My priest has spoken highly of Sherry Weddell’s Forming Intentional Disciples, so when given the chance to study and discuss it for free this summer, I decided to jump in! All comers are welcome…easy-as-pie free study guide, or cheap-for-you copies of the book should make this a great summer book group for Catholic mamas.
Today, we look at the Introduction and I’m reflecting on what my lived relationship with God is. Golly, I ‘muse on Him through the night’, often waking for the 3 a.m. Divine Mercy shift, when we seem to soar through the world together blessing friends and whole continents! I run past Him and take Him for granted and ignore signals that He wants to talk to me, just like I do that to my family….so sorry, Lord! I beg Him for help being present to Him in the Blessed Sacrament – no doubt He’s fully there, but I’m the one whose presence is vague and ghostly, or fractured and insubstantial! His Spirit helps me write poetry…or, I often pray in poetry….is that the same thing? In a crisis He is my go-to pillar of strength. In non-crises, He waits patiently while I get over the illusion I can handle things myself. So, that was fun….now for the next question: is my parish a hotbed of discipleship???
Well, though I had a good laugh before getting serious about answering, who am I to say how discipleship is going in my parish??? Olivia Steer is doing great things with young moms who want to get deeper into their faith. Focus ministry is, I think, doing helpful things with college students. The St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center theology classes are, I hear, wonderful for those students who are attracted already to go deeper into the Faith. The Apostles of the Interior Life are super-on-fire and great at helping draw people deeper in. So, it sounds like we may be a hotbed after all!
I think the reason my initial reaction was a guffaw is that there isn’t much community life among the faculty/permanent community, so it is my inclination to doubt there is much fire-for-faith where there is not any smoke-from-shared-hearth-fire – very lame attempt at humor….pardon the ad lib answers! I’ll be interested to see how this author thinks we should go about making disciples, and then can think more about whether this is happening at my parish.
“…who am I to say how discipleship is going in my parish?”
Same here. I see some things that encourage me, but as a parish we aren’t halfway there yet. But unless I’m kidding myself, it gets incrementally better each year.