The joy of conversion, Christian community, and the Catholic faith
Old Sally taught me that evangelization is not about me or how well I can convince those lonely souls on the fringes of the church that they need God, but about sharing what God has done in my life.
No one can refute the experience of my personal encounter with Christ! As for you, think of all the life lessons God has taught you through your God-moments!
Today’s Matthew 16:18 has two interpretations. One is that Peter is the rock on which the church of Jesus was built. The other is that Jesus, Himself is the Rock of our salvation. Peter is the “little rock” next to Jesus. He was obviously a stabilizing factor within the early church and today. The Catholic papacy has been something of the eye of almost every religious hurricane in the course of Christian controversy.
One of the first persons I talked to about my faith was struggling with a sibling relationship. My heart filled with compassion for her. God’s grace of compassion rose from within me as I remembered his miraculous healing of my similar struggle. His compassion overflowed into caring more for her than for my discomfort in sharing how God had given me the grace to forgive someone in my family. I didn’t hesitate when the Holy Spirit prompted me to pray with her and share how God had delivered me from an unforgiving heart and bitterness. I forgot I wasn’t in my comfort zone and spontaneously spoke from my heart. The experience was so freeing! It brought me so much joy! But I still didn’t wasn’t sure how to evangelize.
Featured on CatholicMom.com My journal entry continues describing one Sunday in 1988 on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Last month I wrote about Mass in Galilee, celebrated in Aramaic and Arabic, the closest language to that which Jesus spoke. After Mass at St. George Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Ibillin with Fr. Chacour, our lunch...
Featured on CatholicWritersGuild.com Did you know that when you were baptized, you were anointed to be an evangelist? Yes, you, I and every Christian are meant to bring others into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. How do we do that? There are as many ways as there are people to fulfill this commission from...
Wisdom 7:7-11; Ps 90:12-17; Hebrews 4:12-13; Mark 10:17-30 Holy Spirit, please fill us with more of your wisdom. Worldly wisdom according to "Webster’s New World Dictionary," #4 is "a wise plan or course of action." In business this leads to a successful, productive and comfortable life style. In Biblical times this kind of wisdom was...
The spirit of the family is the constitutional charter of the Church Vatican City, 7 October 2015 (VIS) – During the period of the Synod dedicated to “The vocation and the mission of the family in the Church and the contemporary world”, the catechesis of the Wednesday general audiences will focus on various aspects of...
Acts 12:1-11 Ps 34:2-9; 2 Timothy 4:6-9, 17-18; Matthew 16:13-19 We might logically ask, “Why are these men being celebrated on a Sunday after Easter, Pentecost, the Holy Trinity and the Body and Blood of Christ?” Jesus trained special men and women to continue his work of saving the human race. We call this model...