RESOURCES FOR EVANGELIZING

What if we taught young people that they can measure success by how they follow Christ rather than by how much money they make or where they go to college?

In What Matters Most, University of Notre Dame theology professor Leonard J. DeLorenzo urges youth ministers, teachers, and parents to help young people redefine success in light of their call to discipleship--completely saying yes to God.

In Luke's account of the Annunciation, Mary offers a true model of discipleship for young people to follow. Her example will empower them to make choices about how to live their lives as a courageous yes to God in everything they choose--just as she did.

DeLorenzo, who served as the long-time director of Notre Dame Vision--a program designed to help young Catholics find their true calling as disciples of Jesus--shows how Mary exhibited four habits that will guide young people to make important life decisions:

• Listen carefully and practice patience.
• Remember who we are and what we value most.
• Respond with compassion to choices we face.
• Embrace sacrifice for the sake of love.

DeLorenzo includes personal stories from his experience as a father and working with youth and young adults with spiritual wisdom to equip teachers, mentors, pastoral ministers, and parents to reexamine the way they encourage and help form young Catholics approaching significant life choices such as college and jobs. He presents ways to remedy spiritual deficits in these young people created by cultural realities such as the fast pace of tech-driven lives and the looming pressure to succeed with worldly accomplishments.

In the classic The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis, the most important Christian writer of the 20th century, sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society. Both astonishing and prophetic, The Abolition of Man is one of the most debated of Lewis's extraordinary works. National Review chose it as number seven on their "100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century."

Does science discredit the Bible, God, religious faith? Absolutely not, says Dr. Michael Guillen, former Harvard physics instructor and Emmy-winning ABC News Science Editor. In Amazing Truths, he uses his entertaining, down-to-earth storytelling skills to reveal ten astonishing truths affirmed by both ancient Scripture and modern science that answer some of our biggest questions: Can faith really move mountains? Does absolute truth exist? Are humans truly unique? Is it possible to communicate with God? How much about the universe do we actually know? How could Jesus have been fully man and fully God?

In Amazing Truths, Dr. Guillen explains that faith is not some outdated way of thinking. Faith is a necessary part of science, Christianity, and any intelligent, comprehensive, coherent worldview - vastly more powerful than even logic.

Amazing Truths will expand your mind and bolster your faith. You will see for yourself what Dr. Guillen, a theoretical physicist and devout Christian, has discovered in a lifetime of serious exploration--that science and faith are not at odds. In fact, they're the ultimate power couple.

What gives you hope? What are your hopes and dreams for yourself, your children, your church, your community, your nation? What sustains that hope and turns those dreams into reality? What are some of the unique ways you bring hope to people in your life? The contributors featured in Beautiful Hope offer intensely personal answers to these questions, and their stories will spark your own exploration of hope and increase its abundance in your life.

In this book, Chesterton's brilliance as a writer and thinker again shine through as he explains his understanding of Catholicism and the Catholic Church and how its appeal to reason and truth eventually won him over. For Chesterton, two essentials lay at the heart of conversion, and without these, a man misses the point of it all. He describes these in his own words: "One is that he believes it to be solid objective truth, which is true whether he likes it or not; and the other is that he seeks liberation from his sins." That is why Chesterton became a Catholic, and what he describes in his unique and colorful way in this book.

The widely read author and philosopher Peter Kreeft presents a unique book about the important beliefs that Catholics and Protestants share in common. Inspired by Christ's prayer for unity in the Gospel of John and Saint John Paul II's encyclical Ut Unum Sint, Kreeft demonstrates that Christian reunification is possible. While he acknowledges that there are still significant differences between Catholics and Protestants, he emphasizes that they agree on the single most important issue: justification.

The style of this book is modeled on Pascal, Solomon, and Jesus: short answers and single points to ponder rather than long strings of argument. The writing is direct, simple, and confrontational, but vertically rather than horizontally by "directing arrows not against each other (Protestant or Catholic) but against our own hearts and minds and wills."

The purpose of this book, writes Kreeft, is to be "like an Australian sheepdog, herding and hectoring Christ's separated sheep back to His face. For that is the only way they can ever return back to each other."