MEDIA!

Shout out, Kilner (now Sousa) and Stiggity!

Ah, the battle cry of the Media Studies major circa 1999-2003 and our friends who loved us:

Media!

After the week of Apostolic meetings, we've been assigned "Apostolic Projects" each having to do with a facet of our "apostolate". (Get it?) What's an apostolate? It's our mission. Like some nuns have teaching as their apostolate. Some have nursing. Ours is MEDIA!

Charism is another fun word people don't understand often about religious orders. So the apostolate is more the work we do. Charism is the way we pray or our spirituality. For example, our Charism involves lots of reading of the SCRIPTURE (the Gospels and St. Paul's letters in particular, obviously :) EUCHARIST because Alberione (our founder) received the mission from Eucharistic Adoration, and MARIAN because Alberione entrusted us to Mary, Queen of the Apostles. Does that make sense?

Anyways, so a lot has been going on apostolic-ly, so I haven't been able to write as much. We had an exhibit last Sunday. Exhibits are an important part of our apostolate. It's a way to take our mission outside the Book Center and more to the people directly. So it was a Pro Life conference for the diocese and we set up a table and met lots of lovely people from the diocese. And I was actually surprised at how many people we already knew! Our next exhibit coming up this month I'm super excited about because our Media Studies expert Sister- Sr. Rose- is coming in to give a talk at a Christian Brothers Conference. So we are going to set up an exhibit with some of her books and we also get to go to her sessions on Media Studies. Yeah!

In other apostolic news- I have been given the apostolate of organizing our Faith and Film nights (all of us postulants and Sr. Carmen have a say in it and collaborate, but I just keep up with the details). I'm soooo happy to do this! I research the possible movies we might show and help to promote the event.

Our Faith and Film night, by the way, is something some of our Book Centers do. Once a month, we show a movie at our center and invite the public and then we lead a discussion afterwards and complete the night with prayer. Last month we watched "Hotel Rwanda" which is such a powerful movie. Sadly, we only had 3 people come, but hey- my experience with youth ministry has taught me not to be discouraged :) It's quality, not quantity :)

But we are trying to recruit a little more quantity, so I've also been asked to help our superior with promotions, advertising, and marketing, which I also feel at home with. Since we have NO budget practically for advertising (we do some radio spots on local radio and have some ads in local Catholic papers, parish bulletins- that consumes most of our budget) we have to do a lot more FREE stuff. So my latest task is to make some personal contacts via email, campus visits, church visits, and let people know one-on-one about our center and events since all those means are FREE :)

I really love to talk about our mission. There are so many cool things we are trying to do here. Not only do we have our Book Center (book store) our St. Louis community hosts monthly lectures with guest speakers on various topics open to the public, the Faith and Film nights, and we have a women's book club that read a book each month. And in December, we have a Baby Jesus Birthday Party :)

So I'm promoting these things to you all, even though you are most likely not in St. Louis or going to be anytime soon. But if you know of anyone here, now you can spread the word! :)

Another cool thing that happened this week: we went to see Leonardo Defilippis in his play about Maximilian Kolbe. You hardcore Catholics will know him and his company, Saint Luke Productions. They produced the movie Therese that came out a couple years ago. Anyways, he came into town to do the play for Catholic schools in the diocese and we went to one of the shows. Then he came into our Book Center today so we got to meet him and chat with him. I got my picture taken with him :) I don't have the digital copy, though, so I can't post it ;( But he stayed for like an hour 'cause he really understands our mission of evangelizing through the arts and media, obviously. We were trying to convince him to do a play on our dear Blessed James Alberione next :)

Oh! And we got to go to an Extreme Life Teen event last week (XLT) and that was sooo nice. It felt like "home", but made me sad 'cause my teens weren't there. I ran around promoting our next film night, though. We are showing Spiderman II, so that is pretty kid friendly. We'll see if some show up!

So it's Halloween, huh? It doesn't feel like it, but rumor has it Sr. Caritas is gonna dress up tonight. She's one crazy 71 yr. old Italian/French Canadian. But I love her. She told me she usually dresses up as Gandhi because "all you need is a sheet". Hmmm...we shall see what tonight entails.

Don't forget to honor the SAINTS with MASS tomorrow :) Holy men and women, PRAY FOR US!

Peace,
Julia