Posted on 09/02/2010 1:35:47 AM PDT by markomalley
My mother-in-law entered the Catholic Church this past Easter because the mere actions and lifestyle of her daughter (and apparently me... the mind boggles) gave her the idea that maybe we had something she wanted too. It took 15 years, but she has directly confirmed that if we'd spent that time hammering her with Scripture and doctrine it wouldn't have worked.
There is a time for instruction, there is also a time for a living witness, confusing the timing can lead to disaster. Not everyone is equally suited for the task of instruction, a quick look around the religion forum proves that. I know I'm not, except in very few circumstances.
Everyone wants to be the mouth, nobody wants to be a toe.
Then, by all means, be silent
“I am not Catholic.”
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sitetest
Most Gracious Apologies. I hereby retract all I said, please, if necessary, have the moderator remove them.
Christ left us with a wonderful message to share with others.
We have seen how Christianity has grown. A great amount of diversity within the Church. While I truly believe that the Catholic Church is the one true Church, we need to continue to follow Christ with our love for him and our neighbor.
We need to continue to make the Church and ourselves holy by sharing this message from God - both by word and deed.
We can be happy and fulfilled in Christ as we grow in understanding and wisdom. We need to chose to be with Christ and follow him and share His Love with others.
It can be hard to open the eyes of others and they will need to desire to be open to Christ. We need to stand firm on the principles taught by Christ and be willing to speak out and to make sacrifices to follow them.
If we truly want to be with Christ, others will see that and want to follow Christ also.
I read this earlier today and have been thinking about it since.
It's a tough one.
My own reaction is similar to those posters who talk about evangelizing through our actions. I do believe that actions often speak louder than words. But I also believe that sometimes, our actions may provoke questions, and we need to be ready to answer those questions, to the best of our ability, and even more importantly, in a position of openness to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
The other thing to remember is that the people we need to evangelize are generally those closest to us. For those of us who are married with children, transmitting the faith to the best of our ability to them is our very most important evangelistic task. Also, many of us know many Catholics - whether friends or relatives, co-workers, etc. - who are, at best, nominal or occasional Catholics. By our example and our gentle words, perhaps we can evangelize these, too, to bring them to fuller participation and deeper faith.
sitetest
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