The joy of conversion, Christian community, and the Catholic faith
Let us grow deeper in faith, hope and love from this day forward. Let us really repent of our past sins and not following Jesus. Let us spend more time each day closer to Jesus in our prayer, wanting to be closer to Him. He will heal us and fill us with all the grace and power we need to bring His good news to others.
Nancy Ward details how gratitude helps us keep hope alive, even in the most difficult times. It is not joy that makes us grateful, it is gratitude that makes us joyful. (Benedictine Brother David Steindl-Rast) We know that the Covid-19 quarantine will come to an end without returning us to our former status but with...
To turn our God-light on, we need to plug our lamp cord into God’s power socket, our baptism. Then we can turn on the Jesus-light inside of us. Knowing and loving Jesus empowers us to radiate His light and love to others. To keep our lights on we need to repent of all our past sins and beg God for His mercy and love.
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 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.
St. John shows us the major works of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus told the disciples about at the Last Supper. The Holy Spirit teaches us God’s truths about life. He reminds us of what Jesus did and said. He witnesses to what comes from God or from the devils. And the Holy Spirit guides us through our lives so we can help God make the world a better place to live in and ultimately at the end of our life get to heaven.
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.