Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus by Weddell Sherry

Author:Weddell, Sherry [Weddell, Sherry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612782287
Publisher: Our Sunday Visitor
Published: 2012-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

It is important for those who are committed Catholics — especially those who have never known anything else — to remember that a threshold usually looks and feels very different to “insiders” than it does to someone approaching from the outside. As evangelizers, we need to make a real effort to imagine; to see Christ, the faith, and the Church through the eyes of outsiders. The same threshold can seem overwhelming and insurmountable to them while looking very simple and obvious to us.

One important side note: We have found that people who are already disciples within another Christian tradition usually go through these same stages as they contemplate the possibility of entering the Catholic Church. This was certainly true for me when I first considered entering the Church. I had been raised as a strongly anti-Catholic fundamentalist in southern Mississippi, and contemplating becoming Catholic was like considering becoming a Martian.

I brought a big book about Catholicism to my first RCIA session. In those days, I was completely clueless about intra-Catholic squabbles and presumed that all books on Catholicism came from the same basic perspective. I put my big book underneath my battered metal chair and waited for the session to begin. A member of the RCIA team sat down next to me, glanced at the title of my book, and fixed me with a knowing look. “I see where you’re coming from,” he said.

“What?” I was completely mystified. “I don’t even know where I’m coming from. How do you know where I’m coming from?”

That was my first clue that there were mysteries involved in being Catholic that weren’t covered in the Catechism.

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