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
What does accompaniment look like in the midst of the current crisis of abuse, cover up & scandal? It must mean first LISTENING.
Person to Person Listening: Openness of Heart
We need to provide a space within our hearts for others to feel their despair, hopelessness, anger, betrayal, fear, denial and heartbreak - and then to simply sit with them in that place.
I am struck by how often we (all the Baptized) fall into the trap of trying to tell other people what to feel and how to think about all these matters. What starts as sharing my own emotions quickly turns into debating, posturing, defending, and becoming solution-focused.
When I jump to responding, I ignore the lived experience of the person in front of me. I focus on myself - my own defensiveness, skepticism, anger, etc - rather than being truly present to the other. When I jump to solutions, I am not truly present to brokenness.
We have a particular responsiblity to listen and be truly present to those who have been hurt, traumatized and destroyed by men acting in the name of the Church. It is especially important that we do not allow them to feel forgotten as the spin, politics, and finger pointing continue to make news.
We must pray for those who are still hurting while we argue - but genuine accompaniment calls us to more than prayer. It calls us to compassion, to empathy - to listening - rather than arguing.
Communal Listening: Masses of Healing, Reparation, Atonement, & Repentence
What might this kind of listening look like the context of a larger community - a parish or a diocese?
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- Written by: Kristin Bird
September 15 is the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows.
May she who followed her Son to Calvary help us to follow him, carrying his cross with serenity and love, to reach the joy of Easter. May the Virgin of Sorrows especially comfort those who are facing the most difficult situations. (Pope Francis, March 24, 2013)
In her role as Our Lady of Sorrows, Mary becomes the mother who cries with us when we are suffering.
When Simeon prohpesied at the temple that a sword would pierce her heart, did she know what that sword would be? Did that prophesy fill her with dread? Did she pray desperately to God to avoid it, even as she taught her young son to seek and obey God's will in his life? As she listened to Jesus cry out on the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me," (Mt 27:46) did she feel abandoned by God?
Mary lived in a different time and place. Her experience of daily living was nothing like mine in the details. She didn’t have the convenience of electricity, for one thing. Her vocation was outlined in a very different way.
And yet, I find that the Mother of God and I do share the humanity of suffering. As she stood at the foot of the Cross, she must have felt the full cascade of emotions and the brunt of sorrow. The three days before Jesus rose must have been torture.
It’s easier to lean back into the arms of someone who’s been there. I look to Mary and see the careworn face of a wife, daughter, and mother who has known the burden of everyday life, the small stings and the big burns. I turn to Mary and I feel the comfort of someone who has survived the suffering and offers me the same graces.
Sarah Reinhard, Integrated Catholic
In her role as the Sorrowful Mother, Mary shows us how - in a life filled with suffering - there is also grace. When we are despondent and feeling hopeless, Our Lady of Sorrows can be a wellspring of hope. She can cry with us in the midst of pain. She can pray with us through our heartbreak. She can wrap us in the comforting warmth of her motherly mantel and just be with us.
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- Written by: Kristin Bird
One reason many of us don't pray more often or better is because we have questions and uncertainties about prayer. We worry that we’re doing it wrong or that it’s not really working. One of the best ways to combat the neutralizing effect this doubt can have on your prayer life is to remember that prayer is a gift.
Prayer Comes From God
“[Prayer] is not what we do but what God does in us, how God loves us, addresses us, looks at us, enlightens us, forgives us, heals us, purifies us and eventually transforms us.”
Dominican Nuns Ireland Family Day Address (www.dominicannuns.ie)
God is constantly seeking us. Like the father who daily scanned the horizon for his prodigal son, God waits patiently for us. Prayer is the gift, given to us by God, to respond to His call and to seek him in return.
Every moment of prayer begins, not with us, but with God’s call to us - the desire for union with him that he has placed deep within our hearts. Our prayer is a response to that call. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says,
“Prayer is both a gift of grace and a determined response on our part. It always presupposes effort” (2725).
Prayer is Relationship
It is time spent with someone you love. To pray is to speak and then to listen; to communicate on a more personal and profound level and to grow in understanding, respect and appreciation of the other.
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- Written by: Burning Hearts Team
There are many different ways to express and proclaim the kerygma. You can find it throughout the New Testament, the documents of the Church, and the writings of the early Church Fathers.
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What Is the Kerygma?
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Ultimately, however you express it, the kerygma is about the person of Jesus Christ and someone making a choice to give their lives to Him - to become his disciple.
Proclaiming The Kerygma is Essential to the Mission of Evangelization.
To proclaim Jesus Christ is the Church's mission.
[Silent] witness, no matter how excellent, will ultimately prove ineffective unless its meaning is clarified and corroborated…the good news proclaimed by a witness of life sooner or later has to be proclaimed by the word of life. (Pope Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 22)
Evangelization will also always contain - as the foundation, center, and at the same time, summit of its dynamism - a clear proclamation that, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, who died and rose from the dead, salvation is offered to all men, as a gift of God's grace and mercy. (Pope Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 27)
On the lips of the catechist the first proclamation must ring out over and over: “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.” (Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 164)
How Do We Proclaim This Message?
There are a number of resources and tools that we can recommend to help you proclaim the kerygma most effectively to the people you have been called to evangelize. Ultimately however, the most powerful proclamation of the kerygma is the one that comes from out of your personal encounter with the life-changing power of the person of Jesus. The most effective proclamation tool you have at your fingertips is your answer to this question:
What difference has Jesus made in your life?
Internalizing and living this core apostolic proclamation in your own life must come before any of the resources below can be used with any expectation of fruitfulness.
When we see the movements of the kergyma in our own life stories, we can be nimble enough to share this proclamation in the manner, method, and expression most appropriate to the needs and journey of the person or people in front of us.
Kerygma Resources for Adults
The list below is not exhaustive! There are a number of different tools available to help us encounter, absorb, and proclaim Jesus - but these are a few we have found to be particularly helpful. (See also: Proclaiming the Kerygma to Children & Youth)