The Gospel Challenge

Did you know that there are approximately 35 pages in the Book of Mathew, 22 pages in the Book of Mark, 37 pages in the Book of John and 28 pages in the Book of Luke [1]?  All in all, approximately 122 pages which is less than the size of paperback novels these days.  I don’t know about you, but it takes me about half a day to sit down and read the average paperback novel, and I do this once or twice a month. 

St. Jerome, who lived from 331 to 420 [2], is commonly quoted as saying “To be ignorant of the Scriptures is to be ignorant of Christ! [3]” 

Where Better to Start?

Here I am, on the path of growing apologetic’s– which is nothing like growing pains I hope– and I thought to myself, Self where better to start than the bible.  Or more appropriately, Catholic Answers pointed me in that direction, but that is hardly the point.  The point is that I’ve done a series of posts on the Rosary, Communion of Saints, Advent, and Prayer.  But I have not yet done one on the bible.  It is very prudent that my first series of posts since a long batch of silence would be on the thing that has been giving Christians hope and inspiration and teaching for a very long time.  Just how long?

And Its Back!

It’s been almost a year.  A year of wandering, poking around, searching, brainstorming, trying this, trying that, reading, digging, asking how, how, how… How do I become an apologist?

I know what an apologist does—they defend the faith.  They answer the tough questions, speak up for the Church, and help people determine what is true to the faith and what is not.  They know the theology, the doctrine, the traditions, the history not only of the faith they defend but of other faiths too.

The skills of an apologist is many—ability to debate and reason with love, to remember scripture and writings of other great figures, the desire to learn and understand and the motivation to put their mind to use.

My problem is how do I become an apologist?  Where do I start? 

There Are No Cons

I struggle with spontaneous prayer, which as a former Protestant this is a bit difficult to admit; however, I have always been fond of talking to God. Then when I started on the road to Catholicism, the first structured prayer that I learned was the ‘Our Father’. It was odd to me. It seemed dry—I did not see the beauty in what I was saying. I did not realize that the ‘Our Father’ was the way that Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Now, the ‘Our Father’ springs to my lips easily, while I’m working and I struggle with people and projects; while I’m running and struggle to keep going; while I’m cleaning and thankful for all that God has blessed me with; while I try to fall asleep to still my mind on the peace of God. I have not abandoned spontaneous prayer. In fact, often times I couple the two together.

Lessons on Powerful Prayer from St. Scholastica

There is a story of two twins, St. Scholastica (whose feast day is today) and St. Benedict of Nursia. St. Scholastica being a nun and St. Benedict a monk, they would customarily see each other once a year, during which time the two of them would pray and sing praises together and discuss heavenly matters.

One year, St. Scholastica asked her brother to stay the night with her so that they could continue their discussions and prayer, but the brother was very devout and would not stay a single night outside of the monastery. This distressed her, so she immediately folded her hands and laid her head on them, praying hard to the Lord. As she looked up to heaven, lightning flashed across the once clear sky and as the tears fell from her face, great rain droplets pounded on the roof of the house. The storm that the Lord granted on behalf of Scholastica was so great, that neither Benedict nor the monks with him dared to set foot outside.

Learn All About Prayer From Jesus

Now that we have covered the high level of what prayer is, who can pray, and why, when and where we should pray, one major question remains. How do we pray? It seems like such a simple thing—just talk to God—and yet I feel no shame in asking this question as it is the very question that the disciples of Jesus asked of him.

In the book of Mathew, when the disciples ask of Jesus how to pray, Jesus gives them the prayer of Our Father. The disciples were faithful Jews. They were taught at a young age how to pray, with formal and memorized prayers, in synagogues and the temple, and by the priests. Yet something they saw in the way Jesus prayed prompted them to ask him to teach them.

The Underestimated Holy Spirit

I don’t know about you, but I know something about me… I underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit. My first step towards Christianity as a Protestant was my belief in Jesus. I was still not quite right with God, but I was headed in the right direction. At that time, I believed that God was a very unkind God (the Old Testament was my proof—He wasn’t very nice to his chosen people. I know now that they had it coming to them as they just refused to listen) and the Holy Spirit was just this odd, third entity that I recognized as important, but less important than both God and Jesus.

The Holy Spirit is not at all less important in the Trinity, nor should he be any less respected. I could be totally off base here, but I think that as Protestants and Catholics (perhaps the majority of Christian believers), we put more emphasis on Jesus and on God and tend to remember the Holy Spirit as an afterthought. However, we must remember that the Holy Spirit does not come third to the Father and the Son, but is the third person of God.