Journey Home - 2018-07-16 - Margaret And David Bereit

[Music] good evening and welcome to the journey home by Marcus Grodi your host for this program I'm excited about our program tonight for a couple reasons besides the fact that we are going to as we do every week here how the holy spirit has moved someone's heart and mind to awaken to the Catholic Church we also have a guest tonight that's a very visible person in Christian world very active some of you may know of him and his work which in that sense can make it difficult for the journey itself and in some ways that's what the coming on networks all about health especially men and women who are in ministry face the issues of do I become Catholic well we have a we have a guest that face that tonight Margaret and David be right Margaret as a lifelong Catholic she was married to this former Presbyterian and he is the founder cofounders our founder I would founder founder of 40 Days for Life and if you haven't heard about 40 Days for Life you can go to 40 that's the number 40 Days for Life com to find out more about what David and Margaret have been involved with for a long time and I remember when I first met you and first heard you speak even locally here that the discussion wasn't about the Catholic Church bring it up but I wasn't even sure whether it was appropriate to bring it up at the time but first of all welcome thank you in the chair is in front of the desk to hear ya exciting story who wants to start Wow okay first off I just want to say Marcus thank you for the invitation to be a part of this you have no idea how much this show and the coming home network has meant to me and so many others who in the midst of our journey we're looking for examples of other people we could relate to and so thank you for the inspiration that you and so many others have provided for us my journey began from the moment of birth I was born into a wonderful Christian family and when I was born my dad was a Presbyterian minister Presbyterian Church USA he actually as an infant baptized me and then shortly thereafter left the ministry so I don't know if it was my fault or not realize it was not his calling he gave up everything he had to give you that grace that's all you'd left so I grew up in a wonderful home my parents loved each other they loved the Lord we went to church every Sunday and I had an amazing upbringing and I loved going to church as a family my faith was not at that point really my own for my early childhood but I was relying upon the example of two parents who loved the Lord and who shared their faith with us and I'll never forget in fourth grade and we had a summer kind of Vacation Bible School program and my Bible school teacher that summer her name was mrs. Kerr and we were sitting in the gym after one of the little programs and she told us about the importance of us inviting Christ into our own heart and that was the first time I ever remember asking Christ to come into my own heart and that was the beginning of making my faith my own in fourth grade but still didn't really live it out fully so went through high school I was gonna say don't interrupt but you remind me of it's sometimes hard for pastors to do that with their kids you know what I mean piqué absolutely somebody else to call you to surrender to Jesus Christ and wasn't your dad didn't want to do that but it sometimes it's just not as easy right to do it with you right and I would say my dad and my mom both were instrumental in forming my early faith and so that created the receptivity so that when mrs. Kerr made that invitation I was willing to do it on my own so my parents lived through example and certainly through words as well but that was where the invitation really connected with me so went through graduated from high school and the real test was when we moved at that point I grew up in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania my dad got transferred to Dallas with this company and he was working for and so I suddenly realized I can't afford to go to school in Pennsylvania I'd be an out-of-state student in my home state and I made the decision because at the time I wanted to be a veterinarian to go to Texas A&M and it's a school in Central Texas and sight unseen I made the decision to go there and all of a sudden is I'm leaving my home and all that formation my parents have given me I have to make a decision going off to college when they dropped me off will my faith be my own and will I continue to live the out and by the grace of God I made the step to get involved in a presbyterian church there in that community I had a few other people from the area of Dallas that we lived in who were involved in that church and so that was when I began to consciously make the effort and every Sunday would go to church but during that time I started to become a little disillusioned with some of the things in the denominational body and they were individual church congregations that I respected tremendously but the denomination was grappling with issues that you and I have have experienced everything here I was a pastor of that denomination and I was thinking as you were saying that just because you chose to go to a Presbyterian Church didn't necessarily mean it was a church that was proclaiming a gospel of Jesus Christ I mean I hate to say that but that's the reality of the breadth of that particular denomination and there were even times where parts of the denominational body were co-sponsoring abortion marches in Washington DC they were questioning whether or not cohabitation was acceptable within the church and then you know every year when the Senate would meet they would have these debates and I just thought this is foundational biblical teaching that they're just wavering on as a denominational body new members of ppl now we were not I was a strange pro-life yeah as my wife Meryl and I were very much involved with that when I was a pastor because we were fighting the battle as a denomination was just going farther and farther left yeah it's very sad but you know really what began to kind of crack my rose-colored glasses about the Presbyterian Church and again there are many good people my dad is still very involved in the Presbyterian Church and loves his congregation where he attends but when I found out that my pastor at my college Church he and his wife were the ones who raised the initial seed money to bring Planned Parenthood's abortion facility to town and that was when I just said even though I was not really formed on the pro-life teaching that I would come to understand later I just said that's fundamentally wrong and that violates everything I understood about the teaching of life in the womb as created by God so at that point I started to wander a little bit and look for other places and I got involved with evangelical ministries at the Texas A&M campus and in the Bible Belt there were plenty of those to get involved in but all throughout this time I was getting more involved in student activities and everybody was getting in rounds in the Student Activities was telling me about the Catholic campus ministry at Texas A&M called st. Mary's and I was always like it sounds like something really amazing is happening there and I had some misconceptions about Catholicism but not real hardcore criticisms or cynicism and so I always thought maybe one day I should check that out so then I meet this amazing young college student this beautiful girl prettiest girl I've ever seen in my life and here she is sitting next to me on the journey home today but Margaret I met through our shared involvement in student activities and we became attracted to one another very quickly and I asked her out on a first date and Margit maybe you could share a little bit about our first date together and some of the things we talked about and then what that led to is our second date yes our first date was too much before we go there two days to tell the story but yeah you know okay what do you bring to this spiritually yes so um I was born in Corpus Christi at Corpus Christi Texas in 1967 and you know the meaning of the name of the city yes the body of Christ yes it is a very special place and my parents are amazing they are they beautiful Catholics my dad's the oldest of eight children he's since passed away and my mom's oldest is seven and we went to st. Patrick's Catholic Church and that was our life we we went to school there my sisters either three of us three girls went to school the whole time their elementary middle school we went to Mass every Sunday very involved in the parish life I mean our whole family life centered around st. Patrick's and that was key in my formation as a Catholic I'm so grateful for my parents we also were very involved in the pro-life movement so so I remember I was a typical teenager in high school and we had in Corpus Christi we would go and pray outside pray the rosary outside the bortion clinic there and my parents would wake us up at like 6:00 a.m. and as a teenager on a Saturday morning Saturday morning I didn't want to do that did that and I'm so grateful for their example and we did that all through high schools so I brought that with me and I brought that conviction that pro-life conviction with me to Texas A&M and so then the other thing is everyone around me my whole life growing up was Catholic really I mean I don't think I had a single Protestant like teenage friend or anything I think we had one friend what the Carpenters some very close friends that were Protestant was there amazing but really everyone in my life was Catholic so then I go to Texas A&M and I meet this amazing man who we were both very involved in student government and student activities and just really knew I wanted to just form a friendship with him and really get to know him as a person so we went our first date was to the grapevine restaurant for lunch and it was very nice and we had a great conversation and I just started sharing with him about my faith and when I went to st. Mary's he's like oh I've heard great things about st. Mary's I said oh it's so wonderful and I told him I said well I'm on Sunday I wanted mass do you want to come with me and he said so we did we sat in the front row remembered the front row I do that's hard for a non Catholic you see the front row watch the saving grace there was my Boy Scout Troop growing up in Pittsburgh was sponsored by a Catholic parish so I had been every Scout Sunday once a year to Mass so I knew there was on and he'll stand kneel stand I just didn't know where and when so I would just look to Margaret the entire time for cues on that so the funny thing is I called my parents and they were in Corpus Christi we were in College Station I called him and I talked to my dad and I said dad I met the greatest guy and I went on on about David he goes is he Catholic and I said I said no and there's this long pause together into the phone and I said dad you're gonna love him and yes he did sure enough when we went to Corpus to visit I really I always say this I think it's really true though that my parents fell in love and david they'll i think they liked him better than they liked me well from the second date going to mass together and this is kind of an interesting note we went to Mass together every week from then yeah until this very day yes so for twenty-eight years before I came into the church I was attending Sunday Mass with Margaret so during our dating I was still involved with an evangelical church as well and so I would go on Sunday to Mass and also to the evangelical church and then even during our time of engagement in marriage we would both go to both churches every single weekend and it was just important to us so we we dated for two years before and during this time I had moved to Dallas and Margaret still had a year left at Texas A&M so we dated a long distance for a year and that was a real test of the strength of our relationship yes so you would I she didn't have a car so who got to do all the driving back at forty three hours down and three hours back it was make yeah and it was well worth the trouble to do that but in the midst of that year also we had a real test on a relationship because my mom came down with cancer and ultimately she died during that year and that was the timeframe during which our relationship grew so much because we went through that trial together and it really strengthen our faith and our relationship to where we said if we can work through this together than by the grace of God we can work through just about anything together and so after that was when we really kind of knew this is the relationship that God has prepared for us for a lifetime so after two years of dating we got engaged and that was an interesting process because then we had to navigate how will the wedding transpire what will this look like so we went with you were you at all interested to make a transition not at this point so there's nothing within you drawing you to even consider the reality of it one thing to see there's truth in here but the mandate to I I struggled with in fact at that point still during our engagement time my initial thought was one day I'll show her the truth hahaha and that was one of my mindset but then over time I started to realize Margaret's faith was so incredibly important to her and how dare I look at it and try to attack it and find fault and instead I wanted to understand it because I loved her and so as I began to shift from trying to find fault to trying to understand it changed everything for me so I began to learn and I began to say oh that makes sense or well that I still have questions about but it went from a kind of hostility to and a willingness to to seek to understand so even as we're going through engagement we were blessed to have a Presbyterian pastor and a Catholic priest help with the marriage preparation and we had a mass in the Presbyterian pastor did a second homily at the at the mass we would invite it's a very human but the marriage preparation time for us was enormous ly beneficial because we had the focus and prepare we had the we went on a engaged encounter weekend we had a sponsor couple and we were attending a parish in Dallas st. Rita's parish and the Presbyterian pastor pretty much said any questions what can I help you with and that was the marriage formation but the Catholic Church takes so seriously the sacrament of matrimony that there was this investment of time and energy to help us understand not only church teaching but the church wants us to succeed in this gift of matrimony our guests are Margaret didn't David be right did you have to promise Margaret did I did not so you would explain that well you mean as far as the children yes okay so when when we were talking about getting married and talking about children David was he was saying I just I don't know like I don't know what I think I know you know about them being baptized and as Catholics and my heart I'm like and so I had to do a lot I did a lot of praying and I remember one time I was a student at st. at Texas A&M but I went over to st. Mary's Church and it was in the middle of the day there was no one there and I just sat there and I was just praying and praying to our Lord and I'll never forget this because I was Lord you know what do I do here I mean do I continue with this relationship like this is my faith is so important to me and that my children Catholic and I'll never forget this this priest came and he kind of just slightly tapping on the shoulder and he gave me this holy card and he said and I know I've never seen this priests never this was the first I've seen and I have never seen him to this day ever before I guess he was a visiting priest at st. Mary's but he hands me this white card and he says I just want you to know that God has a plan and everything is gonna work out and I said there and he walks out of the church and never seen him since that day and I just sat there and I was just shaking and I was crying and I just took that as the Lord going it's gonna be okay just trust me just walk through this this is right you know it's beautiful so I said okay Lord and um so we did you want to well we began our marriage and one of the things was interesting Marcus is if we had had children when we wanted to have children we would not have been prepared because I still was hardened against that and feeling like uh it seems like the church is trying to force its will on us and even though a priest had told us he said David I hope you would be as inclined to share your faith in Europe bringing with your children as well but I still had that kind of resentment but God graced us and this is going to sound very strange with several years of infertility and during that time as we were struggling realizing what we wanted is not the same timing that God wanted as we were struggling through that that time God used to grow me and to help me be prepared for it and so during that time we met one of our priests it when we moved back to College Station named father Dean Wilhelm a dear friend so I was at daily Mass and he father Dean was a pretty new priest we were all very young we're all about the same age and I was leaving daily mess and he was shaking everyone's hand and I said hi father Dean and he said he said winner you can invite me over your house for dinner we'd love to have you over and he came over soon after that and that started a very close friendship with him to this day we're gonna see him in Texas soon and so so then father Dean threw that invitation he invited us to start to get involved with the pair tharon he knew I was not Catholic but invited us to get involved and particularly introduced us to a couple named Vincent Judy who ran a lot of the marriage preparation a relationship instruction because it was a campus ministry parish and they were preparing about 150 to 200 couples a year for marriage so through father Dean and Vincent Judy we were invited to give initially a talk to college students about relationships and marriage and then eventually we were asked to help out with marriage preparation and so I had to really get myself up to speed and I by this point was understanding the Church's teaching on marriage and family and was really in complete agreement with that with one exception just because of ignorance was the Church's teaching on contraception so we go to this marriage preparation the first workshop were going to help with and to back up during our marriage preparation that was completely glazed over they skipped it they just said if you want to learn about this call this 800 number regrettably but we had never been formed in an understanding of that but at this pre-cana workshop Rainie McCaslin who at the time was the diocese of austin's NFP instructor shared a presentation and it was the most compelling presentation about the church's teaching and about the beauty and value of natural family planning and particularly for our situation he talked about how it could be used to help achieve a pregnancy which in our infertility we were looking for we were really blown away by this I mean we had never heard this before and so yes and for us it was so important because we could not have children so we started to use the crate model of natural family playing to achieve pregnancy and praise God after several years we were able to achieve and through the help of doctors yes we went up to Omaha Nebraska had surgery there and he was just incredible love that man very holy man his whole staff so then and again it was God's timing and David was so good because it was such a cross for both of us but I think particularly for me being a woman and all my friends were pregnant I was giving everyone baby showers and not being able to have a child so but David had so much wisdom because he said you know Margaret if we wanted to have this baby on our terms our time I been ready for her to be baptized Catholic but because in God's infinite wisdom as a timing I'm I'm ready I'm excited for her to be baptized as a Catholic something struck me as you're just telling this is that I think a lot of people assume Catholics know all this stuff but is an awful lot of Catholics said get go through dating and get married and just for whatever reason they didn't learn great stuff there's a lot of work we've gotten there is there really yeah well it was through that also that experience with infertility that really helped us to understand is we're seeing the pattern of the Church's teaching on marriage and family we also particularly may Margaret had grown up in this pro-life family it had never been on my radar growing up in the Presbyterian Church it was never mentioned from the pulpit my parents didn't discuss it they were pro-life but they never really brought it up in the home but starting to understand the Church's teaching on life during this time was really when it all began to come alive for us and at the same point Planned Parenthood announced they were going to build an abortion center in our town so everything came together at that critical moment like you were pro-life though before you met right I was what I would call passively pro-life I knew abortion was wrong and I mean I described it sound like you were leaning in that direction and that's what gets me I'm you know how does a presbyterian that has no formation as it grace was working in you to awaken you to this even before this was happening maybe my former pastor that had helped to raise money for Planned Parenthood the largest abortion provider in the country that started that rubbed me wrong even though I didn't have that strong formation there was a lot going on there but when the news broke that Planned Parenthood was opening an abortion center it's a college town 40-some thousand students at the time a young church secretary at st. Mary's the Catholic Center invited people a small group of people to get together at the parish to talk about what can we do in response to this can we stop this from happening and the local newspaper found out and they ran a story anti-abortion activists plan counter to Planned Parenthood and so it became a huge meeting and instead of a handful of people more than four hundred people came out that night and Margaret having been raised in this pro-life family that we go out and prance this meetings and I'm thinking no night Marcus and she wanted to sit right up front like we headed our first time going to Mass together I said no we gotta sit at the back so we can escape if it gets kind of crazy and we ended up navigating that to sit right about in the middle but that night as we sat in that church and hundreds of people were getting excited about what can we do and how can we try to stop this I remember thinking what can I do I'm just one person I have no knowledge no experience nothing to bring to bear to this but I really felt that God was saying I have some role for you for such a time as this and little did any of us know at the time so we began to take little baby steps getting involved to go out and pray at the site where Planned Parenthood was building that facility volunteering with the local organization that that young church secretary Lauren had set up getting asked to serve on the board of that organization and really over the next two years that unfortunately Planned Parenthood did open they did begin to perform abortions and we began to hear the terrible stories of women who'd been wounded children who died and it just seemed like after that initial surge of enthusiasm amongst many churches in our community it seemed to be really fading out and two and a half years in it really came to a point where we had a decision to make about what do we do and I was working as a pharmaceutical sales or the owner I was a drug dealer it was all just a big clarify for the record our daughter was young very very young and I was a postal teacher but once she was born I stayed home with her so we had one income so one day I was calling on doctors in a little town about 30 miles north of where we lived and my phone rang and it was Warren the young lady had started the pro-life group the Coalition for life and she said David Planned Parenthood aborted ten more children today and for whatever reason was June 26 2001 I'll never forget the date because that was the day that my heart finally broke and I realized I'm not doing everything I can do to try to stop this and without even thinking I just said Orrin maybe I'm supposed to just quit my job and do something to try to help with this and I was just talking out loud but there's a long pause on the phone and Lauren says well David why don't you do that I said oh no oh no now what do I have to do so I went home and I told Morgan thinking she's gonna completely talk me out of this you know we got a young child and all margarets not teaching anymore and Margaret said you know David to whom much is given much is required maybe you are supposed to do that and two weeks from that day I turned in my notice I left my job in the pharmaceutical industry and I took over that small little pro-life organization and that began our time so for those next few years it was doing everything we could and there were blessings and incredible wonderful moments about 75 80 % of the participation was Catholic Christian but we worked a lot with local Baptist churches a charismatic Methodist Church which was really interesting some of the Lutheran churches and it was really neat to see the different parts of the body coming together around the cause and we may not always see eye to eye on theology but we could stand arm-in-arm united in our commitment to speak up for those who could not speak for themselves and that began to gain momentum yes whole time God was really asking us to trust in him even more so when David took that job there I mean we got down Clair was little and we got down on our knees in our living room into said Lord your will be done and we know you're gonna take care of us spiritually financially emotionally but it was just a real just a new level of trust in him we also a good spiritual mentors in our life our pastor was then father Mike says now bishop mike says the diocese of san angelo and then father jane we talked about and then he was moved to another parish and then was brought in a young priest named father David chondral and now Bishop David Candela of the Diocese of Tulsa Oklahoma and so they were wonderful supports in the process of this and our children growing up in that environment of that campus ministry was on fire producing vocations the pro-life movement there were a lot of good things happening but it was sure it was moving I mean the Holy Spirit is alive and well now but you're still with both feet in the Protestant world still both vice world know there was an interesting thing happen here and if I can share this one moment some dear friends of ours who are Pentecostals came down to visit us from Dallas and they came to our house and I said we've got to have you sit down because we're going to share some bombshell news and you're gonna be stunned and I thought they're gonna tell us there we both thought that yeah and they sat us down they said we're coming into the Catholic Church and that was the most shocking words I could have ever heard of their mouth and we suddenly what happened and why and they said they pulled out a cassette tape and it was Scott Hans conversion story and they sure know what Scott's name on this program well you know what I mean my point is the Lord has used Scott's story so profoundly so many miles so that night we drove around town with that cassette tape popped in my car just listening to that whole conversion story and that was the first time I remember just kind of asking is there something to this and so all throughout this process we're finding more and more our parish home is st. Mary's where I feel more and more at home in the Catholic Church when I go out of town and travel I find myself gravitating to the Catholic Church and not any other Presbyterian or Evangelical Church but I still have a lot of hang-ups that I've got to work through but at this time you're not doing 40 days for life yet we're on the verge under where you're still just learning a local pro-life organization okay let's pause there that great time for a break Margaret and David be right or our guests and we'll come back in just a moment to pick up and find out about 40 days for life but also what was finally the thing that knocked down [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host and our guests tonight our Margaret and David be right markers lifelong Catholic David is kicking and screaming as still a presbyterian in our story he's the founder of 40 Days for Life which we'll hear about in a moment okay let's jump back in this way all right so I was involved in the pro-life movement I am married to this amazing Catholic were very involved in our Catholic parish doing marriage preparation and marriage enrichment and so forth and the pro-life movement kind of hit a wall in our community there were lots of people that had been involved and they just began to get tired they began to just wear down the abortion numbers were going up in our community and we reached a point of just utter frustration and out of desperation myself and three other people who worked at that little pro-life organization the Coalition for life one day just realized we need to pray and we need to ask God to show us what can we do here and shame on us for not having done that so much sooner but literally for now around a wooden table we prayed and just said God show us what you want us to do and during the hour there were the first thing that God put on our hearts was a time frame and it was the time frame of 40 days because when you read throughout scripture you see over and over again that's a very spiritual time frame a time frame that God uses to test faithfulness and a time frame he frequently uses to bring about transformation so he said we want transformation maybe our faithfulness is being tested here so let's do something for 40 days then the question was as we're praying what do we do there were three things that we felt led to do number one and most important was prayer and fasting prayer because with God all things are possible ending abortion on her own probably not possible but with God all things are but fasting which I had never done up to that point I was raised in a tradition that didn't emphasize fasting that married a Catholic every when she was teaching about it but realizing in Scripture we're told that some demons can only be driven out through prayer and fasting so we said perhaps we need to pray and fast number one number two was hold a peaceful 24-hour day prayer vigil in the public right-of-way outside of the Planned Parenthood not judging not yelling not condemning but simply praying and being available should the holy spirit want to use us where two or more gather awards and Amy's present myths we desperately knew his presence was needed outside of that place of hopelessness and then the third thing was community outreach taking a pro-life message door-to-door every way we possibly could in inviting people to get involved in praying and fasting peaceful vigil and in pro-life efforts so we finished that hour of prayer and we felt we had been given a clarion call of action but I was terrified I didn't want to do this this amazing Catholic who did this growing up and even haven't been involved in pro-life efforts this was more audacious than anything we'd ever taken on I didn't think we could succeed at it but when we realize children are losing their wives every week in our community and women are being wounded we have to do everything we can and so we decided to do the first-ever 40 Days for Life campaign and so that was back in 2001 and so for those 40 days we ended up seeing God bring over a thousand people into that local campaign and at the end of that year when the abortion numbers were reported by our department of health they had dropped by 28% well so over a hundred children were spared because the many parts of the body of Christ came together in that pro-life work led predominantly by the Catholic Christians in the midst of this so we finished that campaign exhausted and thought oh we'll never do that again and we nobody would be crazy enough to do this anywhere else but one by one other cities began to replicate what they'd heard about and so during this time Margaret and I had been invited to move up to Virginia from Texas to work for me and a National pro-life group and Margaret began homeschooling our children in the midst of this and so when we moved up there God continued to breathe life into this 40 Days for Life effort and so we were hearing these stories and eventually realize God's on to something what if we actually join him and what he's doing and so a group of us got together on a conference call who had Wed these disparate individual 40-day campaigns and we said what if we tried to do a coordinated national forty days with for life with like twenty cities doing this at once okay maybe that's too optimistic maybe it doesn't and so we decided to hold the first-ever and this was in the fall of 2007 national 40 days for life and to our surprise 89 cities in 33 states joined that first effort so I left the employment of that other pro-life organization ironically the day I went to our parish in again st. Mary's in College Station st. Mary the Immaculate Conception in Fredericksburg Virginia where we're living and the day I go to our ask God if he wants me to leave my job to do this full-time for 40 days for a wife as opposed to this other group was Feast of the Assumption so what did I even know what was the all the fingerprints that were on this all the way along Our Lady was involved in this the whole time so 40 days just exploded and it was beyond anything we could have imagined or thought it went from that 89 cities and it's continued to grow and over the last decade I've left 40 days for life within the last year but over the decade that I served as the leader of the organization we saw it grow to 769 cities across all 50 American states 49 other nations 750,000 volunteers have participated in 40 Days for Life campaigns across all these different locations and by the grace of God we've seen over 14,000 lives spared from abortion these were mothers scheduled to have an abortion appointment who because the people peacefully praying outside these facilities change their mind and chose life we've also seen completely to our surprise 177 abortion of workers quit their jobs and leave including Abby Johnson and so many others many of whom came to the church as a result of their departure from the abortion industry and we saw 96 abortion centers close their doors and go out of business so it was incredible to see what God was doing but Marcus the way this ties in so beautifully to why we're here today is for that decade we traveled to hundreds of cities as a family we went to our kids have been to 44 states dozens of countries and in the midst of this we were standing and working alongside Catholic Christians and their example their faithfulness their joy attracted me so I was singing in my own wife who was leading this beautiful attractive Catholic life that was drawing me a little bit by little bit and then working alongside members of the clergy and amazingly faithful bishops and Archbishop's and Cardinals and laypeople I just kept seeing they have something why is it in the midst of all the cultural chaos going on around us why is the Catholic Church leading the way we were in ecumenical ministry and yet 80 plus percent of the people who are participating with Catholic Christians so that began to really attract me throughout this journey so I was in the midst of this going through all these different issues the hang-ups that I had and some of them I would resolve quickly and easily like I came very quickly to a belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist apostolic succession some other thing that a roadblock for others I was able to work through but I still had a few minor things that were hanging me up and I kind of on the scale from where I was in the Presbyterian Church to the Catholic Church I probably made about 90% of the way before getting stuck for more than a decade well and that was because we were running so hard with 40 Days for Life and it wasn't until after I departed and there were some twists and turns in that departure and even after that we had just a season where we had to spend more time on our knees in prayer but that was when finally I was willing to listen so it was September 8th of last year I was driving a car from Texas to Virginia and I was talking to a friend of mine Brian Westbrook who runs the 40 Days for Life campaigns in Saint Louis Missouri and who runs a pro-life group there that he started out of the 40 Days for Life campaigns and he was telling me about this amazing experience he had just had in adoration and I said oh yeah I haven't been down racing in a while he said you really need to go he said interestingly as I was at an adoration right before I left I felt the Lord asked me to ask you why isn't David be right Catholic yet and I of course will have oh yes I've heard that when I go you know I've spoken at the Catholic Leadership Conference I get that a lot ha ha ha he said have you ever asked our Lord in the Eucharist in adoration I said no he says you need to do that I said okay when I get home I'll do that and I said I'll schedule a time and I'll go and he said wait a minute you're driving across the country you're gonna pass all these churches that have adoration going on right now he said pull over pull up mass times down to work on your phone find a place that has adoration and go to that adoration Chapel and ask the Lord today a great friend September 8 the Feast of the Nativity of our Blessed Mother so I look at the route I'm going I'm gonna be going right through Charlottesville where our daughter Claire attends the University of Virginia and she's very involved in that with campus ministry so I called her up and she said oh I'm not gonna be there I'm going on a retreat with our focused missionaries and we're doing all this she said but the adoration Chapel is there it's open I don't tell her why so I go to her parish st. Thomas in Charlottesville Virginia I go to the adoration Chapel I sign in and I go in and there's just a couple people silently praying and I get down on my knees and I knew our parish was starting RCIA the following Monday every year that when they made mention I was thinking maybe maybe but this year I was thinking maybe a bit more and so I got down on my knees and I just asked our Lord what do you want me to do be careful asking those kinds of and all I got was a wave of peace and a word that just wait on my heart whether it was my thought or the Lord's I don't know but the word was begin peace and begin in that whole hour that was all I got and so I drove home and I sat down with Marga and I said I have some news don't get your hopes up I said I went to adoration she said really I said yeah and I asked this question and I feel I'm supposed to begin RCIA but I don't know what I'm supposed to do you know this is the process of forming the Rite of Christian initiation of adults and I said I'm gonna start but I can't guarantee where I'm in and or when she's kind of jumping up and down excited I said you can't tell anybody because this is a discernment process so then we call our son downstairs and we call our daughter Claire and we tell them the same thing and they've been praying for me for years far more even than I even knew was going on in the process of this so how did you feel when I shared that well I was shocked I I really had no idea I I really I'm a I almost fell on the floor but then I was so excited and I wanted to tell everyone a dame it's like you cannot tell anyone I was just so excited and I had for years been of course into the Catholic Church and for both our children Claire and Patrick on their first communion days it was so it was bittersweet because my dream and my prayer was that he that David would receive his First Holy Communion with our children and it didn't happen so but of course God's timing and plans so much better so well here what what strikes me of interest is your surround your you're married to a committed Catholic your kids are Catholic all your work is involved with Catholics majority you're growing in things but like the idea of asking the Lord should I become Catholic hadn't surfaced which is interesting because that tells me that there's a lot of our separate brethren out there who love our Lord Jesus Christ who are committed to all these things are learning better but but the idea hasn't because some Catholic hasn't gone on to them you thought about becoming God yeah I mean it's an hour its court to ask if I'd to put put a seed there and you never know you never know people probably thought there's no way he'd be interested in the Catholic Church but it took someone I loved you to do that it did aspect I did and it took me being at the right moment and willing to receive when that invitation was offered so when I went to the first RCIA class I went by myself and it was just an informative first session and everybody else there had someone with them their sponsor or you know the person is glasses the nose and a mustache because like you said I mean when you're in a position of ministry leadership and you're kind of just that's I'm struggling with that to be honest and so yeah I went but it was our parish and I've been attending for years and to be honest more people were probably stunned like oh he's not Catholic not going up for communion they probably visit area for some Pope I want to talk about that later but that is a barrier for a lot of people go on forever and then they're nervous people finding out that I haven't been all this season yeah but I came home when I said Margot everybody else had someone with them and I said would you be open to possibly going with me next week and she said are you asking me to be your sponsor and I said oh sure I guess so I didn't really know what I was asking so she went with me to that next RCIA class and so we began going week after week and they were on Monday nights and in the arlington diocese in virginia where we lived they do an amazing job of formation or parish we have four awesome priests and they did a beautiful job the RCIA process was wonderful and i know that's not the case in every single parish and every single diocese but we had an amazing time of formation and it gave me the chance with a deadline of knowing Easter's coming i've got some decisions to make and the whole time through I'm just saying God show me what you want me to do and I'm just kind of learning and talking and thinking through things and even in the process of this going all the way back to the cassette tape years earlier of Scott Hahn I had met Scott through various different times where he and I had spoken at events together in a Catholic leadership conferences and so forth and so I reached out to Scott and said hey would you be open to possibly helping out a brother in need here I've got a lot of questions and so he got on the phone it was unbelievable just helping to answer questions and sharing his own experiences in his own struggles and we had in our priests there willing to be very vulnerable and help us to just grow and share where they were in their own faith journeys so step by step I was getting closer and closer had a few issues I was working through but towards the very end Marcus the thing I realized is the biggest remaining obstacle was not a theological issue it was me I was the remaining obstacles Mike you said all those years of attending Mass and even praying God if you if you want me somewhere that I'm not right now you know make that clear to me but when he made that clear to me I had to be willing to go on faith and so here we are proceeding through RCIA and I'm making the various different public rights and of course then people in our parish are finding out and so I'm starting to figure out this is going to start getting out beyond that as well most likely unfortunately it didn't go very far because I'm still very actively in a very intense period of discernment I fasted in more intensely I ever had I've done a lot of fasting through 40 Days for Life campaigns but we got all the way into Holy Week and I still did not have absolute certainty and my poor wife she had only the only concession I'd given her as I told her you can we can let your mother know if she wants to come from Texas to be there but I can't even guarantee that I'm coming in at the East is the lack of certainty is this what you want me to do Lord or was it is this what I want to do I think it was kind of a little of each I was asking what he wanted me to do but I had to be willing to set aside what I wanted to do and even in the midst of that just communicating with my dad and getting not only his blessing just his enthusiastic support in the midst of it just kind of those things that just began if all my excuses if you will begin to fall away but here we are coming into Holy Week and I'm realizing I have a decision to make because if I can't take that profession of faith and say it with absolute certainty I have no business coming into the church I have to believe it from the core of my being and so Margaret is really worried she keeps saying is this gonna happen can we tell people and I'm just like I'm still discerning as late as Holy Thursday okay the Easter Vigil is on Saturday this is Thursday I'm going and I said Margaret this journey into RCIA began in in adoration and I really feel like that certainty is only going to come from our Lord directly in adoration so I asked if we could take two separate cars and go to that night Holy Thursday mass now my name is already printed in the trio and booklet that I'm coming into the church I'm still not certain I'm 95 98 99 percent the way there but I still have that like just hang up just is this what God wants for me so we go to Mass and we do a procession over to our activity center where they had an adoration Chapel set up and at the end I get down on my knees again before the Blessed Sacrament and I just once again said Lord what do you want me to do I was hoping for neon sign come into the church cross the finish line but that night the piece revolved around the word continue it was not finished but I realized at that moment that coming into the church was just a continuation on a lifelong journey of loving Jesus and faith and this was just turning the page to a new chapter in my faith journey and at that moment I had the conviction that I could say the profession of faith so I went home to meet Margaret and what did you say what I wanted in the door so he comes to the door I run to the door and he comes in I go are we all good call the bakery put them put the lettering on the cake so we then had the Easter Vigil and Marcus it was the most beautiful graceful evening and Margaret tells me that I was the loudest person on the profession of faith where we said it as a group he memorized it there there and people coming in had you had it on you know were reading their card but he memorized it he was saying it's so loud and clear it was beautiful in our pastor father John Moseman an amazing man and our former pastor father John Rooney just such great formation in that parish there and not only that that night my son was an altar server and so when I receive Communion on the tongue our son Patrick was there holding the patent as I'm receiving Communion Margaret and my daughter Claire in the front row tears streaming down their face it was just a beautiful night and even as I'm walking up to receive Communion for the very first time the organ starts playing and it was just almost like the gates of heaven opened up and it was just floods of Graces it was incredible and Margaret going back you mentioned earlier about how you had wanted any on your timing how do you think God's timing of when he called me in the - vigil what did that feel like for you it was it was part it was perfect it was I've never felt that kind of joy in my entire life and I could not stop crying and Clara was crying our daughter and just to see Patrick Patrick was trying to hold I could tell because I know him very well he was trying to hold it together and make sure he wasn't crying he he had the Pat and he was holding the patent he's right there David was kneeling there was a beautiful kneeler and it was like nothing I've ever experienced I felt like I was just a little bit of heaven right there you know I wanted to capture it and bottle it the the thing that kind of caught us off guard so you know we've had this journey we've come into the church received these so many graces realizing it's a continuation of this journey and we just that day since I'd never mention anything about it publicly I felt the news is gonna get out at some point and so I just did a very simple post on Facebook with some pictures we had a parish photographer they had taken pictures of everyone and she shared the pictures with us and then just a brief explanation of you know for those who didn't know you know I've come into the church and for those who thought I always was Catholic surprise for those who thought I never would be surprised but just really tried in that post to make it very clear that this was a very thought through I mean it was 28 years of wrestling with God to be honest and that it was not something I took lightly it was something I took very seriously and to share that my love of Jesus my love of my upbringing in the Christian Church all are still there and I still love to work with the entirety of the body of Christ in many different parts in the midst of pro-life work and marriage and family work that we've been involved in and so I just thought we'd just get a little blip but all of a sudden I'm getting emails from people all across the country Catholic leaders I've met bishops are emailing me and sending messages Michael Warsaw the president of EWTN is sending me messages and it was just so wonderful and so beautiful and then the Catholic media started picking up and running with it so I thought why would anybody really it's just one person it's just you know again there were we had a class of 30 people that came into the church and every one of their stories is amazing it should be featured on the journey home but the thing that really touched me the most in the midst of this was how many people we heard from we're a Catholic spouse was married to a non Catholic and the hope that they found in you know the example that Margaret provided for me if I were to say other than whole spirit the one thing that is why I'm sitting this chair today is because of a wife who lived out her Catholic faith beautifully joyfully for decades she never pressured me she never hit me over the head with it she lived an example that attracted me for those many years and she walked me through it and I hope for every Catholic spouse who's married to someone who's not Catholic I hope they find hope and inspiration in that as well those love that love you provide those prayers your example can speak profoundly if your children have left the church if there are loved ones that you're praying for live your faith live your faith with joy live that example you have no idea the inspiration of the seeds you're planting that will yield so much fruit down the road I think also to persevere in that prayer I just kept on going to adoration and praying and praying with the kids and the kids are so awesome to just their prayers and yeah is amazing and you were blessed at least with a husband who loved Jesus Christ and was very so there the other issues weren't the ones you were just wanted to go the experience of fullness absolutely who things like you reflect on sure a scripture and in a statement in the mass the scripture is the wedding feast when Jesus says don't take the front-row seat take the back row seat when you come and then the other one is a little statement in the mass that we take for granted every week but it's Lord I'm not worthy talk about those two in terms of now you're Catholic we've been in ministry and now what are you gonna do yeah you know that's a great question and it's something that we are now once again similar to the question we had years ago getting involved in pro-life work to whom much is given much is required we have been blessed with this amazing grace of being able to find this fullness of faith together from plum Sunday this past year where for the last time I realized our family is apart a communion and to now be fully together the graces that come from that are amazing and so we have an obligation in this new understanding I had truth before but now I have the fullness of truth and to be able to have the rich the church teaching on life on marriage and family and I've got a lifetime to learn and grow do I have all the answers absolutely not the church does and I can immerse myself in that so I hope we can continue to grow in our own formation within the church and then also in the midst of that to share that with everybody we come into contact with yes I will continue to be involved in pro-life work for the rest of my life and have projects I'm working on even at this moment that haven't been publicly announced we also feel very called that we've been blessed with almost 26 years of marriage the sacrament of matrimony and we feel an obligation to share that with so many others the family is under attack like never before and I love the words that Scott Hahn has at the beginning of his new book first society where he talks about a professor sharing if Catholics lived out the sacrament of matrimony for one generation we would transform the culture and we would see the culture turned towards and that is one thing uniquely different that you can portray now and that is the power of the sacrament because were you saying from I didn't have that you didn't have right so we have a obligation you had the sacramental Grace's all along you just didn't have the name to put on it because you didn't believe in that from your non Catholic background that's correct when we came home from Easter Vigil Mass it was so beautiful because our son Patrick he he was so excited he said we all received communion together now we're together we have an email list you can please us and Kathy from New Orleans my husband and I married when neither of us were that interested in our faith in the last few years I've really delved into the beauty of the Catholic Church and was confirmed since I'd never was a kid my husband though shows absolutely no interest and is indifferent to the whole idea of whether God exists and certainly doesn't seem to have any faith he's okay with me going to Mass but that's the extent of it I'm dying to have him be on this wonderful journey of faith with me but don't want to be overzealous and push him away do you know how I can best reach him and encourage him to have an act of faith life mmm you want to start sure well for me I felt really called to pray for David and never and I really didn't push him I really didn't say I hope I really didn't now we had lots of people around us you know sharing with him and but I just tried to live that and and really the key was pretty in prayer so praying the rosary praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament and and persevering through that I think that's really really important when the midst that also I'd say that Margaret not only was living out her own faith but as she shared that and formed our children in the faith teaching them about the liturgical calendar and teaching them about the sacraments and helping formed I mean both of our children are very open and discerning the religious life and we don't know where God will ultimately call them but watching their formation in their love and then wanting to say how do we what's missing here it's me so I think Margaret's prayer the example of her teaching the children and then just that willingness to live out the faith joyfully and to again God surrounded me with many other Catholics some of whom were much more forward than Margaret who would say hey buddy what are you doing down here and thank them for that because they love me enough to invite me in you know and you know from your work and pro-life work we never really know what's behind that person's shell that's right we never know the person could be as atheistic sounding on the outside but on the inside might be asking questions so you never get up in your prayer and your witness and your friendship I mean you were talking about Newark Catholic you didn't know any Protestants wait a second they're Catholics and we need to do that so that we can have relationships there with that witness can come about absolutely right well in the thing Marcus I would just kind of to begin to wrap this up with is just to say we have an incredible gift the fullness of truth of the Catholic Church and we have to share it with everybody we can in every way we can and I thank you for taking such a prominent role in helping with that well it's been a great privilege to do that now that website is for TF then the number 40 Days for Life dot-com in case you want to connect with more what they're doing and thank you both thank you for joining us on the journey home and sharing your journey and God bless and continued witness for him and your marriage and your kids and God bless you all what a great witness to Islam thank you very much and thank you for joining us on this journey home I do pray that Margaret and David's journey is an encouragement to you god bless you seen it [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 20,302

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Keywords: ytsync-en, jht01619, jht

Id: n8yqSdQ9FLs

Length: 56min 11sec (3371 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 16 2018