The Making Disciples Today Blog has reflections to help you grow in your journey of missionary discipleship, reviews on recommended Catholic evangelization resources, and practical insight on how to evangelize in your daily life.
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- Written by: Kristin Bird
If your family’s Thanksgiving prayer sounds more like a comedy sketch than a quiet moment of gratitude, you’re in good company. The dog’s barking, someone’s burning the rolls, and just as you bow your head, someone yells, “Who’s saying grace?” Stillness rarely finds a seat at the table.
In our family, I usually get the “voluntary” assignment to pray. (Apparently working in ministry means you’re forever it. It’s practically a job hazard.) Some years it’s sacred; other years it’s like being handed a microphone you didn’t ask for. Either way, it’s real life – loud, messy, and exactly where Jesus likes to show up.
Not long ago, a woman at one of our accompaniment sessions shared a story I haven’t been able to shake. She and her brother hadn’t spoken in years. Politics, religion, and hurt feelings had built a wall neither knew how to climb. Then, out of nowhere, he called. He wanted to see her. They planned dinner at her house.
She brought it up during the session and asked quietly, “When is it okay for me to talk about faith again?”
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- Written by: Cathy Lins
When someone has been hurt—especially by the Church or those in authority—trust isn’t automatic. Missionary disciples who want to walk with the wounded must learn how to accompany at the speed of trust.
Missionary discipleship often assumes that when we extend an invitation, people will accept. But for the wounded, that’s not how trust works.
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- Written by: Kristin Bird
Do I speak up now, or just listen? Am I supposed to invite them deeper, or just keep walking alongside for now? Should I encourage them to take a step closer to Jesus, or just let God work quietly in the space between us?
These questions capture the heart of accompaniment-based evangelization. It’s a tension every missionary disciple knows: holding both a pastor’s heart that wants to care tenderly for the person in front of us and a missionary’s urgency that longs to see them take the next step toward Christ.
Holding that tension is not easy. It’s messy. It feels like fumbling in the dark. And yet – it’s exactly where God asks us to live. Both proclamation and patience. Both urgency and gentleness. Both moving and staying.
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- Written by: Kristin Bird
I’ve always known Mary as the Mother of God. I’ve loved her as Queen of Heaven and admired her “yes” at the Annunciation.
But it wasn’t until I stood in front of a statue of her in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher—wrecked, silent, and hollow-eyed—that I understood her as a companion in sorrow.
That moment stayed with me.
Those Who Mourn, a magazine dedicated to grief and spiritual reflection, recently published a piece I wrote about that moment—and about how Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows, can accompany us in grief.
Our Lady of Sorrows: A Ministry of Presence
Mary is known by a lot of titles–Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea, Mother of God. But the one that has meant the most to me in the seasons of my own sorrow is this one: Our Lady of Sorrows.
Because she gets it.
She knows what it's like to ache for someone you love. She's held a suffering child in her arms. She's waited in uncertainty. She's stood by while people she loved were misunderstood, mistreated, crucified–literally. She has stood in the space between hope and heartbreak–and not run from it.
She has stayed.
