Jesus Saves!

"We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world." - 1 John 4:13-14

What an incredible witness to share with others the amazing things God has done in our lives and His saving power! Our friend Jen King who went through ChristLife's Discovering Christ and Following Christ courses, has a powerful story of the Lord saving her and drastically changing her life! It is such a privilege to know Jen and her story is such an inspiration to me!
To listen to her testimony click here or press play below:

Discovering Christ Session 2

"Draw near to God and he will draw near to you." James 4:8

God makes this promise to us, and if we take that first step and seek Him, He will give us all we need. Last night we had the second Discovering Christ course at OLPH. Dave Nodar gave a talk about the person of Jesus Christ and who He is in our lives. He opened up scripture and gave examples of the many signs and wonders Jesus worked and how his disciples and followers were so amazed that they were continuously exclaiming, "who is this man!" That is the very question that everyone in my small group was asking themselves last night, who is Jesus Christ in my life? It's a question worth pondering.
One point Dave Nodar made that really hit home for me was that our faith is about a personal relationship with Christ much more than belief in some doctrine. We must first ask ourselves the same question that Jesus asked his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" (Matthew 16:15-17), then doctrine and everything else can follow.

Please continue to pray for every person that attends this course that we may all accept Jesus into our hearts and lives and believe with our whole being that He is our Lord!

Discovering Christ Session 1

“It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.”
- St Paul to the Ephesians 1: 11-12, The Message translation

We began the Discovering Christ course at Our Lady of Perpetual Help last night, April 2nd. Father Erik Arnold, the Pastor at OLPH, gave a talk on the meaning of life and how there's a reason why were are here. He sent out a letter to the leaders of the course to sum it up and invite prayers. The letter is below:

Dear Discovering Christ team, Thank you for making our first night such a great success! The evening flowed well, the food was great, the small group leaders did a great job, the set-up created a wonderful atmosphere, and, above all, I know that much prayer went into the night. Thank you! I believe so deeply in what we are doing and I am grateful to the Lord that you share the same desire to help others experience the Lord in a life-changing way that will also bring about renewal in our parish and Church. Next week Dave Nodar will offer the teaching as we look at the question "Why does Jesus matter?" Please continue to pray, asking the Lord to open hearts to conversion. Thank you again for your hard work and dedication! You are in my prayers
In Christ,
Fr. Arnold

All in all I'd say it was a great night - good food, songs, fellowship with our small groups, and a profound teaching! During the small group discussion the Associate Pastor, Fr. Larry Adamczyk, went to the Church and prayed for each of the leaders by name. Prayers are definitely the power behind this course, please keep us in your prayers!

Getting ready to evangelize at OLPH!

Things are stirring at Our Lady of Perpetual Help these days! A team of 20-30 adults are readying for a new evangelization initiative ChristLife is sponsoring - Discovering Christ.

We met together as a service team for prayer, worship, planning, etc. this past Saturday. The day went quite well. After mass and some super breakfast food - Dave Nodar began the day with a talk on evangelization and Discovering Christ. Quoting from Pope Paul VI, we all joined Dave in reading from On Evangelization in the Modern World,

"The churches have the task of transposing the gospel message, without the slightest betrayal of its essential truth, into the language of the people... It loses much of its effectiveness if it does not use their language, their signs, their symbols, if it does not answer the questions they ask and impact their concrete lives."

This was one of the main points I pulled out of the day. We need on one hand to "transpose" the authentic Gospel and on the other - we need to speak in the language of the people and aim at impacting people's "concrete lives." To borrow the title of a fellow evangelization ministry's blog name, we need to engage in intentional discipleship - and especially in intentional evangelization. Looking at the Gospels, we can see that osmosis is not how Jesus made disciples or converts.

Moving on throughout the day I was struck by the parallel between our training day at OLPH and Acts 2:42,

"And the disciples devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers."

apostles' teaching = Dave's exegesis of Scripture and Church teaching on evangelization
fellowship = during our delicious pizza meal provided by Larry (see below)
breaking of bread [eucharist] = started the day with mass
prayers = all throughout the day we had times of praise and intercession

So, all in all - it was a wonderful day. One more thing I forgot to mention was - the fact we were joined by Dianne Martin, former staff member, who is now the Catholic coordinator for Alpha USA. She gave an excellent presentation on small group pastoral care. It was wonderful having her with us.

Please pray for Discovering Christ at OLPH and visit their Web site for more information about being a part of the course.

The Lord's strategy

We are now moving forward with Discovering Christ on several fronts now. Exciting stuff!

What's our strategy? Well, I hope the Lord's. During morning praise & prayer at ChristLife last week I shared a Scripture I was reminded of-

"Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, "Children, have you any fish?" They answered him, "No." He said to them, "Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some." So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, for the quantity of fish." John 21:4-6

The lesson I took from this "word" is that we could "fish" all day long and not get anything - unless we are in tune with the right way of doing things - with Jesus Christ.

Back to Discovering Christ...

We want to make available the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all humanity. And we want to equip Catholic communities to enthusiastically and intentionally do this.

So we are now praying for God's anointing to rest upon the Discovering Christ course. We also - following up from our meeting with Archbishop O'Brien - are focusing our efforts here in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Part of the strategy is to hopefully see great fruitfulness here locally and then leverage this to others across the nation.

Where locally? Well, we've done the course at Crucifixion Parish, St. Agnes (for young adults), UMBC campus ministry (Newman club), and now we are preparing to get started at Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH). And, we are really excited about doing it at OLPH! Our Board member, Fr. Erik Arnold, is the pastor here and has a really solid vision for parish renewal and evangelization. Plus, my friend Erin, is the youth minister and has been doing some awesome stuff with the youth there! Our Lady pray for us!

At the national level - we are working with two other Board Members - Bert Ghezzi and Michael Timmis. Bert, a senior editor for the Word Among Us, is helping us put together a manual - so we can make Discovering Christ exportable - in a similar fashion as Life in the Spirit. Michael, who is connected with a lay apostolate who does some great work - Regnum Christi - hopes to run a version of Discovering Christ down in Florida for men in his pseudo-theology on tap series (or he might call it beer n' bible - "stealing" the name I used for a bible study I did in Baltimore at J. Patrick's pub).

So, we are excited about all of this, please pray for us and if you have any comments, suggestions, connections, etc. - please let us know! It may be all a part of the Lord's strategy.

"Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts." Zechariah 4:6

Many have never had the chance to know Christ

Dave's blog account isn't posting - so here are his latest thoughts...

“Sometimes Catholics have lost or never had the chance to experience Christ personally, not as a mere value, or paradigm, but as the living Lord, the way the truth and the life.”
- Pope John Paul II, address to US Bishops


Recently I attended a meeting (non-religious in nature) at which a woman shared how she had been raised as a Catholic, gone to Catholic schools, and yet had never come to know God personally until she had been an adult for many years. And, she went on, it was not in the Catholic Church that she learned about this loving relationship that brought her great peace and change of life. I have heard similar stories hundreds of times over the years.

This weekend I participated in one of our Discovering Christ retreats for young adults. It was a wonderful time in which there is time for prayer, teaching, fun, laughter, fellowship and explicit opportunity to ask Jesus to be the priority of their lives - the Lord and Savior of all they are. Additionally it was a time when people could ask Jesus to baptize them in the Holy Spirit. See Luke 3:16. (In theological terms, the participants were praying for renewal of the grace of the sacraments of initiation ). It was wonderful to be there and witness the work of grace among us!

Now here is the point I would like to make, many Catholics in and outside of our parishes, have never had the chance to have a personal relationship with Jesus. Many have never even been told that this was a possibility. They need to hear clearly proclaimed the person of the Jesus Christ, and the explicit invitation to personally encounter him as Lord of their lives. And they need to be told how to do this. We as Catholics - clergy, religious and laity, who have been graced with knowledge of the Lord, must take up the commission of Christ (Matthew 28:18-20) to make him known, loved and followed.

The call of the Catholic Church presently to make evangelization, once again, the essential mission of the Church, in practice and not just in theory, calls for everyone of us to pray and to take action to help the many who do not personally know him to have the opportunity that Jesus made possible by his death and resurrection.

People are hungry for God. As Catholics we have been entrusted with a missionary mandate to tell them Who is the bread that will satisfy their hunger!

Father, use us we pray! Grant us courage to be fools for Christ, not ashamed to share the Good news with others who have the right to know. Grant us the power from on high to be witnesses to Jesus, in our lives and explicitly in our words. Grant our parishes and organizations fire to move and make available the means of helping others to know, Jesus is Lord! Amen.

What's happening at UMBC

While most college students are enjoying the last of their weekends, finishing up last minute homework, and getting ready for the start of a new week, 30 young adults are joining together Sunday nights at UMBC for fellowship, teaching, and prayer! That’s not something you see everyday.

ChristLife has joined forces with UMBC’s Newman club to start a 6-week course called “Discovering Christ”. The purpose of this course is simply to introduce or reaffirm in young adults the love of Christ and the impact of having a relationship with Him. The course consists of: dinner, fellowship, prayer, a teaching, dessert, and small group discussions. The themes of the courses include of variety of topics such as: “The meaning of Life”, or “Why do I need a savior?”. There are about 30 young adults that come each week, including a core group of 10 young adult leaders who help to facilitate the different aspects of the course.



The vision of this course can be summed up by the inspiring words of Pope Benedict XVI when he said:

"Those who allow themselves to be led by the Spirit understand that placing oneself at the service of the Gospel is not an optional extra, because they are aware of the urgency of transmitting this Good News to others...I assure you that the Spirit of Jesus today is inviting you young people to be bearers of the good news of Jesus to your contemporaries."
- Pope Benedict XVI, Papal Message for World Youth Day '08, July 24, 2007

The Pope does not give us the option; he makes very clear the necessity of sharing your faith with others. Hopefully through this course young people will enter into a relationship with the Lord and it will have a ripple effect as they pass it on to others.

As a participant in this course, I can testify to the impact that is has had on my life and the lives of many other young adults. This past week my small group discussion was about the love of God as our Father and how it is constant know matter what we do or how many times we fall. It was a tear filled conversation as we reflected on our own failings and the freedom that comes with surrendering them to the Lord. We ended the discussion each saying a brief prayer giving our individual burdens to the Lord and allowing His love to free us! It was a very powerful experience for me, and hopefully the rest of the group!

Happenings at ChristLife

Well, all sorts of good things are happening at ChristLife these days. Recently its just been two of us in the office, as one of our co-laborers in the vineyard of the Lord, is hanging out in the vineyards of Tuscany, Italy. Nice!

So what are we doing? First, we are worshiping everyday to draw close to Jesus and praying that we follow Him where He leads us to go (the picture is of our tiny little chapel in our office where we begin everyday).

Beyond that we are helping people know and follow Jesus through two courses: Discovering Christ and Following Christ. Right now we are hosting Discovering Christ for about 25 young adults at a local university (UMBC) and hosting a small Following Christ course - to follow-up our Discovering Christ Course at St. Agnes, for 10-15 young adults at ChristLife.

Discovering Christ takes its cue from a recent speech to the German bishops by Pope Benedict:

"We must reflect seriously on how we might carry out a true evangelization today, not just a new evangelization, but often a true first evangelization. People don't know God, they don't know Christ. A new paganism is present, and it is not enough just to maintain the community of believers, although this is very important. I believe that together we must find new ways of bringing the Gospel to today's world by preaching Christ anew and by establishing the faith."

Both courses run into mid- to late November. Please pray God continues doing great things among the young adults attending.

Finally, have a wonderful day! I'll close with a random inspirational verse from the Apostle for whom I'm named:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you... Without having seen him you love him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy. As the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls!" 1 Peter 1:3-4,8-9

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