Excerpt: Your Catholic Faith Story Defined

Limpopo River, Mozambique by Cary Humphries (National Archives, public domain)

An excerpt from Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story: Tools, Tips, and Testimonies, Chapter One What Is a Faith Story? part 4 of 4 parts 

(Read Part 1 A River winds through your life. Part 2: Value of a Faith Story Part 3: Someone is waiting to hear your story.

To begin, let’s examine each word of “Your Catholic Faith Story” and see how each contributes something essential to this task of personal evangelization.

“Your” indicates a first-person account of the facts, experiences, and relationships in your life. You make it authentic, not fiction or fantasy nor anyone else’s story.

What if you were an identical twin, and the two of you were raised alike in dress, food, entertainment, and education? Suppose you both chose the same career, worked for the same company and even had a double wedding. You could write the book, My Life as a Twin, about your relationship with your twin and all your adventures together. But if your twin did the same, your two stories would not be identical. Each would be unique. You cannot tell anyone else’s story authentically, nor can anyone tells yours.

The “Faith” in your story focuses not on human relationships but on your relationship with God. Your faith story is a record of God’s work in your life to fashion you into the Christian he meant for you to be, in the environment where he placed you. And yet, the essence of our relationship with God often comes clear when we examine personal experiences and relationships that have occurred in our lives, even from our earliest childhood. These are the canals and tributaries of our youth that flowed together to shape our belief in God.

“My Life as a Christian” starts with the first twenty years, when my family situation provided the environment in which I could commit my life to Jesus as a teenager, feel the tug toward ministry, and learn to rely on Jesus in times of need. I could tell you stories about my Christian grandmother and mother and never mention their faithfulness to their church, or mention my summer job at our Protestant church or my father’s death or the Catholic I fell in love with in college. But if I failed to point out how these influenced my life of faith, I would not be telling you my authentic faith story. To do that, I must dig deep into my feelings and decisions in response to what God as doing in my life. I must focus, not on what I was doing but what God was doing during those early years of my life.

The “Catholic” in your faith story adds another essential ingredient, creating a first-person account of the facts, experiences, and relationships in your life, centered on your intimate friendship with God the Father and Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit and lived out in the Catholic faith, the Catholic Church. Whether your faith started in the Catholic Church or eventually led you there, God has brought you to the Church to make you not just a Christian, but a Catholic Christian. This Divine action runs through your life like a living river that bears testimony to God’s transformative activity in your life. He did not make you a Catholic by chance. If this part of your story is written only on your heart at this point, the Holy Spirit has the power to reveal it, to give you spiritual gifts to understand and express it, and to prompt you to evangelize others by declaring it.

My own “Catholic Faith Story” might begin, “The only way God could get me into the Catholic Church was for me to fall in love with a Catholic.” My childhood environment and relationships are important in the backstory, but it was my love for my husband, Phil, that proved instrumental in making me a Catholic. However, as fulfilling as my love relationship with my husband is, that is not “My Catholic Faith Story.” Phil will tell you that he is number two in my life, right after Jesus, who is my number one. Being a Catholic has given me vast opportunities to know God and to serve him as my story has unfolded. Since my conversion, my Catholic faith has guided my life and my story as God continues to lead me into a deeper relationship with himself and with others.

Faith stories, then, recount significant events, circumstances, or trials resolved with supernatural solutions. They include stories about:

• Conversion from a non-Catholic tradition, a non-Christian faith, or even no faith at all.
• Return to, or renewed faith within, the Catholic Church of our childhood.
• A call to a religious vocation.
• Spiritual turning points that lead us into deeper faith in God.
• Physical or emotional healings from supernatural means.
• Miracles that God works in our lives.
• Answered prayers that seemed impossible or were resolved supernaturally.

Now that we understand what “your Catholic faith story” entails, let’s delve into why we share it.

Link to What’s Is a Faith Story? series

© 2019 Nancy HC Ward

Read more about how you can evangelize through your personal story in Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story: Tools, Tips, and Testimonies, by Nancy HC Ward, available on Amazon.com