The joy of conversion, Christian community, and the Catholic faith
Jesus paid all the bill by His death and resurrection. At infant baptism, our parents received them for us then. Sometimes in our adult life, we must make our own commitment to know and follow Jesus in His new kingdom. Each sacrament in God’s kingdom offers us a different set of operating gifts for personal growth and adult ministry for others.
With the crisis in the world today, what might be our role as evangelists to help spread Jesus’ messages of love, peace, joy and stability? Like St. Benedict’s monasteries, our homes can be secure places of faith, peace, study, work and harmony for ourselves with God’s power flowing out into the culture around us.
I realized that the way for me to connect the dots for others was through the virtues, for Jesus is the Way. My “call within a call” is to focus on the virtues, evangelizing both adults, through my public speaking, and children through my picture books. By embracing the virtues, we can grow closer to God and live happier lives. My life’s focus now is to bring the virtues to the forefront of our lives and share them with others.
I sense joining the church Jesus founded is like joining a country club. Jesus gives us a free paid-up membership card, which He paid for by His death and resurrection. As we use the sacramental gifts, our lives radiate the fruits I listed from Galatians 5:22: love, joy, peace, patient endurance, kindness, generosity, faith, mildness and chastity or self-control, according to our life’s mission. These are a result of living a higher spiritual life more connected to God. The Holy Spirit “melts us, molds us, fills us and uses us” to help others.
I attended Mass with my family every week while being secretly bitter about being there. I would help in the Church where I could try to convince myself that this was where I needed to be. The biggest area of conflict for me was the Marian Dogmas and specifically the Assumption. I wrote against it, did podcasts decrying it, and said it was pagan. I read many books about it, except Catholic ones. One day on my Nook, an ad for the book “Behold Your Mother” by Tim Staples came up. I was intrigued. I bought it for the purpose of destroying it on the blogosphere.
What does Jesus continue to do all over the world each day? He changes a little bread and wine, as our daily best food. It is full of God-power to equip us to go forth into the world bringing the love of Jesus to others. What about all of those people all over the world who are caring for coronavirus victims? Aren’t they all reaching out with the hands of Jesus to heal and comfort? Receive and go forth to help heal the suffering.
We have been created to find our fulfillment and peace only in knowing, loving and serving God. It is an unmistakable fact of experience that human beings will be restless and searching until they have surrendered their lives totally to God. We have been created with a God-shaped hole, or vacuum, in our hearts, which can only be filled by Him who created us. It simply won’t work to find true happiness and fulfillment in anything or anyone else. St. Augustine expressed it this way: “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You,” O God.
My second reason to write is to let you know how we came to accept Jesus in our hearts, and how He became a big part of our lives. Jesus led us into his light, away from the darkness of sin, and we became a new creation as some say, “born again,” and we learned a new way of living our lives. Looking back to the beginning of our spiritual life, Our Lord chose to use sadness to get the attention of Marjorie and me. Our son Anthony was our first child, born November 30, 1969, and died on October 18, 1978, from Leukemia. He died in five days. The doctors told us that the autopsy indicated that he would have suffered much in a couple of weeks since his appendix was close to giving a lot of trouble. To add sadness to our broken hearts, it was my birthday when he died. Three days later began the change of our life together. I understand in many situations like ours, people will pull away from God, thinking HOW can God do this to us, etc.