During the summer after my senior year in college in 1990, I experienced a return and deepening of my faith through the intercession of our Blessed Mother. The following January, as a 23-year-old seminarian, I began attending Mass every day. Today—32 years later—I have since gone to Mass and received Holy Communion over 10,000 times. Little by little, bit by bit, these 10,000 Communions have transformed me. Only in retrospect can I appreciate how much I needed to be transformed. Today, I am still a work in progress, but the Eucharist is the center of my life, the daily event... Read more
Categories
- Adult Faith Formation
- Articles from Bishops
- Catechesis and Culture
- Catechizing Children
- Catechizing with Art
- Catholic Schools
- Evangelization
- Leadership & Catechist Formation
- Liturgical Catechesis
- Marriage and Family
- Pedagogy & Methodology
- Personal Witness Stories
- RCIA
- Sacramental Preparation
- Saints and Holy Men & Women
- Scriptural Catechesis
- Spiritual Formation and Prayer
- Youth Ministry
Articles Under: Personal Witness Stories
How tempting it is to want the Lord to provide grace far in advance! Yet, in the Our Father we have the petition and the promise that our loving Father will give us our daily bread. While there are many layers of meaning, one implication in these words is that he will provide the grace we need in the specific circumstances of our day. In a world where self-sufficiency and independence are praised, we can easily forget this basic truth. It is a truth of which the Lord reminds me almost daily—sometimes even multiple times a day—to shift from my... Read more
Mark your calendar for the upcoming 2024 Steubenville Conferences for adults, held on our beautiful campus in Steubenville, OH. Registration will open in late January, 2024. NOTE: The St. John Bosco Conference for Evangelization & Catechesis is being postponed until summer of 2025 because of our involvement with the National Eucharistic Congress. Hope to see you there! Questions? Call 740-283-6315.Read more
After I graduated college and joined the military, I started volunteering for a parish youth group. I figured it would be a perfect way to dissociate myself from the hustle of work and diversify my friend group beyond my then-insulated circle of “sailor-mouths” and military-focused individuals. Having helped out with my college campus ministry for the past four years, I was certain that I had enough experience to help these kids fall in love with Jesus. Volunteering for a youth group would be a positive and easy way for me to pass the time. My pride and passivity had never... Read more
“If we can nurture in a [person] the emergence and the victory of spiritual liberty, we have accomplished our task. If not, all is lost and the Christian life will weaken into childishness; it will harden into formalism; and finally it will disappear.” —Jean Mouroux, From Baptism to the Act of Faith In 1986, everything changed in my Catholic life. I was 15 years old. I had grown up in a home where I was loved. We went to Mass every Sunday, and I had progressed through parish catechesis. This change didn’t come about because I was suddenly being catechized... Read more
Lessons from Hallmark I taught religion to the whole middle school, from sixth to eighth grades. I was also the homeroom teacher to the sixth-grade boys for most of the years I taught there. I was always on the lookout for anything I could use for my boys or for teaching in general. One evening at the convent, we watched a Hallmark movie, and I walked away with a one-line golden nugget that the Holy Spirit told me to write down for my boys: “A boy with courage grows up to be a man with courage . ” I wrote... Read more
My husband and I met George a few years ago through Marriage Encounter. He was a navy pilot. W hile his wife was Catholic, George was not religious. We were George and his wife’s prayer couple during their weekend. We kept a candle lit for them the entire weekend and we prayed for them in various ways. During our prayers Saturday afternoon, something happened that had never happened before. The candle’s flame kept flickering and gradually grew weaker. My husband and I wondered what this could have meant. Thinking that the couple might be struggling in their relationship, we decided... Read more
For Communion Growing up Protestant, sacraments seemed fairly irrelevant to me. It was not until I turned fifteen that I decided to get baptized because I knew that if I accepted the te rms of what baptism meant, by Protestant standards, then I needed to truly accept Christ and all that it meant to follow him. As a Methodist, I alway s wanted to be in the right mindset for communion and not take for granted what I was partaking in. When I met my husband, I recognized that his Catholic beliefs were particularly important to him. As he explained... Read more
Several years ago, I was working as a parish Coordinator of Youth Ministry, and one of my responsibilities was teaching a high school religious education class. The class was arranged by the parish DRE and met as part of her programming each Wednesday night. There was no set textbook or program. We had a wide range of topics and materials available, and we were able to move as the class needed. The class was comprised of a diverse range of students with varying backgrounds and levels of catechetical formation. Mid-year, a new family moved to the parish. The parents only... Read more
The Lord’s Relentless Pursuit after My Own Heart I was born and raised Catholic, with a family who went to Church every week. I also went to Catholic schools, so the faith was constantly around me. Yet, growing up, I just wanted to fit in. I wanted to be popular, I wanted people to talk about me like they talked about the other girls. And all my life, I always felt like I was going to have to try harder to get people to like me because I wasn’t pretty like the other girls. I got teased a lot for... Read more
- 1 of 7
- ››