Patrick Madrid: "The Shock of Divine Kinship"

let me say a word and defensive reason in dialogue with it because faith is that true faith unites us to that substance the reason you in order to realize its full potential meets the horizons revealed by and truths contained in the faith and not just any sense but the Catholic I was trying to count up how many of the defending the faiths I've been able to be present debt and I think this is maybe my twelfth so I'm not quite at the halfway mark my family was just up here a minute ago and I was thinking about maybe naming them all for you but I figured now that would take too much time I wouldn't have enough time for my talk so Nancy and I have never been invited to teach NFP classes I don't know why the theme of my talk today is lessons learned 25 years in the New Evangelization and as as Alan just mentioned a moment ago this new book that's coming out the subtitle is 25 years as a Catholic apologist and really apologetics and evangelization and catechetical all at one time or another seem to blend together they're not it's not always just one or just the other there are a lot of different combinations of the three so the title just as easily could have been envoy for Christ 25 years in Catholic evangelization or envoy for Christ 25 years in Catholic catechetical apologetics is more what I'm known for and as I prepared for this conference I wanted to share with you as many of the key lessons that have cropped up in my last 25 years things that I've learned not always the easy way I'll tell you the things that I'll mention that involve mistakes or failures I guess I could say I'm an expert in all of those things because I've made all these mistakes and all these failures that I'll warn you away from and I've also seen a number of really powerful even miraculous things that have happened over the years I'd like to share a few of those with you as time permits but let me begin by quoting something from Archbishop Charles Chaput he just spoke three days ago at the Napa Institute which is recently started but gaining momentum kind of conference that brings together Catholic intellectuals and leaders up in the Napa Valley in just three days ago in the midst of a long speech that he gave at at this conference he said the following we need to re-examine the spirit that has ruled the Catholic approach to American life for the past 60 years informing our priests deacons teachers and catechists and especially the young people in our schools in religious education programs we need to be much more penetrating and critical in our attitudes toward the culture around us we need to recover our distinctive Catholic identity in history then we need to act on them because as he says America is becoming a very different country a few of you remarked to me and now it's me speaking a few of you remarked to me yesterday and today about a talk I gave I believe it was two years ago about the persecution of the church in Mexico and some of you were there for that talk many of you perhaps and I oh thank you I actually gave that talk first a year or two before that I think it might have been at least a year before that before the movie for greater glory was even in production as far as I know I hadn't heard about it and before really it was on anyone's radar screen I felt a bit like a voice crying in the wilderness and over lunch that afternoon with father Benedict we talked about this and and I I felt he gave me a good bit of advice and that is don't be too doom and gloom ish you know don't be too worried about these things God has a way of taking care of them and I believe father Benedict to be true on that on that point but I don't think he would be bothered if I pointed out that in just those three years since I first gave the talk in just two years since I gave the talk here would it not be a fair thing to say that Archbishop Charles shop.you is right that this is becoming a different country things are changing so with that in mind and this is not a doom and gloom talk please don't don't worry because we are living in a different country and because at least the last two generations of Catholic people here in the United States have become complacent fat and happy willing to go along to get along quiet in the face of things that are totally contrary to the gospel of Christ and sometimes even easily swayed or entirely bent over by the winds the gale force winds of the Spirit of the world because of these things I think that not only do you and I have to take stock of the changes that are existing but we have to change our own methodologies as he said we have to become more incisive more critical he doesn't mean critical in the sense of being mean-spirited and criticizing other people what he means is to think critically he's talking about our approach to the culture that requires that we think critically and engaged the culture at a more sophisticated at a more intellectual level now this doesn't mean that any of you have to go out and get a graduate degree in theology or something like that but it means that we have to be keeping our wits about us and doing the best we can to evangelize not simply by what has worked in the past but taking account of the new challenges that we face things that our grandparents never had to worry about Ozzie and Harriet not only didn't have to worry about fetal stem cell research they had never heard of fetal stem cell research all the things that are coming to the fore now simply didn't exist at least in any scientific sense 30 40 50 years ago so we have a new set of challenges that we face today now to be sure there are the same old challenges that people everywhere at all times have had to face there's may be a new paintjob on some of them most of them in the area of sexual morality can be denominated today as things like contraception legalized abortion the pornographic culture in which we live these are all contributing factors to our need to to become better at engaging our culture as archbishop Chaput says and as st. Paul said in second Timothy 4 verse 3 he said for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths and he says in second Tim the three versus one through five but understand this that in the last days there will come times of stress for men will be lovers of self lovers of money proud arrogant abusive disobedient to their parents ungrateful unholy inhuman implacable slanderers profligates fierce haters of good treacherous reckless swollen with conceit lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God holding the form of religion but denying the power of it sound familiar I'm not saying that we're in the last days but these things have a habit of playing out in every generation we are no different than any previous generation but we have to fight the battle ourselves now this is our turn to do this and as the theme of our conference this summer tells us that we will be Christ's witnesses and he will give us the power that we need to be effective witnesses each in our own way so in spite of the new changes or the new challenges human nature human weakness and God's grace and power are the same today as they ever have been we just need to invoke his assistance as we have been here and that leads me to want to share with you some of these lessons that I've learned and as I say sometimes the hard way some of the lessons that I've learned about how to become better and more effective in the New Evangelization how to be a more effective witness and how to do things not for numbers or for statistics or cost-benefit analyses or things like that but to do things for the greater glory of God and for his kingdom sometimes those things I've found maybe this is one of those fundamental lessons sometimes the things that that you and I will do that will be good and positive you and I will never know that they were they can be hidden from our view and probably it's a good thing that they are because if we being human and being weak if we could see the good that's being done we might start doing it more out of the desire for accolades and and people affirming what we do rather than because this is what God is calling us to do I myself grew up Catholic some of you know my story some of you may think that I'm a convert many people do think I'm a convert in fact I think many Catholics wonder if there may be a law somewhere saying that you must be a convert to the Catholic Church if you're going to be involved in Catholic apologetics all the household names dr. Scott Hahn Tim staples Marcus Grodi so many of the well-known figures of the world of Catholic apologetics whether or not they're permanently in that world or not the fact is many people associate converts with apologetics and I'm one of the token cradle Catholics Karl Keating and I I think we had a waiver given to us to be able to do this work and so growing up Catholic I I went through what many young men go through probably what many of you men went through when you were that age from my teenage years into my mid-20s I was Catholic on paper I went to Mass every Sunday I didn't never miss Mass prayed grace before meals in fact if I were if I was ever in a conversation and somebody said something critical of the Catholic Church I would be johnny-on-the-spot to defend the church and explain what we really believe and I was you know very much Catholic in those regards but when I started playing bass guitar in rock bands when I was in my 15 16 year old Garage Band days I had this notion that I would be the next paul mccartney and and i really stupidly thought that i had a chance to make it big in that world so i pursued this dream that i had of being a successful rock and roll bass player and the more it went the more I suppose moderately successful I was but with that kind of approach to something that I thought was important came a lot of the inherent dangers of of that life you know and so while I was very fortunate in some regards I was not as fortunate in others and for a period of roughly that ten years span I went through I went through this phase where I was like 70% catholic 30% of me was involved in doing things I shouldn't been doing and it all caught up with me in my 26th year and those of you who have read my chapter in my book surprised by truth to you know this story so forgive me for belaboring the point for you but for those who are not familiar with it just very briefly I went through a year-long conversion experience I'd never left the Catholic Church nor was I ever tempted to but I I had to I had to repent of all these attitudes and actions and things that were not consistent and compatible with being a follower of Jesus and I had to I had to reorient my life I mean I had to decide who am I gonna live for him I can lift myself where am I gonna live for the Lord and over the course of this year-long what I would call like a midlife crisis I hope it was my midlife crisis because I never want to go through this again i I came out the other side converted I guess is the best way I can say it and the last month or so of this process on my lunch hour I went to the local parish church and I spent that hour making a holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament praying the rosary asking the Lord to show me what he wanted me to do with my life because I knew that whatever it was what I was doing wasn't it now I was married I had children at the time so I'm not talking about that but it was like what am I gonna do with my life Lord I've wasted in many ways the last 10 years what can I do to help make up for that and so these were very earnest heartfelt prayers of mine and they were very angry because there was a lot of pain involved and a lot of Tears and you can just imagine all the emotions that were going through my mind so I decided after a month of this Holy Hour and not getting any kind of indication from God what I must do I decided that I would take matters into my own hands and quit my job so yeah oh yes I quit my job on a Friday afternoon and I came home and told my lovely wife Nancy you know we had a house payment car payment groceries children to feed and I came home and told her that I quit my job so that I could just I could discover what God had in store for me can you imagine now I'm confident that when my wife's cause for canonization comes up this is going to be one of one of the factors weighing in her favor and that is that she didn't murder me on the spot but that I had done this so we she was very calm about it very very understanding maybe a little bit nervous I think we were both were nervous but she was willing to accept this leap of faith I guess if I could call it that so that was Friday the following day a friend of mine called an attorney friend who like I at that time was very interested in Catholic apologetics and he called as he would normally call every few weeks or I would call him and he called that next morning and I said to him by the way I've been going through this really difficult time and I haven't really told you about it but I've had this deep reconversion it's taking a long time and I put my job yesterday because I don't know what I'm gonna do with my life and would you please pray for me and he paused for a minute and he sort of chuckled and said well I'm sure I could pray for you but it's funny you should mention that because I've decided to quit my law practice and I'm going to open a full-time Catholic apologetics organisation why don't you come work with me and I said no no whatever God has in store for me that can't be it that can't be it I had all sorts of ideas of what God might want for me but that never entered my mind so I told him no and then my lovely wife Nancy shot me a glance across the room that said you better say yes because we have to buy groceries you know for next week so I told my friend okay I will come down temporarily I'll help you out for you know a few weeks a few months and then when I find out what God wants me to do then I'll go do that that friend was Karl Keating the organization was Catholic Answers and there I was stupid me and there I was stupid me saying no to God's plan for me and he was practically hitting me over the head so the lesson that I learned from that I would call miraculous intervention of God's providence is to trust in God's providence that's maybe one of the hardest lessons for us to learn is because we live in a culture that tells us we have to do it for ourselves if you want it done right do it yourself and there's a good quality to being industrious into being ingenious in what we come up with the things we devise but if we lose sight of God's providence if we fail to trust in his providence then a lot of great things for us and for other people will pass us by I can only imagine and I shudder to think of what would have happened if I hadn't quit my job that day trusting in God everyone around me thought what a ridiculous thing to do and I even thought it was kind of ridiculous but I had this deep sense that I needed to trust God in a way that would involve a radical decision God came through and I love this passage where God says put me to the test says the Lord of Hosts see he tells us see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you and overflowing blessing it certainly worked for me and it will work for you these are different things God is calling us to do you and I we have different roles to play but his Providence is the same for all of us we just have to ask for him the second lesson is that of being generous in our efforts to explain and share and defend the faith here's what st. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 9 verses 6 to 15 keeping in mind that in this passage he's talking specifically or literally about donating money to the cause of the church being being generous with your money but I'd like to translate this generosity with money into a generosity with time and willingness to help others he says the point is this he who so sparingly will also reap sparingly and he who sews bountifully will also reap bountifully each one must do as he has made up his mind not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful Giver and God is able to provide you with every blessing and abundance so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide an abundance for every good work as it is written he scatters abroad he gives to the poor his righteousness endures forever he who supplies the seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your resources with increase your resources and increase the harvest of your righteousness you will be enriched in every way for great generosity which through us will provide Thanksgiving to God for the rendering of this service not only supplies the wants of the saints but also overflows and many Thanksgivings to God under the test of this service you will glorify God by your obedience in acknowledging the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God in you thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift every time I read that passage I am uncomfortably reminded of my tendency towards selfishness and I don't know where you would rate yourself in that regard but you know it's confession time for me I guess I'm in front of a lot of Catholics and this is only appropriate to confess our sins one to another as it says in James chapter 5 so I'll just tell you that I am prone to wanting to not be bothered at time sometimes I'm willing and ready and happy to talk about my faith sometimes I'm not that interested sometimes I'd rather not be bothered and what I found is that when I'm super busy sometimes busier than I really should be because I've got too many things going on or when I when I think that I've got no time for somebody else I've learned the hard way that it's in those times when if I make an effort to be more generous than I feel like being usually something really good will happen and I don't do it so that something good will really happen but I do it because I know that God wants us to be generous and one thing I can testify to is as he was saying here st. Paul that God will enrich us and give us the increase in the super abundance of all the things that we need one of those things is time I get asked all the time where you know where did you have time to write 18 books I honestly don't know I really do not know where the time came from or when I actually wrote them I'm pretty sure I wrote them but I don't know when I wrote them I'm Marvel when I look at somebody like dr. Scott Hahn and I think of all the things that he's been doing I mean I I feel like a slacker when I consider the schedule that he keeps but there's something to be said for God not being outdone in generosity and so the more generous that we are with our time the more willing we are to say all right I'm busy I'm tired I'm distracted I'm unprepared but I'm going to do this anyway because I believe that God is calling me to help in this situation God will not be outdone in generosity it's one of the lessons I've learned over and over again and if it's of any benefit to you I would just say remember the man the Catholic man who was one of these guys didn't want to be bothered didn't want to talk to anybody about religion he was complacent he was lazy and one day he found himself on an airplane traveling across country and he was seated next to a very talkative Evangelical Protestant who wanted to talk about religion and Jesus so the Catholic didn't want to talk about anything so the evangelical fella said well how about a game of trivia and if you miss an answer to my question then you pay me a dollar if I miss the answer to your question I'll pay you a dollar and the Catholic guy said now I'd rather just read my book so then then the evangelical fella said okay well just to make it more interesting if you miss one of my questions you pay me a dollar but if I miss one of your questions I'll give you $50 so the Catholics ears perked up when he heard 50 dollars and he thought well how bad can this be so he said okay go ahead so the the protestant gentleman's question was how many miles is it from the earth to the moon now without even hesitating this he didn't know the answer he wasn't gonna try to get the answer he just reached into his pocket pulled out a dollar bill gave it to the guy he wasn't going to try so then his question was what goes up a hill on four legs and comes down on three this Protestant guy was smart he's so hang on I know that one just give me a second so he's thinking about it before you know what he gets out his iPad and cuz all the planes that Wi-Fi now so he goes out on the internet and he Facebook's this Twitter he asks all of his friends from email nobody seems to know the answer to this question so he puts closes his iPad and with a huff of exasperation he hands a fifty dollar bill to the Catholic guy Catholic guy pockets the 50 and goes back to reading his book so now this Evangelical Protestant man is is fuming he's really angry now and he says no he says you got to tell me what goes up a hill on four legs and comes down on three shrugging his shoulders the Catholic guy just takes another dollar out of his pocket hands it to the guy and he goes back to his book so the lesson that we can learn from that is let's be generous right let's I'll let this linger for a minute here just so I know you'll all be telling that joke tomorrow when you talk to your friends another lesson the lesson of simplicity and this one is maybe a bit counterintuitive because after all the Catholic faith and its dogmas and practices are by no means simple in the sense that there's very few things to look at or worry about the vast panoply of Catholic teaching certainly Catholic history the various Catholic practices that we're all familiar with simple is not really the right word to describe them but I found that the secret to effective evangelization more often than not is simplicity in explaining them and I know it's counterintuitive because it seems so obvious and I'd say this would be incorrect it seems so obvious that we should have grandiose elaborate explanations filled with lots of precise theological vocabulary and that's important in the classroom to be sure and it is important for some of us in certain capacities to be sure but by and large I found that the simpler the message the more powerful it is you know the old acronym K is s keep it simple what is it stupid I won't say that but keep it simple and this this has impressed itself on me many times over the years I'll give you a few quick examples one happened when I was speaking somewhere in San Diego and two Calvinists wanted to talk to me afterward because they were really unhappy with what I was talking about in my lecture that evening so they invited me to go with them to the local Denny's and we sat down and we had our Bibles out they were on this side of the of the booth I was on this side and we were arguing for the better part of an hour over what I was teaching I think it had to do with Mary and the conversation started by them saying the Catholic Church teaches unbiblical doctrines meaning that the church is adding things to the Bible things that are not in the Bible and I said to them well I can give you biblical examples to support what I'm saying and then when I started quoting those passages then their response shifted from it's not in the Bible - well you're misinterpreting that passage you're miss construing that passage you have a false understanding of that passage and that's when it got really frustrating because I couldn't get them to budge nor could they get me to budge so after I don't know close to an hour of this I took out my napkin I took out my pen and on the napkin in front of me I wrote the words I never said you stole money now maybe some of you have heard me talk about this before but for those who haven't think about this I asked them do you understand what I just wrote here I never said you stole money and they looked at the napkin and said well sure we understand and I said are you sure you understand they said well of course we do I never said you stole money big deal and I said all right what if I meant I never said you stole money implying that somebody else said it or maybe my implication was I never said you stole money I thought it or maybe I meant I never said you stole money or maybe I meant I never said you stole Oh money maybe you accidentally lit it on fire or maybe I meant I never said you stole money there was something else that you stole and with a suddenly sheepish look on their faces the two of them I could tell understood what I was driving at and so I said now which is more likely to be misinterpreted the Bible with 73 books written by different authors at different times in different languages or a six word sentence that can give you five different meanings and you don't know for sure which of these five meanings I'm talking about do you without me explaining it to you further right and they said okay right we get the point and pretty much at that point our conversation wrapped up we went we went home and six or seven months later I was speaking somewhere else and one of the two fellows who was there that night attended this talk he happened to be the former Catholic and at the intermission he came up to me shook my hand with a big smile and he said by the way just want you to know I've come back to the Catholic Church and I said whoa what happened because he was fierce he was you know like really hammering me with arguments that night and he said do you remember that napkin thing you did I said yeah I do he says that started the process he said I was unwilling to consider that the Catholic Church might have something to say for itself and the napkin didn't convince me but the napkin was like a key opening a door that had been locked and that started the process another time I was and I've told this story before so again forgive me if some of you have heard it but I was Nancy and I after our 11th child had been born little Steven we wanted to get away and go to dinner just the two of us while we brought the babies so just the three of us so we went to the Olive Garden in the town near where we live some of you know this story and when we got to our table the waitress was wing and ahhing over the little baby and asking all the typical questions is that a boy is it a girl and then she asked my wife the question is here first this is our 11th child keep in mind ok so Nancy looks at me and with a mischievous look on her face with her eyes she says do you want to tell her and I shook my head and said no you can go and tell her so she told her this is our 11th child now this poor woman didn't know how to act when she heard eleven children so she went and got a few other waitresses and they came to the table and they're looking at us and they're obvious obviously disapproving you could tell by their looks on their faces and the comments to eleven children why would you want eleven children that's oh my gosh that's crazy and then they started talking about their own contraceptive habits so one of the you know like our weight just said well I'm on the pill the other one said yeah well I got my tubes tied the other one said well I made my husband get a vasectomy and I'm thinking I just want a plate of lasagna I don't I don't want to know about this this is not what I'm here for and so in the midst of all this disapproving commentary my wife smiled at these women and said just this she just said well my husband and I believe that children are blessing from God and we believe in being open to life so that God can bless our marriage but that was like putting water on a campfire and they went away back to their work we've finished our meal 45 minutes later I paid the bill and we went out to the car with the baby and I heard footsteps running up behind us and ice I turned and saw it was our waitress and she came up and she said I didn't want you to leave without saying thank you and I knew I hadn't left that big of a tip so she wasn't talking to me she said I just want to say thank you and she was talking to my wife and then she she said she said what you said in there about children being a blessing from God and being open to life she said I'm on the pill and my whole life I've figured two kids max that's it for me but she said what you said stirred my heart and I know deep down inside that what you said is true she said I'm going home tonight I'm telling my husband I'm getting off the pill I don't know how he's gonna react but I'm telling him because I want God to bless my marriage and I didn't want you to leave without saying thank you so she gave Nancy a little embrace she went back into the restaurant she went back into the restaurant thank you and she we've never seen her again but I have to assume that not only was her life transformed but that marriage was transformed and and who knows how many new souls are now in existence who will praise God for all eternity all because of a simple gentle response so those are two things that I've learned two examples of what I've learned about the simplicity and how important it is for us to avoid as much as possible trying to bury people with lots of complicated explanations the simpler the better and when it's necessary to be more more developed and more systematic that's fine but I would begin with the simple and work toward the more complicated another lesson don't underestimate the power of personal testimonies now you saw dr. Schreck hold up the copy of my book surprised by truth that's a first in three volumes of conversion testimony books by that title surprised by truth one two and three I want to encourage you to either read it for yourself or buy it to give to someone you know who's away from the church a few quick stories there was that email I got from a United States Air Force officer this is back in 1990 book came out in 94 I got an email from him in 95 or 96 and he described to me how he was an Air Force officer US Air Force he was stationed at that time in Saudi Arabia and he said he had nothing to do one day he was utterly bored nowhere to go nothing to do and he saw a purple book sitting on a table in one of his one of the officers quarters and he picked it up and he said it's Catholic and he had left the Catholic Church years earlier and his poor mother was in great grief that he had stopped going to church stopped praying not going to the sacraments so he thought well I don't have anything else better to do so he picked up the book and he started reading the book he read it all through the night and when he was finished he went and found the Catholic chaplain made a good confession came back to the Catholic Church on the spot and he wrote me an email to tell me you know I am just I just want you to know that because somebody left this book laying here I'm now back in the Catholic Church he said that his mother was beside her self with joy what he may emailed her to tell her that he had come back to the Catholic Church some of you moms and dads here whose children are away from the Catholic Church please trust in God's providence and whether it's a CD or a book or something like that don't underestimate the power of God's grace that can work through these things there was a woman in Los Lunas New Mexico where I have spoken several times at a parish in that town and she came up to me during the the break and she pointed it surprised by truth - on the book table and she said that book brought me back to the Catholic Church and I had gotten somewhat used to hearing this because you know it's nice every author wants to hear something like that except maybe Richard Dawkins I don't think he would like to hear that about one of his books but I like hearing them about mine and I said well what happened she said well I was on a vacation up in a remote part of Minnesota and I was far from any major town or anything I've been away from the Catholic Church for 15 or 20 years living a life of pleasure and nothing at all about God and she said I went into a post office to buy some stamps for my postcards and it was just a one one-room post office in the middle of nowhere and she was talking to the clerk behind the counter and somehow improbably it came out that she was the next Catholic he said oh you're an ex-catholic and he reached under the counter he pulled out a copy of that book surprised by truth - and he says you need to read this book and she says she said well she didn't know what to say and so he said go ahead and take it I have a stack of them here that I give away to people and so she took the book and at first she was a little bit offended that he would give this to her but she started reading it same thing happened to her and she described that it was a very quick process from reading these testimonies to then becoming fully fledged but back in the Catholic Church again and so then some years later she's standing there with me at the book table and saying this is the book that brought me back and who would have ever imagined that in the middle of nowhere at a post-office that somebody would give her the very thing that needed like the key that would unlock the door I could tell you many other stories there's no time to give all of them but the power of personal testimonies not only in the kind of books and materials that you can give out but so your own personal testimony don't underestimate how God will give you power through your willingness to talk about what he's done for you I know whenever I say that I think to myself well they probably think that's a very Protestant sounding kind of thing but we were doing it for 15 years 15 hundred years before the rise of the Protestant Reformation the problem is that we Catholics have to recover that very Catholic thing of telling our testimonies and if if that doesn't ring quite true to you just remember st. agustín's confessions there's a good example of a Catholic testimony that has changed the lives of millions of people the lesson I learned from that is that what is impossible with men is possible for God you may not have any earthly idea how to help your family remember a friend come back to the church but God certainly knows here's another lesson not everyone who says nice things to you as a friend and not everyone who criticizes you as an enemy I've had plenty of people say nice things to me who turned out not to be my friends and there have been many blessed people in my life who have taken the time to criticize me and to call me to account for things that I needed to account for that were my true friends and so for me at least I listen much more closely to criticism than I do to flattery in fact I try not to listen to flattery if I can avoid it but we're all human another lesson it's the message that is important not the messenger and I think if anything has proven this to be true it's the last several years of scandals and some of the very painful situations we found ourselves in where people in whom we've reposed our trust and confidence have turned out to be more human more frail than we had expected but we shouldn't let that daunt us we should remember that it's the message not the messenger that's important and this is true for all of us when we begin seeing as I'm little by little trying to see myself that it's Christ who really matters in our discussions with other people in his message then we can as Saint John the Baptist said we can decrease so that he may increase another lesson we need to be friendly and happy and charitable nobody likes the sourpuss I don't and you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar right there all sorts of slogans and things that we can say to explain this but I think st. Peter said it best in first Peter 3:15 where he said we should always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks us for a reason for the hope that is in us but verse 16 is key he says but do it with gentleness and respect and when you're on the receiving end of somebody who is doing something for you even if you're not that excited about what's happening but they're doing it with gentleness and respect you become more willing to accept what they're telling you don't you i I do another lesson we have to be humble we have to work hard to prevent our egos from getting the better of us because the ego will slither in wherever it has an opportunity to do that and we could wind up evangelizing or doing apologetics simply because we want to win an argument not because we have the other person's best interests at heart it feels good to appear at least to win an argument but we can do more damage in the process and drive somebody further away from the truth by doing that in a haughty or supercilious manner than if we are humble and willing to be vulnerable to that other person the willingness to even allow that person to walk away from a from a conversation thinking yeah what an idiot that guy is he doesn't know the Bible very well and boy didn't I really nail him on that question that he didn't know how to answer I've gone through that myself where I was the idiot in that person's eyes but eventually they're willing to talk to me again and then again and then again because an idiot doesn't pose any any danger to you does he little do they know right so and this by the way is why I recently donated my ego to the Harvard Medical School I did I'm very proud of this I got a letter of thanks from the school's president he said it was the single largest gift they had ever received quick story here about humility we all know and love st. John Vianney the patron saint of parish priests there's a true story told about how he was struggling with the answers to a final exam in theology before he was to be ordained and one of his professors who was conducting the exam that day exclaimed in exasperation about st. John Vianney saying what could the Lord do with such a complete jackass Saint John Vianney replied if the Lord through Sampson could slay a thousand Philistines with just the jawbone of an ass imagine what he could do with a complete jackass a few more quick lessons this one's simple pray more pray more that's what I've been learning over over the years we all pray but the more we pray the more results God can bring through us I like this little aphorism if you pray well you will live well if you live well you will die well and if you die well all will be well in that nice and I think that summarizes this lesson pray more and if you pray more you'll pray better the better you pray the better you'll live the better you live the better you will die and if you die well all will be well and just for what it's worth I'd like to offer a little bit of advice attached to this if I can be in the position of giving advice I would say pray the rosary every day maybe you already do maybe you don't but if you see problems in your life if you see difficulties people that need to listen to the truth but won't hear it if you put Our Lady on the case if you pray the rosary every day I know from experience that that is the ultimate weapon against ignorance fear hatred rejection pray the rosary every day and if you want to go a step further then I would take Our Lady's promise at face value when she appeared in Paris at Rue de Bock she told people that if they would be willing to wear the miraculous metal on a chain around their neck would be one way you could wear it in other ways but a chain around the neck she says I will give great Grace's for conversion to anyone who will honor me by wearing this miraculous medal around my neck now not only conversion for ourselves but conversion for those around us so it's not a superstition it's not a good-luck charm it's not a rabbit's foot or any of those things it is like a wedding ring it reminds you and everyone around you of your devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary so my advice here again from my own experience if you pray the rosary every day if you make Our Lady part of your efforts to be a witness to Jesus keeping in mind that she was the very first witness to Jesus the first Christian the first evangelist you won't go wrong in fact it's going to supercharge your efforts and where the miraculous metal put her put her to the test and see what happens finally this is a lesson that I've learned in different ways over the years and I just want to share it with you in the form of a story this is my final point this is a story that I'd like to read to you and it's told in the words of a young woman I know I'll tell you well I won't tell you anything about her other than that she as she's writing this she's an atheist listen to this one evening she says in college some friends and I were sitting around in my dorm room getting ready to hand getting ready to head out and go to a party when the phone rang the caller ID showed that it was yet another telemarketer our number had been inundated with sales calls and I was getting sick of it we had some time to kill before we needed to leave so I decided to have some fun with a telemarketer for my friends amusement I motioned to everyone to get quiet and click the speakerphone button and answered the call immediately a middle-aged sounding man began his pitch announcing that he was with some local home services company and asking me leading questions about my carpet cleaning needs doing a horrible imitation of an East Texas accent I interrupted him to say I don't believe in cleaning carpets he paused excuse me sir that kind of thing is against my religion I said in a lecturing voice the idea came to me to play that role of to play the role of a religious zealot to see if I could get the telemarketer to be the first one to hang up if I launched into a Hellfire and brimstone lecture about how carpet cleaners were from the devil boy wouldn't my atheist friends think that was hilarious me the consummate atheist playing the character of a religious nut a bit hesitantly he said well I have never heard of that what is your religion if you don't mind my asking I'm a Christian of course she replied raising her voice raising her voice with the first syllable the way religious girls on my college campus always did when they talked about their faith oh okay he said where do you go to church that one caught me off guard I could not think of a single church off the top of my head so I stammered the the Church of the Bible woohee gosh is that covenant Bible fellowship at in Huntsville with Pastor Mike why yes it is I said Pastor Mike is just darlin isn't he I was trying to get back to the hilarity of my planned lecture about the evils of carpet cleaning but the telemarketers enthusiasm derailed me again how long have you been Christian ma'am he asked then quickly added I apologize for the personal question but it's just a topic near and dear to my heart well I accepted the Lord into my heart ten years ago I said mimicking the types of things I had always heard my born-again Christian classmates say I walk with the Lord every day god bless you he said just god bless you that is just so wonderful to hear he said I glanced at my friends I felt my face getting red this was not the triumphant whit fest that I had planned when I answered the call I've got to tell you the Lord has just he paused obviously getting choked up the Lord has just done so much for me I was away from him for so many years and I accepted him into my heart two years ago and my life has just been taken places I would never have imagined well how lovely I said I scanned the room for the handset to the phone but couldn't find it we were stuck on speaker phone out of the corner of my eye I saw my friend shift uncomfortably in their seats I'm sorry he said as his voice cracked it's just that it's just that my life was such a mess I was an alcoholic my marriage was practically over I was depressed and the Lord the Lord healed me He healed my marriage I haven't had a drink in 25 months in six days I could never have imagined that my life could be this good again and I'm just so grateful do you know what I mean no longer feeling like such a comic genius I abandoned the plan of playing the church lady role and just tried to get myself off the phone as soon as possible I didn't know what to say this poor man didn't know he was talking to a militant atheist and that a bunch of her a theist friends were listening in ah yes I muttered I'm sorry he said again it's just so good to meet people like you to come across fellow Christians when you least expect it I wanted to crawl under my bed and never come out listen he continued don't you even worry about any of this stuff I was trying to sell you that's not what matters oh I'll let you go enjoy your evening could I just ask you to keep me in your prayers um sure I'll pray for you too he said god bless you ma'am god bless you and have a good night god bless you too I stammered forgetting to use my fake accent and hung up the phone I turned to my friends they were all silent none of them were religious most were a theists and we had never hesitated to ridicule Christians in our conversations by this time nobody said anything seeing such a rare display of vulnerability and innocent sincerity had left us frozen unsure of how to approach that kind of pure humility in the silence that ensued it was clear that though he was the one who didn't get the joke it was I who was the fool some would eventually forced an awkward chuckle and someone else mumbled something about the call not going as planned and we all got up to collect our things to go to the party but before I glanced at the phone but before I left I glanced at the phone and thought about the man at the other end I thought of the warmth and love that had exude from his voice how he seemed to possess a level of hope and joy that somehow seemed both childlike and wise it was something I did not see very often but I always had a deep sense of wanting to experience more of it when I did I thought of how he had reached out to me is if I were a long-lost sister how he'd assumed that I too had experienced something so sacred and so profound that it left you changed forever feeling so overjoyed that you couldn't help but share your elation with the world even on telemarketing calls do you know what I mean he had asked after telling me of how this god of his had taken a shattered mess of a life and restored it to something beautiful and whole and as I closed my dorm room door for a brief moment I wished more than anything that I did that story is called prank calls and the power of humility by a friend of mine named Jennifer full Weiler who's a convert to the Catholic Church from atheism as an atheist this was the conversation she had now I was tempted to offer an explanation for what this lesson means but I'm not going to I'd like to let that last story linger in your minds and let you decide what that lesson is for you let's finish with a prayer the name of the Father and of the son of the Holy Spirit amen this is a prayer called the Child Jesus on the cross victim of love in manhoods prime thou wilt ascend the cross to die why hangs the child before his time stretched on that bed of agony no thorn wreath crowns my boyish brow no scourge has dealt it's cruel smart in hands and feet no nail prints show no spear is planted in my heart they have not set me for a sign hung bare beneath the sunless sky nor mixed the draught of gall and wine to mock my dying agony the live long night the live long day my child I travail for that good and for thy sake I hang away self crucified upon the Rood to witness to the living truth to keep the pure from sins alloy I cloud the sunshine of my youth the man must suffer in the boy visions of unrepented sin the forfeit crown the eternal loss lie deep my sorrowing soul within and nail my body to the cross the live long night the live long day a child upon that cross I rest all night for my children pray all day I with em to my breast long years of toil and pain are mine ere I be lifted up to die work the cold work hold a Paschal Moonbeam shine at noon on darkened Calvary then will the thorn wreath pierce my brow the nails will fix me to the tree but I shall hang as I do now self crucified for love of thee thank you and God bless you you

Channel: Franciscan University of Steubenville

Views: 15,164

Rating: 4.8727274 out of 5

Keywords: Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio, Catholic, college

Id: cwa6EvaNfFg

Length: 52min 52sec (3172 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2013