With the opening ceremonies just days away, it got me thinking about what it would be like to be an Olympian. I thought about how awesome of an experience it would be to compete in front of millions of people, representing our country, playing for a medal, inspiring people to come together and for a moment have the world waiting and watching for what might happen next.

However, for most of us we probably will spend our lives being Olympic spectators but for Sgt. 1st Class Jason Parker, he gets a shot to be on the world’s stage during the London Olympic Games.

Competing this year with his air rifle, Sgt. 1^st Class Jason Parker told Catholic News Service in a phone interview from Fort Benning, Ga. “I'm a little bit more relaxed going into this. I know how to deal with some of the extra things the games bring now."

A Nebraska native, Parker grew up around sport shooting. His dad, Dale Parker, was a competitive shooter for much of his early life. At age 13, Jason Parker's parents bought him a competition air rifle, and he used it to climb the ranks in local and state competitions.

He said his real breakthrough came when he attended Jesuit-run Xavier University in Cincinnati. The university had "just a great atmosphere. It was exactly what I needed during my life," he said. Not only did Parker end up making his first international team in 1994 as a junior at Xavier, but he also met his wife, Andrea.

Parker is very skilled in the 10-meter air rifle competition and the 50-meter three-position competition which has led him to a successful career in the military.  Sgt. 1st Class Jason Parker won the Men's Three-Position Rifle match, to secure his fourth trip to the Olympics and will be competing on the US Men’s Shooting Team.

Parker, a Methodist, said his faith helps him tremendously: on the range, with his family, and in Afghanistan. 

Let us pray this week for all the athletes participating in the Olympics and ask God to watch over them. Good luck to all the Olympians! 

Sister Julie Vieira, I.H.M. at anunslife.org brought to our attention the publication last spring of oral historian and poet Carole Garibaldi Rogers’ book Habits of Change: An Oral History of American Nuns (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Habits of Change is a collection of oral histories that brings together the stories of women religious from more than 40 different communities, most of whom entered religious life before Vatican II. Sr. Julie has a podcast interview with Garibaldi Rogers on her site.

Pope Benedict XVI has urged Catholics to re-read the documents of the Second Vatican Council, saying they "contain an enormous wealth for the formation of a new generation of Christians and for the formation of our consciences" according to The Tablet.

Speaking on Sunday at a Mass in Frascati near his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, the 85-year-old Pope said going back to the work produced by the Council 50 years after it began in 1962 was essential to the New Evangelization. "Therefore, read it and read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and in this way rediscover the beauty of being Christians, of being Church and living the great ‘we' that Jesus formed around himself in order to evangelize the world."

E. A. POE, friend of the early Fordham Jesuits

Dr. Pat McNamara, professor of church history at St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie, New York, blogs on American Catholic history at McNamara's Blog, and a few months ago had an item about a little-known connection between the American writer Edgar Allan Poe and the early Jesuit community at Fordham University.

"In the summer of 1846," Dr. McNamara writes, "Poe, along with his young wife Virginia and her mother, had rented a home in what is now the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. The area was still predominantly rural, numbering a handful of farms at most, offering some hope of comfort and stability. But within a few months Virginia, whom locals remembered as frail and beautiful, died. The grief-stricken widower found some solace in visiting her grave and in long walks.

"Sometimes these walks took him by the Jesuit's St. John's College [later Fordham]. Between Poe's home and the college (formerly a colonial manor) were nothing but woods. One early twentieth century author commented:Fordham is still so charming and rural a locality that we can imagine it to have been a poet's true home before the first encroachments of a rapidly advancing city had broken its quiet.

"[Poe] liked [the] Jesuits, he wrote friend, because they were 'highly cultivated gentlemen and scholars, they smoked and they drank and they played cards, and they never said a word about religion.' " The Jesuits had a similar impression of him, McNamara says. "One young Jesuit, the Canadian-born Edward Doucet, became quite close to Poe. Later the college president . . .   Doucet recalled the poet as 'extremely refined . . . a gentleman by nature and by instinct.' He became almost a confessor to the troubled artist. On their walks around the campus, Poe poured out his numerous troubles to the young priest as they conversed in French.

Another early Fordham Jesuit "remembered Poe as a 'familiar figure at the college . . . It seemed to soothe his mind to wander at will about the lawn and the beautiful grounds back of the college buildings.' Another wrote: 'It was one of Poe's greatest gifts that he could make friends wherever he went. To know him was to love him. . . . It was a pleasure to see him and still more to listen to him.'

"A recent biographer," McNamara says, "notes that Poe 'found intellectual and spiritual companionship' with the Jesuits at the college. In this sparsely populated community, there weren't many people with whom Poe could discuss literature. The Jesuits, who sympathized with this starving artist, invited him to dinner many an evening, and gave him the use of their library. After dinner, he would peruse the library  or play cards with the Jesuits (the majority of whom were French-born).Usually he went home feeling better, but sometimes he couldn't bear going back. On those occasions, when his grief was too palpable, one of the Jesuits would walk him home. Occasionally he stayed overnight at the college."

Dr. McNamara's blog is on Patheos, which has the full story.

Last week I received an email from our friends over at a Nun's Life , in which they were answering a question from a blogger about what motiviates a person to become a nun. After reading the answer, I was amazed at how honest and important it was to really think about where we are each being called to by God in our own lives.   

The message was so powerful and so thoughtful that I would like to share it with you today: 


Please pray for all those who are discerning a vocation and take some time today to really listen to where God is calling you.