Communicating Faith

Okay, so the real focus of this blog is communicating our faith to others - especially the personal experience of our relationship with Jesus Christ. It's not easy, though, to just begin talking with people about Jesus. How many times have I wanted to talk with others explicitly about Jesus and his importance in my life and his redemption and all of that great stuff - but felt like I would offend the hearer?

Well, I have two helps for this. First, Chad, ChristLife's 06-07 intern, and I had an awesome podcast interview with an international speaker and evangelist, named Becky Pippert. The podcast is called Jesus is Irresistible - check it out - it directly addresses the above fears of being "offensive" and makes evangelism much easier!

Secondly, some friends of ChristLife, Greg and Jennifer Wilitz, who have a great podcast called Rosary Army and are also connected with the Catholic podcasting hub, SQPN - are producing periodic short video clips called That Catholic Show. Its funny, creative, faith-building, and inspirational. Here is there most recent clip on "Statues and Icons"



What does this have to do with this blog? Well, a lot. While we don't spend lots of time talking about statues and icons - we do spend a lot of time talking about faith and communicating it to others hopefully. What I love is the way Jennifer explains this aspect of our faith in an easy, light-hearted, and Christ-centered way!

Did you find the video helpful? Why? What can you learn from the way Jennifer communicates elements of faith?

An Open Door

An open door. Smiles. Cookies. Three things that shout "welcome" and the three things I was greeted with last night as I attended a bible study in my neighborhood. I've been pondering the virtue of hospitality, especially as Pete and I plan for Discovering Christ and was so blessed by my host's hospitality last night that I wanted to share with you.

If you are anything like me, hospitality isn't necessarily number one on your list of "Needs Improvement". People come over, you give them a seat, food, drink, smile, and listen - it is a social norm. But I have been learning that there is so much more to being hospitable than the basics and although you may be aware of everything you need to do, actually doing it with Christ's love is a whole different story and can draw someone to Christ’s heart.

If you look in the Old Testament and study Middle Eastern culture, you see how important hospitality was to them. It was normal for families to welcome a stranger into their home and only after giving them food, drink, and rest, ask the stranger's name. In Leviticus, God commands the Israelites to welcome the stranger, as they too had been strangers in Egypt. This hospitality is illustrated by people such as Lot who entertained angels, Abraham and Sarah who were hospitable to the three men, and in the New Testament we are told in Hebrews 13:2, "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it."

Last night my hosts mirrored this hospitality. When I arrived the door was wide open, I was immediately greeted and offered a seat and cookies that were surprisingly good despite being cooked with olive oil. But more than my basic needs were met as the evening progressed.

For those of you who don't know me, I can talk a lot. As a result of my mouth that "runneth over", I often try to hold back when I first meet people; but last night I felt so comfortable that I completely forgot. Halfway through one of my long ramblings, I looked around the room and realized that I was being listened to. Not just the polite, "oh she is new, let's be nice" listening; rather, it was a loving listening. It was small instances like these that really stood out to me. I have always been used to polite, nice people but have not often experienced true hospitality.

The example of my hosts was such an unexpected blessing and made me really reflect on how that alone can be a great tool of evangelization. People just want to be loved, and what better way than going a little bit beyond basic hospitality to truly loving and listening.

How does one discover Christ?

In the midst of Christlife's Discovering Christ for young adults at St. Agnes parish in Catonsville, I feel a fair question to ask is how does one come to encounter Christ? Many people go through these courses and some are influenced, while others are not. From my own limited experience of 22 years of existence, I have come to believe that one must seek humility if they are to see the truth of God's revelation in Christ. Fulton Sheen once said that Christ was born in a cave, because we must stoop in order to see him. This I believe is the great paradox of the Christian faith. It is only when we see ourselves as we truly are- broken, sinful, and evil, that we experience the liberation that Christ offers. Only when we are honest with ourselves do we find peace. And only when we are at peace with that often frightening truth do we come to life as we see that mercy is of far more importance to God than justice. That seems to be the starting point of loving God with all our hearts and our neighbor as ourselves. How this happens, I still have much more exploring and surrendering to do, but thus far it seems the true path.

The Meaning of Life

Wow, what a grandiose title! The Meaning of Life. Well, this was the title of the first talk of ChristLife's Discovering Christ course, which we kicked off last night for about 60 young adults (18-32) at St. Agnes, in Catonsville, MD.

Having experienced it at his parish, Fr. Erik Arnold, a ChristLife board member, sums up the course in our upcoming newsletter:

This new course is designed to bring men and women into an encounter with Christ and the Church through teaching, fellowship and prayer together. Over the course of six weeks participants hear solid teaching that proclaims the heart of the Gospel message, inviting them to reflect and respond in a small group of friends that offers support and encouragement over the six weeks. Each evening begins with dinner together, followed by a teaching and then a chance to meet together in small groups. While the dynamic seems simple, something special begins to happen over the course of the six weeks as hearts begin to open, friendships develop and people begin to see and experience Jesus in a different way than they had before.

--

Back to the meaning of life. I was reading the Intentional Disciples blog today and in it the blogger speaks about how atheistic / agnostic the Northwest is - especially Seattle. She gives an excerpt from an unbeliever journalist writing in The Stranger-

Last week, 850 people packed Town Hall to hear a presentation by Christopher Hitchens, in town to promote his new book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, which was number one on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. Hitchens's stance in favor of war in Iraq has made him a polarizing figure among your standard-issue Seattle lefty crowd, but Town Hall was bursting with people ready to embrace the message that religion is a "Bronze Age myth."

"This stuff," Hitchens said, referring to religion, "is not to be believed." And the crowd roared.

Hitchens's argument—posed to a fully complicit choir, admittedly—was made all the more compelling because no one answered the call to debate the author about the existence of a god or the validity of religion. Seattle could not produce one radical Fundamentalist, sober moderate, or disinterested scholar to stand for the holy side. That's telling (we're the only city that has failed to meet Hitchens's challenge to debate all comers), but it's not what made the event resonate.

That is sad. I guess part of me would love to go visit this guy's little atheist rallies - to offer a challenge - but I realized that "God" is not a subject to be disproved or proved. We cannot put the first cause, the Creator, the Good, the supernatural, to the test under our natural laboratory conditions - any more than we can prove or disprove the existence of "love" - unless we look at what surrounds it.

Love is one of the most powerful principles in all of humanity. If we don't live to love others and to receive love - we are less than human - as John Paul II reminded us. And as 1 John tells us - God is love!

And He is so beyond the "tests" we put him under. Last night I read the Gospel where the Pharisees come to Jesus and ask, "Teacher, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?" And Jesus "aware of their malice" responds, "Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? ... And he said to them "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard it, the marveled; and they left him and went away (Matt 22).

Jesus' logic was so beyond them. It reminds of something CS Lewis said (and I paraphrase) - the questions we ask God are so limited in view of his super-rationality - that often our questions, or prayers are like asking God "is a square, orange or red?" What!? Exactly - it makes no sense. And the Pharisees of today - come to put the King of Kings to the test and they miss the whole point.

God is real to me in a myriad of ways- in the laugh of a little child, in the wonder of nature that surrounds me, in the dedicated witness of Christians who live for the sake of selfless love, in the beauty of the message and coming of Jesus, in the consecration of the body and blood of Christ, in the sacrament of God's love and reconciliation, in the hundreds of saints and biblical characters that lived their lives in extraordinary ways, and in my conscience.

"For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died." (1 Cor 5:14)

Father, Creator of the whole world, Jesus, Word of life, and Spirit, Giver of Life - convince us even further of this love - and help our lives to be a continual offering of love for this broken world. Amen

Jesus of Nazareth

Well I have begun to read the Pope's new book "Jesus of Nazareth." The book came out in English on my birthday, May 15 - and so two different sets of people decided to both get me the book (so I had two given to me ... but one is being re-gifted to someone else).

Anyway, I've only read the first chapter - but I have found it thus far a very good read. My main point in blogging is to point out the whole theme of the book, which the Pope lays out in the introduction-

“This book is… my personal search ‘for the face of the Lord.’"

And in sharing his personal search with us - beyond just dry doctrine etc. - he is really evangelizing. And it reminded me that - beyond all my own knowledge of Catholic stuff and biblical stuff - all of that is secondary to my own "personal search" and "personal experience" of the truths of our faith (see the quote from Pope Paul VI at the top of the blog).

This doesn't come natural to us Catholics a lot of times; however, thanks to the good work of Dave and Dianne here at ChristLife, we have some resources to help us to articulate our faith to others in a more personal way. For more on this, see our course Sharing Christ.

And Action!

I don't know about you but I don't get the opportunity to be in movies very often, so when I had the chance to go to Philly to be an extra in a new movie called Our Lady of Victory I was pretty excited. Although doing "extra" work was not everything I ever hoped and dreamed of, it was a pretty good time. In addition to spending hours waiting to go on set and then hours on set being really quiet and doing the same thing over and over, I had the opportunity to talk about Jesus! Now, it wasn't anything amazing – no mass conversions or anything - but just talking about faith a couple times reminded me of how simple sharing Christ can be.
The first opportunity I had was while on a bus on the way to the set. It was about a 10 min. ride but I had to sit with a stranger. Of course we went through the normal introductions listing who, what, where, ect. and eventually we got into where we work. She is married and does "extra" work a good amount and I introduced myself as a summer intern at ChristLife: a Catholic ministry of Evangelization. From then we continued on, chatting about faith here and there and discussing the importance of knowing Christ as your personal Savior and then sharing your faith. This little chat got me excited for the rest of the day as I looked for more opportunities to share Christ's love.
To my surprise and joy the scene we were shooting was in a Catholic Church. So, sitting quietly for 4 hours on hard wooden pews was a task my body was all too well trained for and of course the setting lent itself to an easy discussion of faith. During the scene the "priest" read from 1 Peter making sure to emphasize the verse “wives submit to your husbands” and that women are the weaker sex and then, according to the script, the priest was to go on giving a very sexist homily. During a short scene break I turned to a girl near me and we discussed the verse from 1 Peter. We shook our heads sadly at the movie's misuse of the verse, recognizing important parts that were dropped and I summarized Ephesians 5:25, 28 which says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” The other women near us overheard our conversation and began chatting on their own about the movie’s misrepresentation of the Catholic Church and the Mass in various ways.
After a few similar conversations I inwardly rejoiced in the Lord for having the chance to talk about faith in an easy casual way. Hopefully I’ll continue to take advantage of the little ways I can share Christ’s love daily on set and off.

Apostles of youth

In the crazy busyness of work lately - I've had little chance to blog. But I'm back.

You may know this, but the Pope was in Brazil earlier in May and had a lot of good things to say to the bishops and the laity in Latin America.

When he was addressing the youth on May 10, 2007 in Brazil he commissioned them, saying-


“I send you out, therefore, on the great mission of evangelizing young men and women who have gone astray in this world like sheep without a shepherd. Be apostles of youth. Invite them to walk with you, to have the same experience of faith, hope, and love; to encounter Jesus so that they may feel truly loved, accepted, able to realize their full potential.”

I really like that statement by our Holy Father Pope Benedict. Whoop!

Holy Spirit, in this season of Pentecost, make us "apostles of youth;" help us to invite others to encounter the most wonderful person that ever lived - Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen!

One way we are using at ChristLife to help "youth" encounter Jesus - is a course for young adults on the basic message of salvation and Jesus (kerygma) called Discovering Christ - we will be doing it at a local parish for young adults (18-32) - whom I think the Pope would lump in as "youth" - since he's like 80.

What are some ways the Lord uses you as "apostles of youth"?