Next Meeting March 26th 8:00 am
Yes, that is Holy Saturday
Welcome to all new sign-ups from Men For All Seasons!
Our next meeting is on Holy Saturday, March 26th, 8:00 - 9:30a, at the Gehl Center (the building directly behind St. Francis Xavier Cathedral in Green Bay). We'll be going over the basics of Evangelization in general - how to have a conversation with someone. We'll use lots of stories but almost as important: the 'how'; how do we move the topic to religion / spiritual things; how do we earn the right to talk about the most personal things in their life and invite them to explore Catholicism? For those of you unable to make it I will try to do a follow up post.
I would also ask each of you to consider coming with Shawn and I to watch while we do Street Evangelization. We're starting to gear up for Summer: Farmer's Markets, De Pere Fest; Manitowoc Kite Festival; Packer's Practices and Games etc. We'll let you know dates as we're able to do them. We may even do a fast one and switch the site of our meeting one month to be the farmer's market! Please pray on this. We're firm believers that Christ's final charge to us was NOT "Go get yourselves to heaven." but "Go make disciples... teach them everything I have commanded." (Mt28:18ff).
If you'd like to know more about how we do Street Evangelization check out: streetevangelization.com (no 'www' just "streetevangelization.com"). Sign up for their news letter and read some testimonials from some of the over 150 teams of Catholics across all 50 states and over 30 countries.
Official Patroness of Fidei Defensor:
The more I do this work, and the longer I live, the less I believe in coincidents. The table next to Fidei Defensor's at Men for All Seasons was a couple of Byzantine Catholic monks selling icons... well selling many copies of ONE icon. I love art and icons and this icon caught my eye. It was obviously of Mary and the Child, Jesus. But it wasn't until late in the conference I got over there and had, what ended up being, a great discussion with one of the Brothers. The icon is called, "Mary, Mother of God, Seeker of the Lost." You can see it at their Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/SearcherForTheLost/
The prayer behind it is that Mary wants everyone to come to find, know and love her Son, Jesus Christ, but this Title and icon is a special prayer / help for those lost sheep who have wandered from the fold or never knew it.
When I told the Brother that I was going to adopt Mary under the title: Mother of God, Seeker of the Lost, as our Patroness, he gave me around 100 3x5 card prints of the icon to hand out on our Street Evangelization days.
Please continue to pray for Fidei Defensor and it's members, and if you remember, now request the intercession of Mary, Mother of God, Seeker of the Lost.
Men for All Seasons Re-cap
We spoke to easily 100 men at the Men for All Seasons conference this past weekend. Out of that we had lengthy conversations with dozens of them - I left there with my voice hoarse. The most meaningful conversations came from men who were looking for answers to help bring their family members back into the Catholic Faith. Our pamphlets on "Why be Catholic?", "Reasons to Return to the Catholic Church", "Scriptural Reference Guide" and "Prayer to Saints" were obviously our most popular pamphlets there, however, many of the men took one of everything.
I'll type a little about a few of the more member able conversations:
One elderly man was deeply saddened that his three sons were not serious about their faith. Two, he said, attended Mass only on Christmas and Easter and otherwise didn't go at all. The third was attending, sporadically as well, a non-denominational church. We talked to him about first and foremost praying for and loving his sons as best he could. We let him know that it is sometimes more effective to have someone else talk to family members about the faith then himself, however, that can mean a book or a CD. We recommended "Jesus Is_____?" - a CD from Lighthouse Catholic Media, by Fr. Michael Schmidtz, which is good for people who are luke-warm to almost non-participating Catholics, for his two sons. But we recommended "True Worship" again a CD through Lighthouse Catholic Media by Fr. Schmidtz, for his non-denominational son, which walks through what the Biblical true way to worship God is: The Eucharist.
Another man was just coming back into the Catholic Church after years away. He had been married, divorced and remarried. He had some questions about what his status was with the Church. We told him he was absolutely welcome! We explained that he would have to receive a Declaration of Nullity for his first marriage before he could receive Confession or the Eucharist OR he and his current wife could live as "Brother and Sister." He described the way his first marriage happened and that it was in a Protestant church, without permission from the Church. Shawn was aware from a family member who had a similar experience, that the process probably would be a short one due to a violation of "form." We directed him to his parish priest at first, but there were so many priests at the conference we put him in touch with one right there! We also directed him to a small booklet on Catholic Answers titled: 101 Quick Questions: Divorce and Annulment.
Finally, we had a man who had come back to the Catholic Church a few years earlier. He had questions about how to raise his teenaged son to not make the same mistakes he did, without sounding and feeling like a hypocrite. We explained to him that the definition of a hypocrite is NOT having done one thing, learning from it and then teaching someone else to avoid it. That's called "Learning from your mistakes." A hypocrite is not even someone who believes something, tries to live what they believe but fails to do so. That's called "a sinner"; and I am absolutely in that list.
A hypocrite is someone who believes one thing, but teaches others to believe something else. For example: just recently a nationally known Catholic Apologist was "outed" by a Catholic news group that he had joined and been attending an Anglican / Episcopalian congregation for 2 years while still giving seminars and talks defending the Catholic Church. THAT is a hypocrite.
We also directed this man to look up Steve Ray's "Swimming Up Stream" available at Lighthouse Catholic media again. It's a talk about how to raise our children to be Rebels With a Cause; rebelling against the secular world, swimming against the current of this culture.
We had MANY other talks like this with men of all ages. Please pray for all these men and their families... and as always please pray for Fidei Defensor.
God Bless,
Fidei Defensor
Mary, Mother of God, Seaker of the Lost, pray for us!
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