There will be no witness without a deep interior life…Words don’t cut it…But actions stop the world in its tracks and leave it speechless

Today at Holy Mass we hear in the first reading from St Paul…He is writing a letter to his friends encouraging them….As I read this letter a line jumped out at me….”You know what sort of people we were among you for your sake”…..As we say in New Jersey - “Paul walked the walk”…Not only did St Paul instruct his people in Truth but he lived the Truth….This is the ONLY way the world will second guess its choices and consider embracing the Catholic faith…Let me repeat what I just wrote - This is the ONLY way the world will second guess its choices and consider embracing the Catholic faith!….Words, even if they are well spoken will NEVER accomplish their aim unless our lives are consistent with our words…Now that does not mean Catholics have to be perfect - No one is…But our life must model what the Church teaches….And because the Church is an extension of Christ himself - Our lives will bear fruit…..Remember - “You tell a tree by the fruit it bears”…..This “fruit” will speak to the world - No words necessary…..So here is the question - How do we model such a life?…The answer - You can’t, without GRACE……Everything a Catholic does is rooted from his / her interior life…..From it comes our witness to the world….Without a deep interior life, there will be no witness and our words will not have any impact…..Daily prayer, Weekly fasting, and frequent reception of the Sacraments should not just be utilized by the clergy…Because without those practices, our life will not bear witness to Christ and our words will not have an impact….Its really that simple…Our world today is suffering because of its rejection of the Truth, God and the Sacraments…..Only by our life’s witness will we transmit the Gospel - So its time to get serious…As we again say in New Jersey - Go BIG or Go Home!

“My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord; I know them, and they follow me”

When you “put yourself out there” and the world knows you take your Catholic faith serious - People watch you VERY closely - Trust me about that one!….With that said, my wife and I have been married for 12 years and have five children….My wife is Haitian-American and my children are bi-racial….We belong to a parish that is predominately Polish…When my family walks into Mass on Sunday, all eyes are on us….As we walk to our usual seat, we always sit near this one family…From the looks of them, its a woman who sits with her elderly father and sometimes she is with her son…I would probably guess either she is divorced or her husband wants nothing to do with Mass - I have never seen him with her….When me and my family walk by these people each Sunday, the old man always looks so happy to see us….There is a look of such approval in his face…..No words necessary - Just the sight of my family alone makes that man react in that way….This is just one simple example of how the world will react when they see our Catholic faith lived out in real time…..The mere sight of my family is a sermon - Thanks be to God - And this is the “kind of sermon” our world desperately needs….…But I will tell you this - When the world witnesses the Gospel lived out loud - It surely second guesses choices made - Trust me on that one too - Why? - Because everyone, whether they say it or not wants to be happy - Only God can authentically satisfy the human heart…..So again - How can we create such a witness? - This ONLY happens from a deep interior life…Allow me to illustrate what I mean by an interior life - My wife and I get up very early each day before our children to pray…We go to daily Mass most days and also go twice a month to Confession with a priest…We pray the Rosary every night as a family…We go to Eucharistic Adoration every Saturday and Sunday in the morning before our children get up…...We also both fast weekly……Why tell you all this?…Because without these practices…We would never have had five children and make the necessary sacrifices to provide for our family nor would we be able to live out our Catholic faith the way we both do - Period!….Abraham Lincoln once said: "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”….The same model must be utilized by us…If we as Catholics wish to live out our faith in real time because that is the only way to impact the world…We must deepen our interior life…Everything comes from that and without an interior life - There will be no witness

“For our Gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction”

We hear today at Mass how St Paul attempts to encourage his people…This is something we as Catholics need to take more seriously because everyone needs to be encouraged…And there is no better way to do this then by the way we live our life….An authentic Catholic life tells the world that - YES - It is possible to follow Jesus Christ and thrive….YES - What the Catholic Church teaches not only works in real time but brings great joy…..However, if we think that we can self-manufacture such a witness without a deep interior life - You are deeply mistaken…..When we connect to God, through prayer and the Sacraments our life is “set a blaze”…As the great St John Henry Newman once wrote in his prayer Radiating Christ….

Dear Jesus, help us to spread Your fragrance everywhere we go. Flood our souls with Your Spirit and Life. Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly that our lives may only be a radiance of Yours. Shine through us and be so in us that every soul we come in contact with may feel Your presence in our souls. Let them look up, and see no longer us, but only Jesus! Stay with us and then we shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be ours. It will be You, shining on others through us. Let us thus praise You in the way You love best, by shining on those around us. Let us preach You without preaching, not by words but by example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what we do, the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear for You.

This is how its done….There will be no witness without a deep interior life…Words don’t cut it…But actions stop the world in its tracks and leave it speechless