Zachary Ratliff
Today’s reflection comes from Zachary Ratliff, a sophomore at Sacred Heart Academy in Indiana. He recently participated in a mission trip to Mexico.
For those 10 days in Mexico, it was incredible. This trip has truly changed my outlook on everything in life, especially my brothers here at the apostolic school. One of the moments that most impacted me was just being with the other Precandidates at the other three apostolic schools in Mexico. While there, we played soccer, volleyball, and basketball, but 
it didn’t matter what sport we played. It was just enjoyable hanging out with my brother Legionaries. But this was only because each Precandidate was focused on one thing: to help the guy next to him enjoy the recreation. This is an aspect in the Legion we always try to bring out, but, as you can imagine, it’s not always the easiest to do. It was a great example for me, as well as the rest of us who came to the mission, a great show of our Legionary spirit, Charity. Sure, there were language barriers, but that didn’t matter. Their effort to speak far from perfect English and my sad attempt at Spanish was enough to communicate what I wanted.
Another great experience in our mission trip was visiting our Lady of Guadalupe. It’s a hard to put it in to words, as words cannot express such an experience as this, but it was awesome. I found it amazing just to be a couple feet away to where Mary actually appeared to Juan Diego. It was truly a blessing to celebrate mass at the basilica with our rector, Fr. Daren. If there’s one thing I do regret, though, I would have really liked to take better advantage of this opportunity; a lot of us spent more the time taking pictures instead of talking to our Lady and praying for the graces for the rest of the trip.
But as it was, I had an amazing mission. I really enjoyed it and it has really changed my attitude on certain things here at Sacred Heart.
