Testimony: Sharing Your Galilee Moment
By Gloria Castro
Featured in Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story: Tools, Tips, and Testimonies
“He said to them, ‘Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.’” (Mark 16:15)
We are called to share our testimony with others in our daily walk. Some of us have been called to tell our story at the ACTS retreat in thirty minutes, but I am not referring to those testimonies. I am referring to a five-minute encounter with a coworker, family member, neighbor, or someone you meet in your daily walk. As you grow in the Lord and experience changes in your life, people will notice. They may ask, “What it is that gives you that assurance that things are going to get better?” Or someone may say, “I would be so troubled if this or that happened in my life, but you seem to be at peace.” Times like this are ideal for sharing your faith story.
My faith journey began when I was a child. Our parents always made sure we went to church and Sunday School. I would now describe what happened when I was eighteen as a Galilee moment—that moment when I first met Jesus, as the Apostles did in Galilee. My neighbor, a Baptist minister, had me read the Sinner’s Prayer. The moment I prayed it, I felt something that I can hardly describe. Whatever it was, it gave me a hunger and thirst for what I felt at that moment. The only thing I can compare it to is when I hear of people experiencing cocaine for the first time. It is so amazing that they want to experience that same feeling of wholeness again and again, so they keep sniffing it to get that first experience again.
I have never forgotten the encounter I had with Christ that day. It was as if I had been told all my life about the Lord, but this day I knew I had experienced something so amazing and wonderful. He didn’t ask me to start going to church and stop living the way I was living. He just showed me, unconditional love, by giving me an assurance of peace that I had never felt before.
Life has a lot of ups and downs and distractions. So many times, we sense the Lord directing us as he did the disciples, to return to where we first responded to his call, to that Galilee moment when we first met Jesus and knew that he loves us.
Many times we can walk so strongly with the Lord and then find ourselves getting distracted with everyday issues. We realize that something is missing—the excitement of being in the Word is no longer there, our faith has dwindled, and problems are occurring. Then something will happen, and again we will remember that Galilee moment. My experience of returning to my Galilee moment relates to the story of the Samaritan woman:
The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah?” (John 4:28–29)
I couldn’t get over my past, the sin that I remembered often. Then a woman I didn’t know told me that the Lord wanted me to quit looking at the curtain behind me because there was nothing there. At first, I didn’t know what she meant. I asked the Lord to show me if this was from him, so I could receive it as from him. If not, then I asked him to help me forget about it.
The following Sunday during Mass I began to cry, because the understanding of what she had said came over me like a flash. The Lord sent this woman to tell me to quit looking back at the curtain so that I would know he had forgiven me in my Galilee moment.
This kind of personal sharing brings hope to others that can’t seem to let go of things concerning their past. It will draw them to want to experience a life filled with trust in the Lord in small and big areas of their lives.
Gloria Castro is a retired broadcasting software operator, ready to witness the love of God wherever she goes. God has blessed her and her husband Amado with two children and two grandchildren. She is on the ACTS Ministry leadership team and serves as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion and a lector. Her passion is witnessing to the love of God and praying with and for others.
