The SEEK Podcast
Welcome to the SEEK Podcast – we're so glad you’re here. This podcast is a place of community, collaboration, and inspiration, created to invite and encourage you deeper into a relationship with Jesus. Join these podcasters and many others as we encounter Jesus at SEEK25, Jan 1st-5th. For more information and to register, visit seek.focus.org.
The SEEK Podcast
How to Bring Loved Ones Back to The Church - All Things Catholic x SEEK
Join us on the SEEK Podcast as we host Dr. Edward Sri from “All Things Catholic” in a heartfelt discussion about revitalizing faith within ourselves and others. In this episode, we delve into practical and compassionate strategies for reconnecting loved ones with their faith.
We kick off this episode with the crucial role of hope in spiritual renewal. Dr. Sri shares engaging narratives that underscore the impact of prayer and the miraculous power of God’s intervention, like the story of the paralyzed man healed through his friends’ faith.
This episode is not just informative but also a call to action to live out our faith more fully and help others discover their path back to God. Whether you’re a long-time listener or joining us for the first time, this episode promises to inspire and equip you for the journey.
Join us at SEEK or engage with us online to continue the conversation.
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Welcome to the Seek Podcast, where we explore faith, inspire hope and build community. My name is John Michael Lucido and I'm excited to invite you to join us this season as we dive into topics about the faith with people from all over the Catholic world. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Know that we are praying for you.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Edward Sri and welcome to All Things Catholic, where real faith meets real life. Do you have friends or family members who are away from the Catholic Church? Maybe they stopped practicing their faith, or maybe they just never came to know Christ in a personal way. Do you long to bring them back? Do you long for them to experience how much friendship with Christ and living as a Catholic makes all the difference in our lives? Of course we do. We want to do that, but many of us are not sure how. I don't know how. I don't know what to do. I'm afraid I don't know what to say. I don't want to get it wrong. I don't want to drive them away. What do I do? Well, that's what we're going to take a look at in this week's podcast. We're going to consider 10 commandments of what to do and not to do when we share our faith with those we love. So welcome to All Things Catholic. I'm your host, edward Sri, and I want to give a special shout out to anyone checking out the show for the first time. Thanks for being with us. Hope you enjoy the show. If you want to learn more about the All Things Catholic podcast, you want to get the show notes that I give each week comes out every Tuesday. You can get the show notes by simply texting All Things Catholic to 33777. So text All Things Catholic one word, all Things Catholic to 33777, and you can get the podcast in your inbox each week, as well as the show notes.
Speaker 2:Now, before I get into these Ten Commandments, I want to share with you something I'm really excited about, something that's coming up here soon. I want you just to imagine this scene. Picture 20,000 young people gathered together in a big arena, not for a rock concert, not for a sporting event, but to fall on their knees and worship Jesus in Eucharistic adoration. Imagine thousands and thousands of them going in a long, mile-long line to confession. Imagine them going to daily mass with hundreds of priests and religious and seminarians. Imagine them hearing amazing talks by Father Mike and Sister Miriam and Curtis Martin and Jason Everett and others, and imagine that this gathering is not just for college students, but there's also thousands and thousands of adults and lay leaders and moms and dads all coming to the Focus Seek Conference, january 1st through 5th in Salt Lake City. So that's what I'm so excited about.
Speaker 2:If you could please pray, there are many young people right now making decisions whether or not they're going to go, many of them preparing their hearts and minds to encounter Christ in a profound way. We hear about so many conversions. I've met so many priests who told me they had their conversion at SEEK or they went to the SEEK conference and that's when they sensed the call from God to become a priest. So please pray for the conference, but I also want to invite you because, as I said, it's not just for college students. Please pray for the conference, but I also want to invite you because, as I said, it's not just for college students. We get thousands of adults that come, whether they're professional adults working in the church as a DRE, a youth minister, a campus minister or a Catholic school teacher, or just ordinary lay people that are moms and dads trying to pass on the faith in the home, or maybe parents that are in a small group with other parents. And it's a great gathering. And there's a special track we have called the Making Missionary Disciples track, which is awesome, where you can go to the general sessions and hear the great talks by Father Mike and Sister Miriam and the keynotes in the evening, and go to the big masses with all the college students in the morning, but then during the day, when the college students are going to their special talks for chastity and dating relationships, you can go to the Making Missionary Disciples track, which is about how we live our faith as disciples in the modern world today, as adults, and how we practically can be trained to share our faith more effectively with others, in the workplace, in our parish, in our own homes, with our own children. So you can check this all out at seekfocusorg. That's seekfocusorg, the SEEK conference, january 1st through 5th in Salt Lake.
Speaker 2:Now we're talking about 10 commandments for how to share the faith with those we love, and I want to be clear. There's many other points you could bring in. I'm just going to zoom in on 10 today, but it was really fun to think about these. I'm going to start off with the first commandment Thou shall have hope. Thou shall have hope.
Speaker 2:As I travel all over the world, I meet many parents that are so sad that their children have turned away from the church. Or I meet many people that are so sad that their friend, their old roommate, is no longer practicing the faith, and our temptation is to lose hope, and that's exactly what the devil wants. He wants us to get discouraged, he wants us to despair and give up praying and sacrificing and trying to evangelize. And we want to remember two things. We want to remember, first of all, that soul was made for God. That person you love, no matter how confident they may seem, joyful and happy they may seem on the outside, know that they were made for God. Their souls are made for God and if they don't have God, then there's going to be something in their soul that's off, something out of order, out of harmony, there's something missing, and that's God in their life. So while on the outside they may look very confident and they have it all together and they don't need God, deep down, just know the truth that there's something off in their soul, that there's a certain sorrow, a certain restlessness, a certain yearning for something more, no matter how much they give the appearance that they don't need religion, they don't need the church, they don't need God.
Speaker 2:I think about the great St Augustine. You may know his story. Augustine was a very successful man. On the outside it looked like he was so happy, he had everything. He had success, he had a lot of wealth, he had a lot of fame, he had a vibrant social life. He had premarital sex and pleasure. From the Roman pagan standards of his time it looked like this was the guy that had it all, and so of course he must be happy. But on the inside he wasn't, and he writes about this in his autobiography, the Confessions. He writes about how he was searching for peace, for happiness, and just couldn't find it in all the things of this world. And he had everything the world offered, but he was looking for more. And he says in the beautiful opening paragraph of the confessions he says you have made us for yourself, o Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
Speaker 2:So know that that friend, that child, that brother of yours that's away from the church, his heart is restless, he's longing for something more and God can use that desire that he put in that man's heart, that woman's heart, to bring him back to himself. Secondly, also just know you're not the only one trying to evangelize your friend. God is, and God is so much more effective and powerful than we are. God can work miracles. We should always have hope that God can do what we think is impossible. Right, because anything we think is impossible God can do. The same. God, who calmed the storms, gave sight to the blind, raised the dead, can bring back that loved one to himself and know that God loves that person more than you do. So never give up hope. Always have hope. That's the first commandment. Thou sh Always have hope. That's the first commandment. Thou shall have hope. Second commandment thou shall always pray and intercede. Never give up on prayer. The beautiful power of intercession, the power of our prayers are really amazing and I think we don't always realize this. I'm going to go to a Bible story from the Gospels, from Jesus's life, that illustrates this. Do you remember that story of the paralyzed man? The paralyzed man can't walk. So he can't walk to Jesus and his friends come and they carry him and they bring him to the roof and they make the hole in the roof to bring the man down and where Jesus was teaching, inside this house, and then Jesus heals the man. But do you know why he healed the man? It says that his friends were the ones that brought him and he decided to heal the paralyzed man. Notice, the paralyzed man didn't walk there by himself. He's paralyzed, can't do that. His friends brought him to Jesus and Jesus saw their faith. Notice, the gospel zooms in and doesn't say that he saw the faith of this poor paralyzed man. The paralyzed man, when he's brought down, doesn't reach out his arm to Jesus and say heal me please. We don't get a reference to that. Instead, the Bible tells us Jesus saw their faith, his friend's faith, and he healed him. Here's my question for you Do you bring your friends, your loved ones, to Jesus? Do you love your friends so much you bring them to Jesus in prayer, in intercessory prayer, and does Jesus see your faith? Does he see your longing, your heart pouring out in prayer, interceding for them? Does he see your faith? Because that's what he did with the paralyzed man. He saw their faith and then he healed the paralyzed man. If Jesus sees your faith constantly pouring out in intercessory prayer, he may heal the one you love and bring him back to himself. Okay, third commandment Thou shall offer sacrifices. Now, this, I love this one here.
Speaker 2:Many times when I'm meeting people as I'm giving, doing speaking events around the country, I hear people say things like you know, oh, dr Shreya, what do I do for my child or my brother or my uncle? And you know, I pray for them. I'm praying for them and I say, do you offer sacrifices for them? And I could tell many of them are like, um, I hadn't thought about that and I love it. They're good, they really were praying for the ones they love. And that's a good first step.
Speaker 2:But Jesus invites us to do more and that's my question for you Are you willing to offer sacrifices for the ones you love? Do you love them enough to give things up for them? Give things up, things you like, Do you offer penances for them? When we make little sacrifices the traditional practice of offering a mortification, offering penance for other people God uses it. It is a really powerful instrument of evangelization and it's not enough just to pray for those we love, do we offer sacrifices for them? So here's my question for you Do you love that person in your life that's away from the church?
Speaker 2:Do you love them more than your favorite latte, your favorite coffee? Nothing wrong with a latte, nothing wrong with a coffee. But could you give up your favorite drink for a month for the sake of the soul of the person you love? Could you give up your favorite beer for the person you love? Could you give up your favorite beer for the person you love? Can you give up your favorite chocolate? Do you love that soul more than your favorite sports team, your favorite show? In other words, could you give up watching your sports team for one season? Man, that would be really hard. Okay, maybe that's really hard. So how about this? Could you just give up watching one game a month, you know, like, okay, the first game of every month we're not going to watch? Do you love that person in your life more than your favorite thing?
Speaker 2:And when we offer up the things that are dear to us, things that are good, they're not bad, we offer it up. That's a generous sacrifice. We can unite it with Jesus's sacrifice on the cross, uniting it in his sacrifice, made present at the mass. And that is the highest form of prayer, the sacrifice, the mass. And we can unite all of our works, all of our joys, all of our sufferings, all of our sacrifices with Jesus at every mass. So thou shall offer sacrifices to be at number four. Thou shall not be anxious and pressuring. Do not be anxious. We should never be anxious.
Speaker 2:But too often when we're worried about someone we love, we have a close friend, maybe it's our spouse, maybe it's a child we can just get really anxious and we lose our inner peace. We lose that calm confidence that comes from trust in the Lord. Do I really trust the Lord? Do I really trust that this person is in the Lord's hands? And it's not up to me, because it's often very self-reliant, very prideful, I think. When there's anxiety about what's going to happen with my kids, it seems like I'm just loving my kids, but many times it's just I want to be in control. I don't like this situation. It's frustrating me and I'm anxious.
Speaker 2:And look, others are going to pick up on our anxiety, whether it's a friend, a child, a relative. They're going to pick up on our lack of peace because we can't help ourselves. We feel like we have to fix them, we have to manage them, we have to control them. I have to say something, I have to do something. All of this is rooted in panic and fear, and that won't work well. God can use us as an instrument of evangelization. The more we have that inner calm and peace about the situation, the more we rely on him and trust in him. Otherwise, when we're anxious, what happens is we'll end up pressuring the person they're going to pick up and feeling like we're just pressuring them. We're forcing them to go to mass or try and make them feel guilty, you know, for not going to mass, or make them feel guilty for living with their girlfriend, and we're putting pressure on them and we always are anxiously having to bring something up. We have to talk about the faith. Maybe we don't always have to bring things up all the time.
Speaker 2:I think about what St Ambrose once said to Monica Monica. St Monica was the mother of St Augustine and she was so sad that her son had turned away from the church and she was very anxious about it and just very sorrowful and crying. And she's going to Ambrose, who was a bishop, and saying the situation needs to change. Can you go talk to him? And Ambrose just kind of smiles. I can imagine him smiling and he says to Monica, maybe it's time you spoke to Augustine less about God and time that you spoke more to God about Augustine. I love that. Maybe it's time you spoke to Augustine less about God and time you spoke more to God about Augustine. Otherwise, you're always trying to talk to Augustine, you're trying to bring him back and you could just imagine a mom constantly going after her son like this. The son's not going to respond well and that's why sometimes maybe it's more prudent to not speak up all the time, because that's coming from a place of anxiety. So thou shall not be anxious and pressuring. All right, the next commandment we're going to turn to. I want to take a look at commandment number five. Thou shall pray for an Ambrose.
Speaker 2:I think that's one thing we could see from the story is, you know, monica wasn't the primary person. God used to break through Augustine's his hard heartedness and his mind was filled with many heresies and false ideas, and it was Ambrose that God used. Ambrose was a bishop and he was a great scholar, a great intellect, and because Augustine was a great scholar himself. He really came to respect Ambrose. He said, wow, here's someone that's really smart, he's really wise, a great scholar, and he believes in Jesus and the Catholic Church. And so they had a lot of conversation and God used those conversations with Ambrose to bring Augustine to his conversion. And I think that's true in many cases. Maybe your old friend from high school is not going to listen to you, maybe your brother that you grew up with is not going to listen to you, maybe your child is not going to listen to you. But you can pray to God that God will bring him an ambrose, somebody else, that God will put someone else in this person's life to be a witness to the truth. So pray for an ambrose, pray that God brings that person into your loved one's life.
Speaker 2:Sixth commandment you shall not just give them a book. This is a funny one, but I had to put it in there. I had to single this out. You shall not just give them a book or a talk or a video. I say this because so often when I'm out speaking, someone will come up and meet me afterwards and they'll say, dr Shree, which book of yours should I give to my son? Or which book should I go buy to give to my sister. And I kind of just smile on the inside and I just pause and I say, hey, tell me why you think they should read a book. And then I ask them some other questions. I say do you think they'll actually read a book if you give it to them? And many times all of a sudden the person will say oh yeah, you're right, they probably won't read the book. Now don't get me wrong. I've written many books and many of you have told me how much my books have made a difference in your walk with the Lord. And I hear stories of people who've read a Scott Hahn book or a Fulton Sheen book and it changed their life. And God uses that. I believe that.
Speaker 2:At the same time, I think in many cases a book isn't going to solve the problem. In other words, especially if you don't have a relationship with them, if they don't trust you, if you haven't won the right to be heard, you coming and giving them a book might just be another thing, like oh, there goes my Catholic friend. You know, he's super religious, he's always giving me books. Or there goes mom. Again, she's always giving me a book. You know it might not be received well. Now again, you may have a friend or family member that loves dialoguing with you about religion and really will read a book. Go for it.
Speaker 2:And sometimes I think on occasion it's okay to even give that person a book, even if you don't think they're going to read it. But they'll keep it on their shelf and then at a certain moment of their life, when they're going through a great trial or they've got a question that they didn't have before, maybe they'll grab that book. I hear stories of that. So I'm not saying never give a book, but don't think that that's the silver bullet. You know, like I'll just give them a book and they'll read this book and then they'llory prayer.
Speaker 2:It's easier to give a book than it is to offer sacrifices of the things you like. It's easier to give a book than it is to give of your time, your heart and your very self. And that's what's more important, which leads to the seventh commandment Thou shall be incarnational. What do I mean by that? The incarnation God took on human flesh. He became man. He became man, he became one of us. Even though we turned away from him, he came and sought us out. He entered into our world. He didn't say, oh, come up to me in heaven. No, he entered into our world. And you see this in Jesus's public ministry. He's not sitting in the synagogue waiting for people to come to him. He's not handing out flyers and saying, hey, go hear my talk in the synagogue tomorrow evening. No, he's going out and spending time with the people. He's spending time with them over meals. He goes to the tax collector's office where Matthew is. He goes to where the fishermen are on the Sea of Galilee. He's entering into their world.
Speaker 2:Do you do that with the people you love? Do you enter into their world? Do you spend time with them and take an interest in their lives? What makes them tick? What are they really interested in? Do you take an interest in their interests? Do you love them enough to really know their heart?
Speaker 2:Well, I think about what St Paul said to the Christians in Thessalonica. He said we gave not only the gospel but our very selves. Sometimes I think we're just quick to just want to give truths of the faith, but we don't give of ourselves. So here's a question to ask yourself that person you love that's away from the church, do they know that you love them. Many of us say, oh yeah, I know that. Yeah, they know I love them. I tell them I love them all the time.
Speaker 2:But here's a second question Do they know that you know them? Because do they know that you know them? Do you really know them? Do you know them on the inside? Do you know what's really going on in their heart? Do you know what their hopes are, their fears, their joys, their sufferings? Do you really know them? And do they know that you know them? Because you can't love them if you don't really know them and they're not going to know you love them until they first know you know them. So go be incarnational them until they first know you know them. So go be incarnational, enter into their world, enter into their heart, spend time with them, get to know them, get to know what they like and get to know what they're interested in and their joys and their sorrows. And then when you speak Pope Francis makes this beautiful point then, when you actually speak into their life, you become a welcome voice, as opposed to just a voice on the outside just telling them what to do. You become the voice of a friend if you really are a friend and you know them.
Speaker 2:Commandment number eight thou shall lead with mercy. What do I mean by this? Oftentimes we're too quick to just want to focus on truths like doctrinal truths, moral truths like the real presence and the Immaculate Conception. The Catholic Church is the true church, or we're going to talk about. You know, cohabitation is wrong, pornography is wrong, homosexual acts are wrong. And don't get me wrong, I'm going to be clear. You have to believe those to be a true Christian disciple, but we don't have to lead with those points. You know we never run away from them. When a question comes up, we should always speak the truth, but we don't have to lead with those truths. And whenever we're talking about the faith, we always want to incorporate the other side of the gospel, which is mercy. We should never talk about the moral truths without reminding people of mercy.
Speaker 2:Because if all I do is just come and say cohabitation is wrong, pornography is wrong, that's not helpful, because the guy that's struggling with his porn addiction probably knows it's wrong. He has a sense of helplessness, he feels so ashamed. Probably he doesn't need to just hear this is mortal sin. He needs to hear how much God loves him, even in the midst of his sin and his mistakes and his addiction. How much God loves him and wants to help him. God wants to forgive him. Addiction how much God loves him and wants to help him, god wants to forgive him. We need to preach how much God wants to offer forgiveness and how much God wants to not just forgive but actually offer grace to help us overcome our sins, our weaknesses and our addictions. This is the point St Bernard of Clairvaux makes. He says that the main reason people don't turn to God is because they don't know how kind and gentle and how quick to forgive he is.
Speaker 1:They don't know that about God.
Speaker 2:And so don't just talk about the truths all the time.
Speaker 2:Talk a lot about how wonderful God is, how loving he is, how kind he is, how patient he is with our mistakes, that he knows we stumble and we fall and he's always there to help us get up. Do you talk about that more than just your favorite hot-button moral issue in the culture? Again, I want to be clear. We shouldn't run away from those tough moral issues. We have to hold on to them. But we can't only preach that. We have to talk about God's love and how quick he is to forgive, but we also have to talk about His grace. That people feel like I just can't live this Catholic life, so why bother? I'm never going to overcome this addiction, so why do I want to even bother trying? They need to know how God, in his grace, can free us from whatever is enslaving us. The God who made that paralyzed man walk can make you in your area of life where you feel paralyzed and just not able to walk. He can make you walk again. That's our God. Let's talk about how great our God is and his power and his love and his mercy.
Speaker 2:Ninth commandment thou shall not compromise your faith. I've already just touched on that, and I just want to highlight this one, because sometimes we could be afraid of what other people think oh, if I say this, are they going to be mad. And so if someone does ask us a question about a tough moral issue, we should not run away from it. We should speak what the church teaches, with the caveat of what I just said bring it alongside the gospel of God's love and his mercy and his forgiveness and his grace to heal us. But we should always remain faithful to Jesus and never fear, never be afraid of what other people are going to think. Be faithful to Jesus.
Speaker 2:Last commandment, 10th commandment thou shall pray for the opportunity to share the gospel. You know, pray for that. Really, just say, lord, I pray for the chance to have the conversation. Maybe I can't talk to this person right now, maybe I need to build up the friendship, maybe I need to build up trust, but I pray at one point I can have that conversation and if you pray, it'll happen, if you beg God, god help me to open up a door for me to speak in to this person's life and share the gospel. And it can be in a simple way. You don't have to like memorize the catechism to do this. You can just you know someone, your friend is going through great suffering and you could share with them a Bible verse and you can just say, hey, I know, you're going through a really hard time in it.
Speaker 2:This is, this is tough and I want to just share with you. Here's a scripture verse that helped me when I was going through a great, a great trial like this. Maybe you want to know the Kerygma more. You want to be able to know the gospel message better so that when these conversations come up you can bring in parts of the gospel message. If you want to learn more about the Kerygma, you can go back to the podcast series I did August 20th through September 17th of this year, 2024.
Speaker 2:I did a five part series all walking through the gospel what is the Catholic gospel, the Kerygma? You can also go to focusequiporg. They have many free resources on how to share the gospel, how to share the faith. But just know that you can share from your own experience. You don't have to be an expert. Training makes you better, but if you've encountered Christ, you've experienced how Jesus has made a difference in your life. You can share from that. So thou shall pray for the opportunity to share the gospel with the one you love. Now, I hope this has been helpful here If you want to learn more about my podcast and get in your inbox each week with the show notes. You can type all things Catholic and text that to 33777. That's all things Catholic. One word to 33777. And if you want to learn more about the SEEK conference this January, go to seekfocusorg. That's seekfocusorg. That's seekfocusorg.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us for this episode. We hope you learned something and encountered Christ in some way. If you enjoy what we do, please subscribe and share this podcast with a friend. This helps us reach more people with and for Christ. Until next time, this is John Michael Peace.
