RESOURCES FOR EVANGELIZING

These are difficult times for the Catholic Church and the United States of America. There is only one solution to the problems we face... saints! Becoming a saint is a choice, and we must begin choosing the saint within each of us. The biggest crisis of our time is not economic, health care, or vocations, but is an identity crisis. We have forgotten our mission to become saints and forgotten our story as Catholics. We must rediscover that mission and hold each other accountable to accepting responsibility for that mission. Business, as usual, is not going to cut it.

Love of God and neighbor: Jesus says this is the greatest commandment . . . which means that it's also your personal mission -- a mission these pages will help you to fulfill.

Praying through just one of its 60 short, singularly potent chapters each day will usher you through a two-month-long spiritual retreat. It's guaranteed to increase your knowledge of God, to intensify your love for Him, and to cultivate within you the steadfast virtues of a missionary disciple, able and eager to lead others to that same knowledge and love.

Are there greater gifts you can receive? And then pass on to your neighbors?

Masterfully combining Bible passages and Church teachings with practical directions, Fr. John Bartunek, author of the best-selling book The Better Part, here serves as your personal 60-day retreat master. He shows you how to overcome the inevitable spiritual obstacles you'll face, how to nurture your holy desires so that they become stronger and more vibrant, and how to concentrate every element of your soul and personality in service of loving God and neighbor.

Among other things, he also shows you:

What it truly means to be in Christ, and how that sublime state of soul can be yours

How to become conscious of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in every moment

What you must do now to let God bring full spiritual maturity to your mind, your emotions, and your will

How to properly manage the roller coaster of everyday life

How to regulate your spiritual growth prudently, so as to avoid missteps and burnout even as you work tirelessly to bring others to Christ

And much more to equip you to love God and your neighbor as an inspired and enthusiastic missionary disciple!

As followers of Christ, each of us is called to participate in pro-life activities, whether in an active ministry group or individually. We are called to respect, protect, love, and serve every human life.

Above All, Love will set you on an in-depth personal journey, helping you to cultivate your own pro-life attitude and activities through relatable stories, Scripture verses, and thought-provoking questions. The book culminates with an examination of conscience and prayers focused on pro-life ministry.

Written by a post-abortive mother who has been active for more than a decade in pro-life ministry, Above All, Love offers a first step in healing the fractures that have plagued this ministry, helping all of us to look inward and strive for sanctification. Author and speaker Elizabeth Gillette describes how she felt as a mother facing a crisis pregnancy and how no one "stood in the gap" for her. Her personal testimony and the lessons she has learned will equip all of us to take responsibility for our own pro-life activities and defend life with intention.

We are living through the greatest catastrophe since the fall of the Roman Empire. Western civilization isn't dying: it's already dead. Christendom is no more. What we see around us now isn't Christian. It's not even a civilization. It's a walking corpse.

That's the bad news. The good news is that the West can be reborn someday. We know this because it died once before. Who brought it back? The mystics, the martyrs, and the missionaries. Now they must save the West once again.

In this prescient work, Michael Warren Davis examines just how bad the situation is and how much worse it's going to get. He weaves together examples from history and literature to illustrate how societies fell and how various saints helped them rise again. Throughout, he reflects on the transformative power and benefits of persecution and suffering to show how Christians can survive ― and indeed flourish ― in the new Dark Age that's descending.

These penetrating pages will help you move from a "Culture War" mindset to one of answering the Great Commission. You will learn how to form intentional Christian communities to ward off spiritual isolation and come to understand what St. Augustine, the chief architect of Christendom's first renaissance, taught about why God allows the City of Man to fall in the first place. Additionally, you will discover:

- The only weapon in your arsenal (can you guess?)

- What role laughter played in the early Church's victory

- How to attain xenitia, the first stage of spiritual development

- Methods to grow in union with Christ through meditative prayer

- The fruits of street evangelization and your call to go into the vineyard

- How drawing from Eastern Christianity can help renew our culture again

Above all, you will find out how you can respond to the crisis of the early twenty-first century with the wisdom of the ages -- to testify to your Faith, help restore beauty, and cultivate authentic love in the modern world. For, according to Davis, every Christian has a role to play. All are called to share their faith person-to-person to help rebuild the Church, and once again the tears of mystics, the sweat of missionaries, and the blood of martyrs will become the seed of the Church. Despite the darkness, by imitating their witness, you will find unshakable peace and joy in the face of what is to come.

In the new, groundbreaking book Becoming a Parish of Intentional Disciples, author and Catherine of Siena Institute co-founder Sherry Weddell has gathered fellow Church workers whose years of service in parish ministry have yielded hard-earned wisdom and enthusiasm for the work of transforming Catholic parishes into lively, faithful centers of apostolic outreach.

Countless Catholics settle for a life of faith that begins and ends with the obligatory Sunday Mass. While essential, giving just one hour of our lives to God can never satisfy our deep longing for a purposeful, joy-filled life. In Beyond Sunday: Becoming a 24/7 Catholic, radio host Teresa Tomeo gets real about what it takes to live as a Catholic every day of the week. With personal stories and research, this book offers practical tips for seekers in any stage of faith.

"Teresa Tomeo's Beyond Sunday is an inspiring call to action for Catholics from all walks of life to fully embrace all the beauty and intelligence the Church has to offer." -- Bishop Robert Barron, author of To Light a Fire on the Earth

"The ultimate source of a full and abundant life -- not a life of simply existing but a life in which the holes in our hearts are filled -- is to let ourselves be loved by God. And this means seeking that life we were made to live. There is a supreme adventure awaiting us in this life. Teresa Tomeo's new book Beyond Sunday invites us to ignite this fire within and shows us like a beacon a practical way how. Everyone should read this book. Everyone." -- Chris Stefanick, author, speaker, and founder of Real Life Catholic

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TERESA TOMEO has more than thirty years of experience in print and broadcast media and founded her own communications company, Teresa Tomeo Communications. She hosts a weekday radio program, Catholic Connection, which is heard daily on over 500 stations worldwide, as well as the popular television series, The Catholic View for Women. She is a bestselling author of Extreme Makeover: Women Transformed by Christ, Not Conformed to the Culture; and Noise: How Our Media Saturated Culture Dominates Lives and Dismantles Families. Teresa and her husband, Deacon Dominick Pastore, live in Michigan and speak around the world about marriage. Tomeo is a columnist and special correspondent for OSV Newsweekly and hosts the Catholic Leaders Webinar Series: Media Matters.

Concerned parents will learn from these remarkable pages how they can raise their children to live the Faith dynamically.

The only work that exclusively features the conversion stories of theologians, this book provides a unique vantage point on the intellectual challenges faced by those being drawn to the Catholic Church.

The men and women featured here come from a variety of backgrounds: Agnosticism, Secularism, New Age thought, punk rock, and various stripes of Christianity. Their theological vocation had specially prompted them to question their own intellectual presuppositions once they encountered Catholicism, which only gained in credibility the more they studied it.

Although it was the theological truth of the Catholic faith that initially captured the attention of these theologians, each of these essays tells a fully human story. They are not collections of arguments, but stories of grace. Among the ten converts are Scott Hahn, Lawrence Feingold, Melanie Barrett, Petroc Willey, and Jeff Morrow. Each story offers a fresh glimpse at God's work in the world.

This book begins with the inspiring story of Steve Dawson--his dramatic conversion to Catholicism as a young man and his founding of St. Paul Street Evangelization, an international apostolate that has grown to hundreds of teams in seven countries in just a few years.

Also included are other moving stories of conversion and witness. The authors are ordinary Catholics who have come to love Christ so much that they now talk about Him with total strangers in public places--street corners, parks, and shopping areas. They aren't theologians, nor are they highly trained apologists with Ambrosian rhetorical skills or Dale Carnegie slickness, yet their simple missionary efforts have yielded amazing results.

The book's style is readable, accessible, and conversational. It illustrates the missionary calling of all baptized Christians, including Catholics. It reveals the joy and fulfillment that come to those who humbly yet boldly share the good news of God's mercy with others.

Peter Kreeft believes that Baise Pascal is the first post-medieval apologist. No writer in history, claims Kreeft, is a more effective Christian apologist and evangelist to today's uprooted, confused, secularized pagans (inside and outside the Church) than Pascal. He was a brilliant man--a great scientist who did major work in physics and mathematics, as well as an inventor--whom Kreeft thinks was three centuries ahead of his time. His apologetics found in his Pensees are ideal for the modern, sophisticated skeptic.

Stephen K. Ray was raised in a devout, loving Baptist family. His father was a deacon and led Bible studies. Steve himself was very involved in the Baptist Church as a teacher of Biblical studies, and he lectured on a wide range of topics. When a best friend, an Evangelical pastor, converted to the Catholic Church, Steve and his wife Janet decided to investigate the claims of the Catholic Church, taking a thrilling journey back in time that would eventually change their lives forever. After hundreds of hours studying the Bible and the writings of the early Church, they were convinced that the Roman Catholic Church was the Church founded by Christ, and they were received into the Church on Pentecost Sunday in 1994. In this book, with no rancor toward his Evangelical roots, Ray shares with the reader their exhilarating discoveries. He traces their initial hostility toward the Catholic Church, their passionate research and the discovery of the historical Church, quietly waiting to be rediscovered. He convincingly lays out the issues that carried them over the "uncrossable chasm" into the Catholic Church. Thoroughly documented with over 400 footnotes, Crossing the Tiber contains an extensive compilation of biblical and patristic quotations and commentary on the issues of Baptism and the Eucharist, as well as a thorough analysis of Sola Scriptura and Tradition. Ray takes you back to the first four centuries of the Church to discover the early Church - was it like today's Protestantism in theology and practice, or was it Catholic? Discover the unbiblical and unhistorical nature of the "Bible-only" argument. Discover the uniform consistency of the Catholic teaching on Baptism and the Eucharistfrom Scriptures and the Church Fathers.

How to keep faith in a culture hostile to Christianity

In an increasingly secular world, Christians are often pulled in two directions. Some urge us to retreat and build insular communities. Others call upon us to wage a culture war, harnessing the government to shore up Christian cultural power.

But there is another way--and it's as old as the church itself. Stephen O. Presley takes us back to the first few centuries AD to show us how the first Christians approached cultural engagement. Amid a pagan culture that regarded their faith with suspicion, early Christians founded a religious movement that transformed the ancient world. Looking to great theologians like Augustine, Origen, and Tertullian, Presley shows how the early church approached politics, family, public life, and more. From these examples, he draws lessons for practicing authentic, pious discernment in how we engage with the wider culture.

The Christians who came before us endured persecution to share a vision of human flourishing that changed the world. Following in their footsteps, we can sanctify our society through social witness. Readers anxious about shifting cultural tides will be left with hope in the already-present kingdom of God and the promised resurrection.

Highly acclaimed for his work with parish renewal and the New Evangelization, Fr. James Mallon shares with us the many ways for bringing our parishes to life. Through humorous and colorful stories, Mallon challenges us to rethink our models of parish life, from membership-based communities to assemblies of disciples of Jesus who proclaim and share the good news with all peoples. Accessible and engaging, Divine Renovation turns to the Churchs many writings on evangelization and mission so as to articulate practical ways for injecting new life into our parishes. Pastors and parish ministers will be inspired by this book and turn to it for many years to come."

Filled with powerful testimonies from catechists; the fundamentals of evangelization, catechesis, and discipleship; and even helpful connections for parents, An Evangelizing Catechesis will change your approach to teaching the Catholic Faith. It is perfect for parish catechists, Catholic school religion teachers, parish and diocesan catechetical leaders, youth ministers, RCIA coordinators, pastors, and parents.

The Catholic family is a domestic church, rooted in God's love and challenged to hope. Yet Catholic families today are beset with attacks from within and without, as were early Christian house churches. The latter faced persecution and rejection from society and even their own family members. Today's domestic churches face challenges of materialism, individualism, and secularism, coming through technology, media, and the contemporary culture.

The Church must respond to these challenges by seeking new ways to minister directly to families. The future of parish life will depend largely on how a parish supports family life. Drawing on the experience of the early Church, Evangelizing Today's Domestic Churches invites pastors and those engaged in pastoral ministry to take the lead in helping families recognize their responsibility before God to become vibrant domestic churches.