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.
- Details
- Written by Burning Hearts Team
Daily Prayer Routines
Life makes many demands on today’s families, and lives are often full and hectic. Finding the time for prayer can seem difficult - especially if you aren’t sure where to begin or how to pray as a family.
Prayer is a Gift
One reason many of us don't pray more often or more consistently 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] 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).
Make an Intentional Plan
John Piper, in his book Desiring God, says that a main hindrance to prayer is our lack of planning:
"If you want to take a four-week vacation, you don't just get up one summer morning and say, 'Hey, let's go today!' You won't have anything ready. You won't know where to go. Nothing has been planned."
Take the time to create a plan for your own personal prayer life. It doesn’t have to be rigidly followed, but can serve as a grounding reminder -- a thriving, regular, consistent time of worship of and communion with God in prayer.
Tools to Help
We have developed four tools to help you get started developing your personal prayer routine...
- Details
- Written by Burning Hearts Team
Accompaniment and Lent
The forty days of Lent can seem like a long time, especially if one is giving up a favorite food or video game. It's helpful to have a friend to keep us going. He or she can encourage us, challenge us, and pick us up if we falter. In fact, that kind of accompaniment - a holy friendship developed out of mutual love for one another and a desire to walk with one another into deeper relationship with Jesus - is the heart of evangelization and discipleship.
This year, consider finding an accompaniment partner and approaching Lent as a team. That doesn't mean you have to give up—or do—the same exact things, although that's a possibility. It does mean sharing your Lenten resolution(s) and asking for each other's prayers and active support. People often find that they're much more likely to keep their resolutions when they hold themselves accountable to another person. Knowing that someone walks with us, even if it's not exactly the same path, can be a great comfort and motivator.
If you're thinking about Lenten resolutions, consider the traditional practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving (works of charity). Here are some ideas to get started.
- Details
- Written by interGen support team
We all express and feel love differently, and understanding those differences can seriously help our relationships. Being aware of your love language, as well as the love language of the people around you, can improve your relationships with a boyfriend/girlfriend, your co-workers, your parents and siblings, and so many more.
In this talk, Kristin & Tony Bird explain how The Five Love Languages can help foster healthy relationships by recognizing your own needs as well us uncovering how to better meet the needs of the other people in your life.
This talk is a great entry point for audiences who are not explicitly religious or are on the fence. We touch on elements of faith without being explicitly religious. It is particularly fruitful for those who are in early thresholds of conversion.
- Details
- Written by Jennifer Durren
3 Takeaways from the Convocation of Catholic Leaders
3 members of the Burning Hearts Disciples team joined almost 3,500 participants at the USCCB's 2017 Convocation of Catholic Leaders. The goal of the gathering was to assemble Catholic leaders for a strategic conversation, under the leadership of the bishops, on forming missionary disciples to animate the Church and to engage the culture.
Called by the bishops, the historic convocation will find more than 3,000 Catholic leaders — bishops, clergy, religious and laypeople — meeting July 1-4 in Orlando, Florida, to focus on how the pope’s 2013 apostolic exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”), applies in the United States.
Over the next few weeks we'll be sharing some of our personal insights from the Convocation, the impact this national strategic conversation will have on our apostolate's mission, and our hope for the long-term fruits that will result in the American Catholic Church.
UPDATE: Watch the videos of the Plenary Sessions at USCCB Video On Demand.
Takeaway #1: Unity As the Body of Christ
Immediately upon arriving at the Convocation, it was clear that the first day's theme of "unity" was going to be more than just a buzzword. 3,500 bishops, clergy, religious and laity, including five of the six residential cardinals in the country - featuring delegations from more than 80 percent of the dioceses in the county and all 50 states - were gathered with one unified purpose: to explore The Joy of the Gospel and how to live it out in the Church in the United States.
It was very profound and moving to be in one space with all those fellow Catholic Disciples listening to our Apostolic leaders, and having them listen to us. As we prayed and celebrated the opening Mass, I felt Jesus' love for us and our love for him and each other throughout the room. I found myself thinking,
This is what it means to BE the Body of Christ; although we don’t live it perfectly, we are all the same body of Christ.