After a few brief words in Italian, he was about to bless the massive crowd in the square below. But he paused and surprised us by saying, "First, I want to ask you a favour. Before the bishop blesses the people, I ask you to pray the Lord bless me. The prayer of the people, asking the blessing for their bishop."

Francis concluded with words to this effect: "Pray silently over me."

It was an extraordinarily moving moment.

St Peter's Square suddenly grew to a hush.

Here was the pope — the man many Catholics see as the person on earth closest to God — asking us to basically bless him.

It is usually the other way around.

We're used to asking priests and bishops to pray over us and bless us.

But here was the pope — a Jesuit from Argentina who had already been a bishop for two decades and was a year beyond the normal retirement age of 75 — asking the hoi polloi to pray over him.

Little did we know back then that this would be one of the defining marks of his pontificate: the humility to be vulnerable to others, to be touched by others, to draw close to those who are weak, who count for little, who are on the margins, people considered outsiders...

And not only that, but even more essentially, relying on them and their prayers; being in need of their presence and their assistance.

"When I am weak, I am strong"

As we approach the 10th anniversary of Francis' election to the Roman papacy, it has become clear to me that, just as St Paul says to the Christians of Corinth, so it is with our now 86-year-old pope: "It is when I am weak that I am strong" (2 Cor 12,10).

That does not pertain to physical weakness as much as to the realization that we need each other — all of us.

It means willingly renouncing the illusion that self-sufficiency is a sign of strength.

It means reaffirming, instead, that we become strong in relation to our reliance on and trust in others.

Pope Francis has given us one example after another of this throughout his pontificate.

For instance, each time he has admitted his wrongs or mistakes and, thus, has been forced to rely on others — through their corrections and forgiveness, he has modelled strength through weakness.

This is also true with physical weakness, as we have seen the last several months as he has been forced to rely on using a wheelchair — and rely on someone to push him.

Francis' recent pastoral visit to Africa offered other examples of his willingness to be vulnerable and his recognition that he needs others, especially to help him with basic physical tasks he could not handle by himself.

Many wondered why the elderly and mobility-challenged pope was even making the six-day visit to two developing countries with — let's be honest — substandard infrastructures compared to the affluent West.

But Francis went all the same, knowing he would have to rely on all sorts of people in ways he never would have needed to even a few years ago.

"We are all in the same boat"

The Jesuit pope's fiercest Catholic critics sometimes describe him as dictatorial and clinging to power. But he did anything of the sort during the South Sudan leg of the visit.

Instead, he visited the fledgling and violent-racked country with the heads of the Anglican Communion and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, knowing that his message of peace and reconciliation would be even stronger by joining mind and heart with the other two Christian leaders that have sizeable communities in South Sudan.

One of the pope's most important messages, which he has only intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic, is: "We are all in the same boat."

This comes out in all his major writings and speeches and in all his personal encounters.

It's a message he shared with us on that first evening in St Peter's Square. "Let us pray for the entire world that it becomes a great brotherhood," he said.

The pope has tirelessly tried to drill it into our thick skulls that we need each other, that we need to strive to be more united (while respecting the vast and wonderful diversity of our cultural, social and religious expressions), and that we need to live in harmony with each other and all creation.

"The suffering of one becomes the suffering of all"

He did it once again this past week in light of the World Day of the Sick, which we Catholics observe on the February 11th Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Speaking to a group of healthcare workers and patients on Thursday at the Vatican, he said: "Becoming a leaven of charity means to 'make a network'."

And how does one do that? "Simply by sharing a style of gratuity and reciprocity, because we are all needy and we can all give and receive something, even if it's just a smile," Francis said.

"The suffering of one becomes the suffering of all, and one person's contribution is received by all as a blessing," he added, offering these words:

Dear friends, being close to those who suffer is not easy,

you know very well. That's why I say, do not be discouraged!

And if you encounter obstacles or misunderstandings, look into

the eyes of your brother or sister that is suffering and remember

the words of the Good Samaritan (to the innkeeper): "Look after

him." In that face it is Jesus who is looking back at you.

There are many illnesses and much suffering in our world — and not only of the physical sort.

How many of us try to face them alone or only with our most intimate loved ones or particular tribe, clique or co-religionists?

How many of us are afraid of being vulnerable to others, forgetting that "we are all in the same boat" and that "if one of us suffers, we all suffer"?

Francis — the pope of Evangelii gaudium, Laudato si' and Fratelli tutti — has tried these past 10 years to offer us another, more fraternal way forward. But we too often continue carving up the world and our own reality into good guys and bad guys, them and us...

The pope's prayer at the conclusion of Fratelli tutti is for something much different and much better:

Prayer to the Creator

Lord, Father of our human family,
you created all human beings equal in dignity:
pour forth into our hearts a fraternal spirit
and inspire in us a dream of renewed encounter,
dialogue, justice and peace.
Move us to create healthier societies
and a more dignified world,
a world without hunger, poverty, violence and war.

May our hearts be open
to all the peoples and nations of the earth.
May we recognize the goodness and beauty
that you have sown in each of us,
and thus forge bonds of unity, common projects,
and shared dreams. Amen.

• Robert Mickens is Editor-in-Chief at la-Croix International.
• First published in la-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Most people around the world, including most Catholics, probably don't even know that the pope made the September 13-15 trip to the former Soviet republic in Central Asia.

Or that he was there for a religion summit alongside more than 80 other faith leaders representing the various strains of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Hinduism.

But the Jesuit pope's visit may very well be remembered many years from now as one of the more significant of his pontificate, no matter how Catholicism develops or changes.

Francis has been helping his Church become much more welcoming and inclusive, less judgmental and doctrinaire, and more accepting, respectful and neighbourly towards people of other faiths, without trying to convert them.

If the Church continues evolving in this way as a humbler, less-sectarian community of believers over the coming decades, then his Kazakhstan trip will be seen as having played a supporting role in that effort.

But if his eventual successor as Bishop of Rome decides to halt the "ecclesiastical perestroika" Francis has set in motion and is able to successfully reverse directions, the 2022 papal visit to Kazakhstan will be remembered for something else — the time when a pope signalled that Catholicism was just one more among the world's many other religions.

"The Catholic Church was founded by God himself"

In fact, that is basically the charge that Athanasius Schneider, a German who serves as auxiliary bishop in the Kazakh capital of Nur-Sultan, levelled against him.

"We're not one of the many religions," the extremely traditionalist bishop told EWTN. "There is only one true religion, which is the Catholic Church, founded by God himself."

"There is no other way to salvation," said the 61-year-old prelate, who has served as auxiliary bishop in two different dioceses in Kazakhstan since Benedict XVI promoted him (and Cardinal Angelo Sodano ordained him) to the episcopate in 2006.

Bishop Schneider, who is close to the Priestly Society of Pius X (Lefebvrists) and has said that certain texts from the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) are erroneous, was horrified that Pope Francis participated in the VII Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Nur-Sultan.

He said the pope risked confusing people, leading them to think that the Catholic Church belongs to "a supermarket of religions" where "everyone is there, and you can choose what you want".

"We also need other, all others"

One of my colleagues has assured me that Bishop Schneider is a "very holy man", although it's not clear how he deduced this.

Certainly, the bishop demonstrates outward signs of piety and religiosity. And his devotion to liturgical ritualism is well-known, especially among his fellow adherents of the Old Latin Mass.

The bishop's ecclesiological/theological vision is definitely guided by the Tridentine paradigm, while Francis' is shaped by the still-unfolding paradigm of the post-Vatican II Church.

We must presume that Schneider and those Catholics who share his views are acting in good faith when they seek to protect the Church and its doctrines.

But they do so by enforcing rules, rigid liturgical formulas and purity codes. Their type of Church is exclusionary, judgmental and sectarian. They sincerely believe Catholicism is the only true religion and, thus, it has no need of dialogue with other faiths, the false religions.

Pope Francis, however, disagrees. And he said so while in Kazakhstan.

"We also need others, all others: our Christian sisters and brothers of other confessions, those who hold other religious beliefs than our own, all men and women of goodwill," the pope said during a meeting with the members of the country's tiny Catholic community — including Bishop Schneider.

"May we realize, in a spirit of humility, that only together, in dialogue and mutual acceptance, can we truly achieve something good for the benefit of all," Francis said.

"Without dialogue, there is ignorance or war"

The pope was even more direct during the press conference he held during his flight back to Rome.

Without actually naming Bishop Schneider, he noted that "someone criticized" him for attending the interreligious meeting, claiming that it was "fomenting" relativism.

"There was no relativism!" Francis exclaimed. "Everyone had their say, everyone respected each other's position, but we dialogue as brothers and sisters. Because, if there is no dialogue, there is either ignorance or war."

The pope said it's important for people of different faiths to "talk a little and get to know one another" better, pointing out that "so many times these misunderstood 'religious' wars" we've seen throughout history were the result of people not knowing each other well enough.

"The path of interreligious dialogue is a shared path to peace and for peace; as such, it is necessary and irrevocable," Francis told the other faith leaders at the final session of the religion summit in Nur-Sultan.

All children of the same Creator-God

"Interreligious dialogue," he said, "is no longer merely something expedient: it is an urgent-needed and incomparable service to humanity, to the praise and glory of the Creator of all."

And he said the summit in Kazakhstan was a "providential" opportunity to "reaffirm the authentic and inalienable essence of religion" at a time of widespread "pseudo-religious terrorism, extremism, radicalism and nationalism, dressed up in religious garb."

The bottom line, for Francis, is that differences — even differences of religious belief — do not change the fact that we belong to one human family; that we are all brothers and sisters who are children of the same Creator-God.

This is the message he has been preaching since the beginning of his pontificate in 2013. And ever since the coronavirus pandemic broke out he's been doubling down on that message by pointing out that we share a common fate or destiny — that is, we are all in the same boat.

His two encyclicals — Laudato si' in 2015 and Fratelli tutti in 2020 — spell this out beautifully, demonstrating how this is not some New Age spiritual gobbledygook, but is actually rooted in the scriptures and the perennial tradition.

Fraternal encounter and dialogue: the only path in these dark times

At the start of the religion summit in Nur-Sultan the pope said that each person has the "right" to believe and to "render public testimony to his or her own creed, proposing it without ever imposing it".

"To work for a society marked by the respectful coexistence of religious, (and) ethnic and cultural differences is the best way to enhance the distinctive features of each, to bring people together while respecting their diversity, and to promote their loftiest aspirations without compromising their vitality," he insisted.

"May the Almighty set us free from the shadows of suspicion and insincerity and enable us to cultivate open and fraternal friendships through frequent dialogue and luminous sincerity of purpose," the pope added.

And he concluded that particular address with words that his Catholic traditionalist critics like Bishop Schneider must not have heard.

"May we never aim at artificial and conciliatory forms of syncretism, for these are useless, but instead firmly maintain our own identities, open to the courage of otherness and to fraternal encounter," Francis said.

"Only in this way, along this path, and in these dark times in which we live, will we be able to radiate the light of our Creator."

• Robert Mickens is LCI Editor in Chief.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

A few days ago, my colleague Joshua McElwee reported on the pope's homily at the Mass celebrating the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul.

Monday, the pope marked the sixth anniversary of his trip to Lampedusa with a Mass for migrants, at which he delivered the sermon.

These three texts highlight this pope's penetrating theological vision, why it is so suited to our times, and why it so disturbs a certain kind of American Catholic.

The talk at Naples was, as Mickens noted, remarkable because of the pope's focus on theology in the Mediterranean as it is today, not only as the historic source of Greco-Roman philosophic ideas which so shaped the early church. The conference was considering theology in the wake of Francis' apostolic constitution Veritatis Gaudium that dealt with the renewal of ecclesiastical faculties and universities. In Naples, he said:

"When in the Foreword of Veritatis Gaudium the contemplation and presentation of the heart of the kerygma is mentioned together with dialogue as criteria for renewing studies, it means that they are at the service of the path of a Church that increasingly puts evangelization at the center.

"Not apologetics, not manuals, as we heard, but evangelizing.

"At the center is evangelizing, which is not the same thing as proselytizing.

"In dialogue with cultures and religions, the Church announces the Good News of Jesus and the practice of evangelical love which He preached as a synthesis of the whole teaching of the Law, the message of the Prophets and the will of the Father.

"Dialogue is above all a method of discernment and proclamation of the Word of love which is addressed to each person and which wants to take up residence in the heart of each person.

"Only in listening to this Word and in the experience of love that it communicates can one discern the relevance of kerygma.

Dialogue, understood in this way, is a form of welcoming.

Dialogue, he acknowledged, is no magic formula, but a methodology of respect for persons as well as ideas and the only path to peaceful and just social relations.

Francis also pointed to dialogue as a kind of academic self-corrective.

"We need theologians ― men and women, priests, lay people and religious ― who, in a historical and ecclesial rootedness and, at the same time, open to the inexhaustible novelties of the Spirit, know how to escape the self-referential, competitive and, in fact, blinding logics that often exist even in our own academic institutions and concealed, many times, among our theological schools."

"That phrase "blinding logics" is certainly an incisive description of certain ideologically driven norms in the academy, and it can be found on both the left and the right.

The pope's sermon at the great feast day Mass was one of my favorites of his entire pontificate because of its bold anti-Pelagian challenge:

"There is a great teaching here: the starting point of the Christian life is not our worthiness; in fact, the Lord was able to accomplish little with those who thought they were good and decent.

"Whenever we consider ourselves smarter or better than others, that is the beginning of the end.

"The Lord does not work miracles with those who consider themselves righteous, but with those who know themselves needy.

"He is not attracted by our goodness; that is not why he loves us.

"He loves us just as we are; he is looking for people who are not self-sufficient, but ready to open their hearts to him. People who, like Peter and Paul, are transparent before God."

The conflation of the moral with the holy is a great temptation for the Christian.

In other religions, it may be different, but in ours, holiness consists in a reliance on the grace of God in all circumstances and in every decision.

There is an ecclesiological angle to this anti-Pelagianism as well.

The other day, I came across an article at Patheos about Hans Urs von Balthasar and why he remained a Catholic.

Speaking against the Puritans of his day, he wrote:

If they [the emotivist Puritans] refuse, I fail to understand how they can assert they are in the Church and not outside fighting against her.

However, let us leave them to their fate or, better, to a gentle Providence who may open their eyes to this truth: a sinless, all-knowing Church that would sell off the old dusty one would be no Church at all but only a Montanist-Donatist-Pelagian sect not worth remaining in and having nothing in common with the Church of Jesus Christ.

We leave them to draw that simple conclusion, and proceed to positive argumentation.

I remain in the Church because the old catholica still resembles the Church which leaps to the eyes from the pages of St. Paul's Epistles and the Acts.

Indeed, the resemblance is so striking as to be offputting.

The very Corinthians whom Paul lauds "for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, because in everything you have been enriched in him" (I Cor.1 ff.), he proceeds to denounce in chapter after chapter for forming cliques, for their arrogance and their incontinence, for loveless behavior at the Eucharistic party (the expression comes from a Swiss parish bulletin), finally for their denial of the Resurrection by attempts to rationalize it.

QED.

Finally, we come to the Mass for the migrants.

There the pope preached on Jesus' preferential option for the outcast and his mission of liberation and salvation. Continue reading

• Michael Sean Winters covers the nexus of religion and politics for NCR
• Image: Lifesite News

1. Speak as little as possible about yourself.
2. Keep busy with your own affairs and not those of others.
3. Avoid curiosity (she is referring to wanting to know things that should not concern you.)
4. Do not interfere in the affairs of others.
5. Accept small irritations with good humour.
6. Do not dwell on the faults of others.
7. Accept censures even if unmerited.
8. Give in to the will of others.
9. Accept insults and injuries.
10. Accept contempt, being forgotten and disregarded.
11. Be courteous and delicate even when provoked by someone.
12. Do not seek to be admired and loved.
13. Do not protect yourself behind your own dignity.
14. Give in, in discussions, even when you are right.
15. Choose always the more difficult task. Continue reading

Take last Sunday's 9am Mass for Wellington's St Mary of the Angels' parish for example.

The celebrant, Father Joe Savesi, is well known for including jokes in his sermons. They catch people's attention and underline his main points.

To recap -the sermon focused on the Parable in Luke 18:9-14.

In this the upright man praying in the temple says what a good man he judges himself to be. He then compares himself to the tax collector who was also at the temple, and in his opinion is a far inferior person.

The tax collector, on the other hand, was too ashamed to ask God for anything except mercy.

Joe's way of explaining the Parable's message was to sing a verse of the Mac Davis song "O Lord it's hard to be humble" - much to the congregation's delight. Listen to the orginal

She acknowledged that "Humility is not something you hear much about in politics."

But, she said, it should be. Those who truly understand "the awesomeness of power and the frailty of human action" - that is, those who manifest humility - are "our greatest leaders."

Of course, this speech was smart campaigning. It reminded voters of what she sees as a competitive advantage with her opponent. It was also good Baptist theology.

But, humility is not merely a Christian virtue. Humility is an essential aspect of every major religion. For that matter, humility is more than just a religious virtue. In my research, I have argued that humility is also an essential democratic virtue.

So, why is humility so essential in a democracy?

Humility, religion and politics

Like most Christians, Baptists believe that all people are sinners, that all of us are condemned by God's righteous judgment and that there is nothing that we ourselves can do to alter that condition. If we are saved, it is because of God's actions, not ours. Humility is the only appropriate response to these tenets of faith.

What's more, Jesus himself washed the feet of his disciples and humbled himself "even unto death." So, devout Christians are called to do no less.

However, politics and humility just don't go together. Politics requires ego; you need to present yourself as a better alternative than your opponent. Humility means that you aware of your own failures, and are respectful of those with whom you disagree. Seen in this light, many believe that in our society, humility has become "counter cultural" and that politics is a leading cause. Continue reading

• Christopher Beem is the Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Pennsylvania State University.

All that self-abnegation stuff can be another product of the annoying ego, the I, me, my aspect of my primal instinct for survival. If I'm focussing intently on myself in this negative way, I'm not thanking God for creating me. Nor am I expressing gratitude for the harder lessons in life.

Instead, I can get into low self-esteem and project that on others. In an inverse way, my me first instinct can prevent me from directly experiencing God's love.

Certainly the ego needs to be managed, but we should never allow it to divide us. In a battle of self against self, who ends up the loser?

As children, we were socialised at an early age. Some things were good, attached to "Yes." Other things were bad and connected to "No." Remember that? As we grew in experience and could evaluate situations for ourselves, the black and white values of infancy, became multi-coloured and some choices needed careful discernment.

Every now and then we made the wrong choice. We wounded ourselves and maybe someone else. We felt regret, sought forgiveness. Then came the valuable resurrection experience. We realised we'd learned more from that mistake, than we'd learned from several right choices.

So how does this fit with our desire to grow in faith? Maybe we can describe it with a parable.

Our lives are like lovely patchwork quilts, a variety of shapes and shades stitched together with faith. There are patches vibrant with colour, some fabrics smooth and silky, some strong, some delicate, others that are dark or rough in texture. Together they make wholeness.

If I look at my quilt of life, it is the dull and rough patches that are the most interesting, because they have been the greatest teachers. They have enabled me to bring new fabrics to the quilt. I think this is called redemption.

But surely, if I try to unpick and remove a patch I don't like, all I will do is leave a hole, damaging the entire pattern of patches.

So I say thanks to God for the awkward patches and integrate them with my gratitude. This, I think, is called reconciliation.

We are both the quilt and the quilt maker. And what is the purpose of the patchwork quilt? If we extend the metaphor, we see it wrapping our precious little soul that has been brought into incarnation. I like to think that as the quilt grows, so does the soul.

That is a satisfying image, but what do we do about that annoying ego? Any attention we give the me first instinct, be it positive or negative, will only feed it.

Perhaps the answer is quite simple. We just laugh at it.

Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

My wife and I had already moved back to the United States from Rome, but on that date I had returned to give a talk on religious freedom at the Italian Foreign Ministry, which is why I happened to be in town when the announcement of Pope Benedict XVI's resignation was made.

Here's how I became aware of it: I was standing at a coffee break talking to other speakers when my mobile phone rang, with a BBC reporter asking if I could confirm the pope was about to quit.

Because I had received countless calls over the years asking me to run down bogus pope stories, I snapped, "This is probably total BS, and I don't have time for it!"

After hanging up, I walked back into the main conference room where I saw my good friend Phil Pullella, Rome bureau chief for Reuters, who had the same look on his face that people who've survived car accidents often project.

It turns out he had just got off the phone with a Vatican official confirming the pope's resignation, and he turned to me and said, "We have to leave now!"

The weeks that followed are a blur (except for my clear memory that Pullella still owes me cab fare for our ride to the Vatican), but with the distance of three years from that historic moment, one thing seems abundantly clear.

While Pope Francis is rightly celebrated for his personal humility and simplicity, the single greatest of act of papal humility the world has witnessed in at least the last 700 years, and arguably forever, came three years ago today from Benedict XVI. Continue reading

• John L. Allen is associate editor of Crux, from which this article is taken.

The papal entourage had arrived at Fiumicino Airport in Rome for the pontiff's first trip abroad.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been pope for just four months and was now bound for Rio de Janeiro, where 3.5 million young people from 178 countries were waiting to greet him at World Youth Day in Brazil. And he could not find his briefcase.

"It's been taken on board the plane," an aide explained.

"But I want to carry it on," said the pontiff.

"No need, it's on already," the assistant replied.

"You don't understand," said Francis.

"Go to the plane. Get the bag. And bring it back here please."

Members of the press, who were already waiting on the plane, soon saw from their windows that Pope Francis was moving purposefully through a crowd of functionaries to the aircraft, carrying a black briefcase in his left hand.

This was a story: Popes had never before carried their own luggage.

During an impromptu press conference on the plane an hour and a half later, after the pope had talked at length about young people who had no jobs and who felt discarded by a society in which old people had long been treated as similarly disposable, one reporter asked what was in the briefcase.

"The keys to the atomic bomb aren't in it," Francis joked.

So what did it contain?

"My razor, my breviary, my diary, a book to read- on St Therese of Lisieux to whom I am devoted.

"... I always take this bag when I travel. It's normal. We have to get used to this being normal," he added.

It's a new normal: Francis has presented himself to the world as an icon of simplicity and humility, eschewing papal limousines and the grand Apostolic Palace, and instead being driven in a Ford Focus and living in the Vatican guesthouse.

But being simple can be a complex business if you are the leader of one of the world's largest religious denominations and also a head of state.

And Francis's life story shows that humility is not an innate quality of his, but a calculated religious, and sometimes political, choice.

Bergoglio's progress through the ranks of the Society of Jesus, a religious order within the Catholic Church also known as the Jesuits, was remarkably speedy.

In April 1973, at the age of just 36, he was made provincial superior, the head of all Jesuits in his home country of Argentina as well as neighboring Uruguay.

But tensions produced bergogliano and anti-bergogliano factions that divided the province in two and ultimately resulted in the Jesuit headquarters in Rome exiling Bergoglio to Cordoba, Argentina's second-largest city, some 400 miles from the capital.

There were two main, and intertwined, areas of conflict. One was religious, the other political. Continue reading

Source:

Image: USAToday

And not only because I'm part of the Catholic Church and we were without a shepherd . . . I mean I needed him because I'm sinful, and broken, and I need a constant reminder of how to be like Christ.

I have been awestruck by him from the first moment he walked out onto the balcony, to the last news article I read about him.

God knows how many split ends I have, how often I cringe when people chew ice, and where I'm going to be in 5 years.

He understands me and you - His people - and He knew exactly what kind of father-figure we needed to lead us. So He gave us Pope Francis . . .

BECAUSE WE'RE SELF-ABSORBED
You know it's true.

We all love ourselves a little too much sometimes.

Proof: the most popular websites are social media sites that scream 'look at me and how great my life is.'

Given the choice we'll choose comfort, warmth, food, and then diet pills, all for the sake of our own happiness and image.

It's easier to have an attitude than to set yourself aside, and to live on superficial highs instead of dying to self and carrying your cross.

So here's a man who is not only willing, but takes joy in serving the Church.

Sure, this is the royal priesthood, but he's not pampered like royalty.

It's a tough, demanding job. He could have acted proud and inflated when he was made pope.

Instead, Pope Francis' attitude said, 'Here I am to serve you, I want to set myself aside in order to walk this journey with you.'

BECAUSE WE'RE MATERIALISTIC
Excessively.

We just want to be happy and happiness can be bought with a plastic card and taken home in a plastic bag . . . right? Continue reading

Source

• Christina Mead in LifeTeen

Christina Mead is figuring out how to be holy so she can go to heaven and be the patron saint of lifeguards, and is Assistant Director of Resource Development for LifeTeen.