By: William Warby

It is never safe to play it safe.  To do God’s will in our lives takes faith, even the faith of a child.  If we miss God in our sincere movements we really miss nothing. God sees our intention, the risks we take for love’s reward.

Peter was ready to get out of the boat at a word.  Many times we’re asked to do things that don’t make a whole lot of sense.  We need to remember God is the potter we are the clay. His development of us is custom-made, and we need to be willing to listen and respond the best we can.

My sister is a good example of this.  A couple of years before she joined the Catholic Church she felt God was telling her to stop going to Church.  This on the surface seemed unbiblical to a Fundamentalist for sure.  What she didn’t know is that God was doing this with a greater purpose in mind.  She was out of her element and in the midst of her journey into solitude she found her greatest desire, Jesus Christ in the sacrament on the altar.

A few years back I felt called to go into the pastoral ministry program in the Church.  I had no idea why, nor where it was going. After a year of stomaching heterodox teaching I got my reason.  Looking back, I think God wanted me to get a grip on the breach between the Catholic higher education and the faith of the Church.

We may know of something in our intellect and then we can know it in the depths of our being.  God wants us to know a thing often with the desire that it may form and effect who we are and what we do in future events.

I have been perplexed by the state of many a Catholic.  We hear the term ‘cafeteria Catholic’ tossed around, well I think I was in the cafeteria for a year and have a grasp, in my limited experience, of what is going on.  Now I know why my children were being told Jesus didn’t walk on water or feed the five thousand in Catholic grade school.   The teachers were prepped and conditioned by their formal education.

This, in effect, made me sink deeper into the documents of the Church regarding these issues.  Allowance of biblical criticism gone wild has run its course all the way to the children–rational religion in all its ugly glory.

God is shaping his vessel from within and without; cleansing us within that we may share in His holiness, and cleansing us from without that we might see the state of things as they are.  Now we don’t see everything from without but we see what He wants us to see that will effect what we do.

The Apostle Paul was prepared to see the world as a Jew and a gentile before the call even came.  I don’t know the Muslim, Ok maybe enough just to make me a fool if I tried to speak about it. Surprise!  I am not called to the Muslim population.  I know the world, the flesh, and the devil. I know the protestant mind pretty thoroughly. What I didn’t know was the Catholic population, which I have learned over the last few years.  And I’m sad to say it is not guided by the magisterium any more than liberal Protestants are guided by the Scriptures for faith and practice.

Why go to the trouble of sharing any of this at all?  Because the populations reading this blog are unique.  I am called to evangelize; my reader for the most part is not a part of this calling. More than likely we are kindred spirits. Sharing in many common experiences, I’d like to say to these fellow brothers and sisters that have made leaps of faith, have played the Christian version of twister, and have felt so confused and perplexed, you’re not alone. We are all over the place even in this blog.  I love you, God loves you, and you are among the pure of heart.  That got you standing where you are.  God has a plan of restoration, and you are a part of it in your own little way.  He chose you for no other reason than that you were willing to make the journey for love’s reward.

John Paul had a burning flame in his heart for a new Pentecost, a re-evangelization of the Bride of Christ.  God will find his little torches whether from without or within the household of faith, He will raise a standard of faith wherever a fiat of love is given, even if it begins in your little heart.

For the Saints of God and the Lamb.