolest beard I've ever seen.

So tonight's Flock kinduh rocked (and by kinduh, I mean that it totally, completely, absolutely, undoubtedly rocked). Michael got up there and pretty much spilled his heart. He told us his story, and gave us one of the best analogies ever (similar to Aaron's dollar bill analogy). A piece of paper. That paper is our souls. Every time we sin against our Lord, we put a crease in that paper. Eventually, that paper ends up all wrinkled and crumbled up, and maybe even in a trashcan. But guess what? God sees our souls through eyes of LOVE as clean, crisp, pure pieces of paper. It's crazy. One thing Michael pointed out that is so true: God sees us as a new, crisp sheet of paper, but sometimes it's more difficult for us to see ourselves that way. We know what we've done, and we'll always remember those folds and wrinkles we put in that paper. But Our God is a loving, merciful and forgiving God.

But Our God gives us free will because he wants us to make our own decisions. Wow, that's a lot of freedom. But that's also a lot of responsibility. Because freedom is desiring and choosing the best thing.

So it was a great night of learning about God's forgivenessand unconditional love, with some QPT (Quality Prayer Time) in the church. Which was also some quality chatting time with Michael. Dang, he's cool. (You've got yourself a keeper, Sara!) We talked about smiling, joy, surrounding yourself with people who are going to build you up in your faith, my dorky fun little brother, love, responsibility and life. Quite the conversation. And a few of my favorite things he said:

"In life, see the opportunities. In love, see the reality."
Mike: "How many times do you smile in a day?"
Me: "Uhh like thousands of times... Probably too many... I would die if I couldn't smile!"
Mike: "Haha. Never lose that sense of joy. And show everybody why you smile so much."

"In college, pray every single day. And if anyone questions you, don't let that make you question yourself."



For seminarians, paper souls, forgiveness and smiling... GOD IS GREAT. :]]