"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Last week I was in San Antonio giving my “Entrepreneurial Faith” talk to the YCP chapter there.
“Entrepreneurial Faith” (Download)
Q&A (Download)
— Questions —
• You’re an British Catholic. How is that possible?!
• What did you read which led you back into the Catholic Faith?
• How can I put the gift of writing to the service of the Church?
(Just as I was about the answer this question, there was a thunderclap outside!)
There are many worrying statistics concerning the Catholic Faith in the USA. One in ten Americans consider themselves ex-Catholics. In fact, if “ex-Catholics” were counted as their own religious group, they would be the third-largest denomination, right after Catholics and Baptists. As many as 100,000 drift away from the Faith each year. These figures should give us serious pause for thought since, as Christians, we are called to evangelize the world, to witness to Jesus Christ and His Church.
Today I’d like to begin a series of posts which are based on a talk I recently gave at my parish. The talk was entitled “Catholics Come Home”.
Over the next two posts, I would like to tell a little bit my own story, of my journey away from and eventual return to the Catholic Church. I’ve told parts of this story before, but in this retelling I hope to focus on some of the things which attracted and repelled me along the way. In subsequent posts, I’ll attempt to pull these experiences together and distill them into a list of suggestions as to what can be done to draw people back to the Church.
In today’s episode we look at the penultimate section of Chapter 1:
I want you to know, brethren, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ; and most of the brethren have been made confident in the Lord because of my imprisonment, and are much more bold to speak the word of God without fear.
Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel; the former proclaim Christ out of partisanship, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in that I rejoice. – Philippians 1:12-18
Here’s what I had to say:
For an audio-only version of this video, please click here.
A few days ago I received this email:
Any chance you could write about miracles that involve time (if there are any). There are miracles of all types it seems, but I’ve never heard of a miracle that involved some manipulation of time. Just curious if perhaps you had.
The first example I thought was from the Book of Joshua where one reading of the text (Joshua 10) would suggest that time stood still while the Israelites won the battle.
The other example I thought of was that of “bilocation”. In miracles of bilocation, a person is seen in two different places at the same time. In fact, the patron Saint of this blog, St. Drogo, was reported to have bilocated.
The final miracle I thought of was the Eucharist since, through the words of consecration, the sacrifice of Jesus is made present on our altars.
These were the only three examples I could think of though. I guess the problem with miracles concerning time is that they’re kinda hard to keep track of!
Can anyone think of any other examples of miracles concerning time?
If you are leading a Bible Study of these Readings, I would suggest reading them in the following order: Gospel, First Reading, Second Reading, Psalm.
This week is probably my favourite feast in the Church’s liturgical year: Pentecost. On the day the Holy Spirit came, three thousand people entered the Church. Let us pray to the Holy Spirit that we might see this again in our days…
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.
O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.
A little while ago I was commenting on a friend’s blog where we were discussing the practice of church attendance on Sundays. Given that a lot of Protestants comment on his blog, I posed the following question to all those commenting:
What actually is the Protestant motivation for going to church on Sunday?
Now, this might seem like a silly question, but I asked it due to a certain train of thought that I had noticed during my time in the Protestant world. It’s a train of thought that I feel leads to unavoidable, awkward conclusions…
If you heard the last episode of The Restless Heart, you will know that we’re currently doing a giveaway of Bobby and Jackie Angel‘s new book, “Forever: A Catholic devotional for your marriage”:
If you would like a chance of winning the book, please follow us on Twitter @davidandnessa and tweet us a message! Competition closes on 5th October.