Karl Keating's E-Letter of March 25, 2008

[Forum Admin]

Karl's E-Letter of March 25, 2008

Topic:

Two Profiles In Courage

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http://www.catholic.com/newsletters/kke_080325.asp

[Writer]

Inspiring messages in the latest e-letter. I took the opportunity to share with some Protestant family and friends, and everyone seems to have found real value and inspiration in this conversion story. Keep up the good work!

[Junebug999]

Their courage is inspiring. Their faith is inspiring. A wonderful example for us. We need to remember them in prayer. I had recently become disheartened about anti-Catholic comments and challenges. I now see it as I have it too easy, I'm too soft. God called me to his Church, a local parish in a suburb in California? And I'm concerned about a few anti-Church comments? I'm concerned how family members will look on me? No where do I fear for my life, no where is there any threat to me for going to Mass, RCIA.

"Lord, protect all those who are in danger for coming to your Church. Lord, protect our Holy Father. Lord thank you for those who are willing to take any risk to follow you. Thank you for leaders who will follow you."

[CapaxDei]

Thanks be to God.

[bcuster]

I read Karl's E-letter with great joy, but also great shame. I am such a coward! Here are two men who risk their lives to proclaim that Jesus is Lord and I am concerned with what people will think if I pull out my Rosary at the dentist's office. I am ashamed and I should be ashamed. Please Lord Jesus, help me and all cowards like me have the courage to proclaim you from every roof top. Teach me to trust the Holy Spirit to give me the words and actions that will shout to my neighbors that I owe all I am and all I have to You. Loving Father, help me not be worried about what other's think, but to remember that I am Your daughter. Please join me in praying for courage for all Catholics and all Christians to proclaim to all the Good News. Allelulia!
My Jesus, Mercy!

[chelseaboy]

A very brave man indeed.

I live in the UK & we too have the same problem. Openly converting muslims to Christianity will provoke an extreme reaction from the muslim community. We've also had issues with Salman Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses' novel and the UK press would not reproduce the mohammed cartoons.

In a 'free' society people will convert to & from a faith. People will cricticise and even insult a faith. I get annoyed & upset like others but I believe that no one has the right 'not to be offended'. We should handle these situations with charity & not react with anger. Didn't Christ say 'Love your enemies' ? Islam has no right at all to impose sanctions on apostates or anyone that is not a muslim. We all must be brave & calmly but firmly proclaim the truth.

[Cathy]

Welcome, chelseaboy. It's good to have your perspective from the UK.

I agree with the poster who feels ashamed, and for the very same reason. I join in your prayer to our Lord for courage and perseverance in the faith.

I know of a lady in Iran who reads the Bible and prays to Jesus, but her whole family is Muslim. There must be very many like her.
May God bless and protect them. And may God bring us all, Christians, Muslims and all people to the fullness of His Truth.

[Susan1006]

Christianity always shows itself in its best light when professed by those who will likely suffer for their beliefs. Jesus himself promised us that it would be that way, and in the first few centuries after his incarnation, we were inundated with brave souls who willingly “gave their lives” and even physically died for their faith.

The interesting thing in my view is that when we decide to publicly profess our devotion to the God of Love in his three persons, and take advantage of the power of being carried on the wings of the Holy Spirit, we find that we too can be courageous. The truth isn’t so much that courageous people speak out as even trying to speak infuses us with God’s own great courage.

Jesus didn’t commission us to make converts. He commissioned us to make disciples. Disciples follow the master and we all know where the master chose to end his worldly sojourn. I think that the miracle isn’t that anyone is Christian by today’s ecumenical and easy standards, but that anyone at all is Christian by the real standards of being a disciple of Jesus.

I blame the Protestants with their “once saved always saved no matter what I do with the rest of my life” approach to being a Christian, but not entirely. Catholics, too, seem to think that having their name in the book gives them a pass for refusing to behave like a disciple of Jesus. It is a seductive heresy, and we all fall for it. The missing piece- the piece that by being missing make it a heretical belief - is that once we recognize we were saved by the sacrifice of the cross, we are supposed to be able to discern that we were saved by the grace of God and need his grace to STAY saved.

Anyway, I am moved by the bravery of the public figure who was baptized by Pope Benedict on national TV and publicly renounced his Muslim upbringing. That was an act of huge courage, and may have set him up for sainthood by martyrdom.

We don’t take our religion seriously, when we discount things like living lives of heroic virtue as being okay for those religious fanatics of the past, but foolish and irrelevant for modern thinkers such as ourselves. If we don’t take God seriously and pay attention to his unchanging, unwavering faithful message to us of how to be saved by his power and grace, why should we think he will take us seriously when we find ourselves blubbering and begging for mercy when faced with what lukewarm, hypocritical non-disciples we were.

Actually, the blubbering and begging will probably work. It’s the “Whatever, I don’t have time for this,” “I am too sophisticated for this whole scene,” or the “I am a miserable worm because you don’t care about me, so forget you” attitudes (among many other variations) that could lead to eternal life without God, an experience we can not even imagine.