Transcript

Our, uh, commitment to the faith has led us in a, a love for our Catholic faith, and so we want to share it and to be of service to the Lord.

Um, immediately after our RCIA response, each of us sponsored an individual, and it was a joy to see them progress and learn.

And, uh, the most joyous day for us was to see them at confirmation and baptism, to see the glows on their faces.

It was, it was a gift.

And another, um, another contribution is that I am a, um, a Eucharistic, um, um, minister of, um, Communion.

And that is a joy to see the faces of people when they receive the Lord.

And, um, another way that, uh, I give a lot of thought about is to in answering of the, the, the commission to go out and make disciples of the world.

And, uh, we, we sorta do that in a planned sort of way.

Um, uh, we go out and we see a stranger.

We try to make a friend and we try to bring a friend to Christ.

And i- in doing that we, um, uh, spend prayer time much asking that the Lord will, um, have this done as He so will.

But we, uh, also experience making a friend, and for me friends are valuable, those especially Christian friends.

Mm-hmm.

And we pray.

We answer any questions that they might have.

If they appear to be interested, we then invite them to a mass with us and we have done that.

And, um, praying again and asking for questions or letting them ask questions.

And it come to a point where their interest is piqued to the point that they want to know more.

We try to answer for them, uh, how good and gracious the Lord has been to them in their life just by knowing them, pointing out to them this grace and mercy of the Lord.

Mm-hmm.

They want more information that we don't have readily available, we will make sure they get one from the church, a bulletin or whatever.

A, a pamphlet that-

Or a book.

Yeah.

Or a book.

Or a book.

Yeah.

Or a book.

There's many books that, uh, they can use to further their, uh, inquiry into what the Catholic faith is about.

Saint Paul talks to the Corinthians about how he planted the faith among them and someone else, Saint Apollos, came along and watered it.

But God gave the growth so that there was actually eventually a harvest of souls there.

And I've thought about that many times when I think about passing on the faith, sharing the faith, that folks often have a, a notion of, of sharing the faith, what we would call evangelization-

Mm-hmm.

as if you have to be some great preacher, some great priest or professional evangelist to be able to share the faith, and that that's how it happens in big groups, maybe in revival meetings.

But the truth is for most people, it was certainly the, that way for me, the faith was shared in, in little bits and little seeds and little sprinkles of water that would help the faith to grow by different people.

Many of the people didn't even know each other.

And that's what I've come to see in my own life.

It's what I call evangelization by the ounce.

That if we think about it, if we're just intentional about it all through our life, many days, people around us, we can share our faith in small ways.

It may be just that we recommend they read something that we think would be useful to them.

We may just answer a question about our faith.

Maybe that we ask a question to get them to start thinking about some things.

It may be that we offer to pray for them.

It may be that we set an example of integrity, that we invite them to mass.

There's so many small things that we can do.

Now that I'm Catholic, I find that I do get a, a joy from, from being able to share my faith, from handing on the faith to my friends and to my family.

Um, I, I enjoy conversations with people who are considering Catholicism or who are even challenging Catholicism.

Don't take it as a, you know, a threat or I don't become defensive.

I find joy in practicing my faith and I'm eager to share it with others.

I get so much joy sharing my Catholic faith with my children and also my godchildren.

I did not grow up Catholic, so my early Christian formation, um, you know, didn't have a first communion or didn't have an infant baptism, and it brings me so much joy to see my children experience these sacraments.

I love answering their questions when they come to me, when they, when they learn something new and we talk about it.

I love our time together, um, on the weekends if we, if we pray a family rosary and hearing their little voices recite, um, the words to the rosary.

I love, um, being a part of, of their formation because I know that this is, uh, the Church that's going to, to shape their life forever.

And yet, how many people do you know that may be in your own situation that have come this journey of faith to a large degree because of so many people in their lives planting little seeds, sprinkling little bits of life-giving water that made the seeds bear fruit?

And so that's something I, I hope for all new Catholics.

It's certainly been true in my life that we look for little occasions every day if we can to just encourage someone else down the road either to faith or closer to God if they already have faith.

And I think it'll be amazing how even faith like a mustard seed, as Jesus said, can move mountains.