Gulf Pine Catholic

12 Gulf Pine Catholic • January 7, 2022 Sherry Weddell From page 9 Learning how to listen is one of the most crucial things. Part of building trust is lowering defenses so people feel like, “I can talk to Dad, even though I know he disagrees with me. I can trust him to honor me, to not run over me.” Really listening -- asking good ques- tions that evoke issues, and then listening without judg- ment -- that is when people’s defenses drop. I used to think that if I let people talk error, and I didn’t correct them right away, I was hardening them in their error. And, boy, was I wrong. Because what enables them to open the door to new input is you lis- tening, asking the questions that probably no one has ever asked them before. Maybe they’ve never tried to put their ideas into words; they themselves don’t know what they actually think. By listening, you’re opening the door not just to conversations with you, but to conversations with a lot of people. Studies indicate that nonbelievers and non- practicing Christians are much more likely to talk about faith with someone if they’ve had a positive faith con- versation in the last year. Just one positive faith conversation in a whole year can double their openness. These are the very early stages, but they’re crucial before we get to things like apologetics and catechesis. Columbia: In your writing, you talk about “pow- erful evangelizing tools” that already exist in par- ishes. What are some practical things that Knights of Columbus councils can do to fulfill that potential in their parish and in their community? Sherry Weddell: I think Knights of Columbus could be hugely important. The evangelizing potential of the Knights is staggering. There are two basic first steps. The first is interces- sory prayer. We believe that Jesus Christ is our high priest and intercessor, praying with us and in us, pour- ing out graces on the world. It is this same glorified, ascended Lord, at the right hand of the Father in heav- en, whom we encounter in the Eucharist. And we have seen that in parishes where people participate in this intercessory prayer, engaging in orga- nized, sustained prayer for the spiritual renewal of the community, the atmosphere changes. Distrust and con- flict go way down; spiritual openness goes way up. People are much more responsive to anything that the church does: preaching, evangelization, care for the poor. People are much more likely to actually step inside your building and have a direct experience of the presence of God. We’ve heard a number of stories like this. Total strangers, with no clue in the world, just walk in and it changes their lives. I happen to be one of them. As a fundamentalist undergrad in Seattle, I walked across the threshold of a Catholic church and felt the Real Presence. And that’s why I am talking to you today. If you had tried to explain the Real Presence to me, I wouldn’t have believed it, because it was against every category I had in my head. But I had a direct mystical experience. And there are many other people who’ve had similar experi- ences. Intercessory prayer basically frees people up to say yes. We never control people through prayer, that’s really important to understand. We can’t make some- body come back to church by praying for them. But what you can do is remove impediments, misunder- standings, lies they’ve believed, fears, that sort of thing. We restore their freedom to see the good and respond. That’s what we’re doing when we join Christ in his intercessory prayer. The second step is breaking the silence about the possibility of a relationship with God. Even though that has been our doctrine for 2,000 years, we don’t talk about it much at the local parish level. When we don’t talk about Jesus, when we don’t tell His story, when we don’t talk about our own experiences of encountering Him, when we don’t talk about His saving presence in the Eucharist, we are undermining and suppressing conversion in our parishes. In one parish that we’ve worked with, they had a policy that every single meeting would start with some- body giving a testimony of their encounter with God and how it changed their lives. This was at every level -- all formation classes, business meetings, pastoral council, even social events -- the first minutes were spent doing that. It became so normal. And when peo- ple see that it is normal for ordinary Catholics to have those experiences, they start to say, “Maybe I could have something like that. It’s not just for Mother Teresa or some very special saints.” I could see the Knights making something like that part of their council meet- ings, for example. Breaking the silence about relationship with God and telling Jesus’ story are really important. There are lots of different ways that can happen -- evangelizing retreats, conferences, courses -- and all these things take leadership, time, energy, creativity, resources. And I think it’d be right up the Knights’ alley. Columbia: You spend a lot of time studying and thinking about very sobering facts about the state of the Church. What gives you hope? Sherry Weddell: The first is the fact that the living Lord is with us. The one to whom all power and author- ity has been given, this Lord of history, dwells in our midst and is pouring out His graces on us. He is inter- ceding so that God’s kingdom will be built on earth as it is in heaven. We’re joining Him in that, and He has the power to make that happen. The second is the fact that we have been here before, more than once. Frankly, the Church has been in much worse places than this. For example, in early 17th-century France, a generation of disciples arose out of a disaster a thousand times worse than anything you and I have experienced. They had lived through 32 years of religious civil wars in which millions of French people had died. And out of that conflict arose what historians call the generation of saints. It started with Francis de Sales. In 1594, as a newly ordained priest, he set out on foot in his area of the French Alps, where every Catholic church had been padlocked for 60 years, where there were 40,000 ex-Catholics and 100 practicing Catholics. And in four years, he re-evangelized the whole area. That was the opening salvo of this enormous reviv- al that involved tens of thousands of people -- laypeo- ple, married, single, rich, poor. God raised up an extraordinary network. And they not only re-evange- lized the Church, they had an impact on it for 150 years afterward. Out of that, a missionary movement brought the faith to North America, to Southeast Asia and else- where. The revival that came out of that country basi- cally changed the entire Catholic Church. And there’s no reason we cannot be a generation of saints now, in the 21st century. We have the same Jesus Christ, the same grace of the Holy Spirit, the same Gospel, the same tradition. The question is, will we respond like they did? Will we say yes? And we have to do this together. No individual is big enough for this. We need to say yes together to be a generation of saints for the 21st century. And there’s no reason that God could not use us to start another revival, just like theirs. That’s my hope. Reprinted with permission of Columbia Magazine Bishop Kihneman’s homilies are available in video and audio form on the Diocese of Biloxi’s website. To access these homilies, visit www.biloxidiocese.org. Pray for all those who are suffering from the results of hurricanes, earthquakes, Covid and war. Pray for peace on earth!