 All right, good afternoon, everybody. So my job is talking about sharing the gift of faith with others. And I've been praying about which aspects to share, about how to share the faith. So many examples I could give. But the one that the Holy Spirit told me to share with you today is about kids who are away from the church and what to do about it. OK? But before we get there, I have to talk a little bit about prayer because you cannot be an effective evangelizer, an effective witness of the faith if you are not a person of prayer. So let's wait. Let's talk about this word first evangelization. That's the buzzword now that we hear so much in the church. You have to be evangelization. We have to be about evangelism. Let's back up. What does that word actually mean? It's come a Greek word, evangelion, which means good news. And it was used by Homer several hundred years before Christ for soldiers who returned from battle. We have evangelion. We have good news. We won. It was also used the same way by the Romans, of course, Latin, Evangelium, which also means good news, except when Caesar proclaimed news because Caesar was the king. And so when the king proclaimed news, it just wasn't good news. It was life changing news. Why? Because news from the king can change your life. We serve the king of kings and the Lord of lords. So the encounter with Jesus Christ is not just good news. It's life changing news because news from our king will change your life. So it's tapping into that understanding is how we become effective evangelizers. But you can't be an effective evangelizer if you are not a person of prayer. And so what is prayer at its very heart? It's conversation with God. Now, people say, well, Deacon, you're a man of prayer and stuff like that. But where do I find that closer to intimacy with God more than any place else in my prayer? Adoration. Now, people say, oh, wait a minute. Come on, hold on, Deacon. You can pray anywhere. You can pray in your house. You can pray in your car. You can pray anywhere. I can pray right here, right now. I can pray. What difference does adoration make? That's a good question. Here's the answer. When I travel, I'll call my wife. I like to maybe Skype or FaceTime, like to see her when I talk to her. But I'd rather be with her. Isn't it always better to be in the presence of the person that you love when you're talking to them? That's what adoration is. We're in the presence of the living God, body, blood, soul, and divinity. And we're sharing our life with Him. Now, some people go to adoration and, you know, OK, I'm going to do this. I'm going to pray this rosary. I'm going to do the office. I'm going to read these spreads from Bible. I'm going to read this meditation. And those are all wonderful things that I encourage you. But really, all God wants is your heart. Hosea chapter 6 verse 6, I want a loving heart more than sacrifice. Knowledge of my ways more than Holocaust. Just go into adoration and be before God. That's it. Just give yourself completely to Him. Don't hold anything back of yourself. Now, I used to go to adoration. When I was first thinking about leaving my law force of career and getting into speaking, you know, I went to adoration. I started to make a list. OK, God, here's how it's going to go. I'm going to make a list of pros and cons. This list why I should stay. This list why I should go. And then we're going to we're going to figure this out, God. And nothing was happening. And I went to my spiritual director. I told him what's going on. He goes, oh, I see the problem, Deacon. Oh, thank you, Father. Tell me what's going on. He goes, shut up and listen. You're doing too much talking. You need to listen. The beautiful thing about adoration is the silence. We are so uncomfortable with silence, aren't we? Let's be real. We are completely uncomfortable with silence. I go to people's homes and the kids are walking around with ear pods in their ears at home. Don't even hear what's going on in their own house. And let's be real. Let's be real. Even at mass, sometimes we're uncomfortable with silence. For example, first reading. First reading from Job. You read it. Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Response to our song. This is where our song is over. Second reading from First Letter Timothy. Ah, ha, hey, Lou. God just spoke to us in his word. Can we take four seconds? After the reading, for Psalms to allow that word to penetrate our hearts, before we move on to the next thing, we are uncomfortable with silence. Psalm 46, verse 11 says, be still and know that I am God. Yalda. So there's a couple of different words for knowledge. One is daoth. Daoth means factual knowledge. But the word that's used there is yalda. Yalda means knowledge that is gained by experience. So you can translate that, be still and experience God in the stillness, in the silence, in the quiet. Now, prayer is a gift, and it's a response that takes effort in our part. Like, people say, well, you were, because I was a Benedict in my 20s. So people say, oh, but you're married now. That's so great, you're married life. You know what? Married life is the hardest thing I've ever done. Much easier being a monk than being married. I'll tell you right now. Dang, the women are clapping, but I thought, ooh. Ooh, OK. But no, but it really is hard. But it's beautiful at the same time. In other words, anything that's worth it takes work and takes effort. And prayer is no different, especially during those times that we feel that God is not hearing or answering our prayers. You know, when I was 10 years old, I met Craig. Craig and I became best friends ever since the fourth grade. In fact, we're more like brothers than friends. Every time I come to his house, I just walk in his house, go to his refrigerator, get something to eat. I mean, his mother would be like, oh, hey, Harold. Mrs. Allen, you know, that's just the way it was. We went to grade school together. We were boy scouts together. We went to high school together. I was the best man at his wedding. He was the best man at my wedding. 19 years ago, Craig was a computer consultant. He was doing a consulting job over in Germany. He came back and he had this sounded like a flu. And so I was talking to him and said, man, you know, sound good. You should get it checked out. Yeah, I know. Alicia, his wife. Alicia already told me, go to the doctor. I'm going. So he did go to the doctor. He didn't have the flu. He was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of small cell lung cancer. He received his diagnosis on a Monday. He went to Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City for a cancer treatment pan on Thursday of that same week. And he died the next day. I'll never forget when I got that call. I was sitting outside of directory of my spiritual director because I was waiting for him to be done and I was waiting to go into directory. And I got a call that Craig died. I said, what are you talking about, Craig died? I just talked to him this week. And they told me what happened. And I am a person who loves to pray. But during that time, I didn't stop praying, but I felt nothing. I felt empty and I felt dead inside. Why? The same group of us who were groomsmen at his wedding are now pole bearers at his funeral in the same church. He left behind not only a beautiful wife but an almost three-year-old son and a less than one-year-old son. So I'm thinking, how God is that fair? How is that just? How does a loving God allow something like that to happen to my friend? And I'm trying to pray to y'all to pray on my rosary and just the words are coming out. But I'm dead inside. I feel nothing. I'll never forget at his funeral the look on his wife's face when they closed that casket for the last time. I'm like, how do you trust God at a time like this? So how do you get past something like that? Well, first of all, you don't. I miss Craig every single day. I pray for the repose of his soul every day since the day that he died. And the only thing I could come up with is what I said before in my first talk, right? Jesus, I love you. Jesus, I trust you. Jesus, I give my life to you. In prayer, the Lord is calling each of us. The call is going out to every single one of us. Are we ready to answer? Are we ready to listen? Are we ready to follow? What's holding us back from giving our lives over completely to God? Anxiety, pride, an unwillingness to detach ourselves from the things of this world? Our Lord says, this is great. So when I was leaving, I made the decision to leave my career to do this full time, right? And people thought I was crazy. How are you supposed to pay your mortgage talking about Jesus, right? And so my law forces friends were saying, well, at least keep your consulting company because I was an anti-terrorism expert. I had a consulting company where I did target hardening. I would go into private businesses, corporations, school districts, universities, and develop plans to make them harder targets against violence and terrorism. So at least keep your company. Don't give up everything. I said, let me bring it to prayer. And so I walked through the adoration chapel literally before my knees hit the pew. The scripture jumped into my head. Once you put your hand on the plow and you look back to see what was left behind, you are not worthy of the kingdom of heaven. Got my answer. God said, I need you to give up everything because I need all of you to do the work that I have for you. I didn't know exactly what that was. I wasn't planning on traveling all over the world and writing books and doing nine television seasons at EW10 or any of that stuff. That was not in my plan, but that was God's plan. And that happens because of prayer. That happens because prayer leads us to hope and trust in the Lord. One little piece about my father is connected with this. My father was not a man of prayer. My father was an abusive drunk and a womanized. He has 15 other kids from other women besides the four of us were my mother. When I left the monastery, I didn't talk to him for 18 years when I joined the monastery because he was crazy upset that I would throw my life away living with a bunch of men in monastic life. But what turned things around for my father? A man that wasn't baptized, never went to church. I never saw my father in church almost my entire life. And the only time I ever heard him use God's name was a curse. What changed him? Because when he died, by the way, I died at he died at his bedside while I was praying the chapel to the Divine Mercy. What happened? You know what started the whole change? Someone called up from Barbados. When my first series of EW10 started airing in Barbados, someone called my dad and said, isn't that your son on TV? I had not seen my father spoken to him for 17 years at that point. He said, my son, so he flips the channel. There I am. He catches the last 10 minutes of the series. He goes, I want to watch again. So the next week, he got the time wrong. So instead of watching me, he's watching Mother Angelica. They got to understand. My father was like, who's that lady? Where's my son? And he thought, OK, well, she must be talking for a little bit. Then my son is going to come out. And I never did. But he watched the entire hour of Mother Angelica. And so later, I would ask him, pop, why did you keep watching? He goes, she just made so much sense. So the person who reached a man like my father, Mother Angelica, people, that could reach a man that was hard-hearted, that destroyed our family, Mother Angelica? But that was, remember I talked about planting the seed? That was the seed that was planted in my father's heart. And that was in response to the prayers of my mother, who unbeknownst to me, had been praying a rosary every day for almost 20 years for my father. And I didn't know that. Prayer is so powerful that Jesus even prayed from the cross, praying for the people who were killing him. And what's powerful about prayer is a wonderful expression of God's love. And that's so important because so many people do not understand or experience God's love. They just don't. I'll give you an example. I've been to Australia seven times speaking. The last time I was there was October, this past October. But before that was before the pandemic. And I spoke at a conference with a group of middle school kids, about 600 middle school kids. And I told them that you have no idea how much God loves you. So when I said that I got off the stage, a young priest who had been ordained for a few years was standing there. He goes, let me drive home the point you just made, Deacon. He said, when I was first ordained, they put me into Catholic schools. They figured young Catholic priests, they might get some vocations out of this thing. So I was teaching religion at the local high school. And so as an experiment one day I wrote on the board, I believe in God. And on the other side, I don't believe in God. And I asked the students to stand under the statement that best represented what they believed. And so he said, most of the students got up and stood under the statement, I believe in God. He said the other state, probably some atheist kids or just kids there just to get an education, I don't believe in God. And they sat down, he erased it. Then he wrote, God loves me, God doesn't love me. And asked them to do the same thing, stand under the statement that best represented what they believed. Father told me that none of the students stood under the statement that said, God loves me. Not one. A handful of students stood under the statement that said, God doesn't love me, but most just sat there because they weren't sure. Could our young people today not be sure how much God loves them? But that's why they're leaving the church. They don't know Jesus. What do we do? We teach them about Jesus. Here's your religion class. Here are the 10 commandments, which they can't name. Here are the seven sacraments. Here's what Jesus did. They're learning about Jesus, but they don't know. Y'all da, they don't know Jesus. They have an experience, the power of His love in their life. So what happens? The faith becomes math, English, science, language, arts, religion class. They just tick it off a list. I got confirmed. I got my driver's license. I went to the prom. I got confirmed. Boom, gone. Most of our young people are fans of Jesus, not followers. Not pulling the blame or anyone to blame. We underestimate the power of this culture. We underestimate the pull and the attraction of moral relativism. And we don't teach our young people that they need to be in love with Jesus about relationship of intimate, personal, loving, and life-giving communion. Most of them say, mass is boring. Why do they say that? They don't know why they're there. They're there because mommy and daddy make them go. But when they leave their house, except they come to Steubenville, they're gonna leave, they're not gonna go to mass. The faith anymore, I'm out of here. And then what do you left saying? They went to Catholic school. They got confirmed. They were really active in youth group. They went to mass with us every Sunday. What happened? They don't know Jesus, but yet God literally loves us to death. He sent His only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God from true God to die in order to show us that freely giving up what is most precious to us, our very lives to do the Father's will that we will receive everlasting life. Jesus shows us even in the darkest hour of our lives, God's love knows no end. Even in the hardships of everyday life, God's love knows no bounds. Even in suffering and death, God's love holds nothing back. The real cross of prayer is to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord of every single situation in my life. That's the key, the real cross of prayer, to truly believe that Jesus Christ is Lord of every single situation in my life. That means we have to take our hands off the steering wheel and let God drive. I don't even let my wife drive. Never mind, let God drive. We must empty ourselves of sin so God can fill us with His life. We have to die to the ways of this world so that Christ can live in us. That's what our young people need to see. Now, how do we do this with our kids who are away from the church who don't want to hear nothing about what you have to say about anything when it comes to the faith? I get this question all the time, typically from grandmas at parish missions. They come up to me, deacon, my son is away from the church. And the typical, like I said before, they went to Catholic school, they did all this stuff. And now they went off to college and these professors with all these letters after their names filled my son's head with all this nonsense about atheism. Now he says he doesn't believe in God and doesn't know who Jesus is. My grandkids aren't baptized. I try to send them Bibles. I try to send them a Catechism. I sent a Scott Han DVD. Nothing's working. Deacon, what do I do? First of all, I say stop working so hard. Now I love me some Scott Han, okay? I love Scott Han, okay? But I told this one, I said, your son doesn't know who Jesus Christ is. He don't care who Scott Han is. That's why the Scott Han stuff ain't work. He's like, who's this guy? Because he doesn't know Jesus. You have to introduce your child to Jesus. How do I do that? Do you babysit your grandkids? Well, yeah. I said, next time you go to babysit your grandkids, maybe your conversation will go like this. Your son will call you, mom, Jenny and I, we need to have a date night this Friday. Can you and dad watch the kids for us? And you say to your son, son, your father and I would love to watch our precious beautiful grandchildren. And so I just want to let you know that after Mass today, after I received Jesus Christ and the Eucharist, I was praying that you would be like St. Joseph and lead your beautiful family to Jesus. Just cut it out. A couple of days later, your son will call back. Mom, I just want to make sure we're still on for Friday. You know, we got dinner reservations, we got movie tickets. Yes, son, no problem. Talk to your dad. In fact, if you want, you and Jenny can have the whole night to yourself. We can watch the kids on Friday. You got the whole night to yourself. Mom, that's awesome. Let me tell you what else is awesome, son. After I prayed the rosary today, I was praying that in Genesis two, it says that man was put in the garden to till and to keep it. That means to serve, protect and defend. And I pray to Jesus that you would truly serve, protect and defend your family against the evil one. Just don't say goodbye, don't say I love you. Hang it up. Now at this point, your son is saying, what's wrong with mom? Then Friday comes, the minivan pulls up, the kids jump out. You go, don't you see grandma? Right, your grandkids. Your son says, mom, thank you so much. This means a lot. Son, no problem. And I just want to tell you, when I was in adoration this afternoon, because I was nearly before Jesus body busts on the vine in the Eucharist. I was praying, meditating on Ephesians chapter five, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. And how did Christ show his love for the church? He died for her. I pray so that you would die to yourself every day of your life to live for your wife and your children. And your son grabs your arms and pulls you over to the side. Mom, why are you talking like that? What just happened? Remember this morning? Ooh! Door open. What are you supposed to do? You're doing it. Step in and throw some seeds and get out, right? Now your son is coming to you. Now what? You got his attention. Oh son, wait here. Let me go get the Catechism, read paragraph 2238 to you. Of course not. At that point you tell your child about your relationship with Jesus Christ. Son, you know what? When you were younger, you and your brothers and sister were younger. We may not have been the greatest examples. Yeah, sometimes we watched football instead of going to church on Sunday. Sometimes we went to your soccer match instead of going to church. We weren't perfect, but son, let me tell you what God has done in my life since your father and I started praying together every day. Son, let me tell you what Jesus has done in my heart since I started praying a rosary every day, son. Son, let me tell you the healing God has brought into my life, son, since I started going to adoration for an hour a week. That's what he wants to hear! That all this stuff actually means something in his life every day. That's what he wants to hear. What we're horrible at doing is telling our stories. Why do you think the Journey Home is the most popular show on EWTN? People are telling their stories and we are horrible at that. That needs to change. Our young people need to see that we are in love with Jesus. If your answer is, why do you go to Mass? Okay, I don't want to go to hell. That's not, maybe it was good in the 50s, it ain't good now. They don't care about that. Why do you go to Mass? I can't imagine my life without Jesus. I can't imagine living in this life, with everything going out in this world, without uniting my body to the body, blessed with the Vinny of Jesus, that gives me strength to take my next breath. Ooh, that's a little bit different answer, doesn't it? So let me give you some more advice here. Six things you can do for your family members, okay? Besides the beautiful example I just gave, right? Number one, don't argue with them. They already know how you feel, okay? Because look, we know what happens. They come over for Thanksgiving or they come over for Christmas and everything's fine until someone starts talking about religion or politics. Then crash and burn. And they're yelling and they're screaming and people are taking things personally and everything falls apart. Don't argue with them because it's pointless, which feeds directly into number two. Love them more than ever before. I cannot tell you how many young couples I talk to who are away from the church who say that they honestly believe that their parents don't love them as much anymore because they're not practicing their faith. They honestly believe that. Now here's how the first two are connected. Your daughter comes to your house for dinner a couple of times a month with her husband and the kids. And every time they're there, you pound them about why aren't the grandkids baptized? You know, son, this and this and son, this and that. My honey, this and, you know, one day they're gonna be driving back home and her husband's gonna say, you know what? I really love your parents. I really do. But they're not respecting where we are right now. Every time we go over there they keep hounding us about mass and this and this. You know, if that's gonna continue to happen I don't wanna go over there anymore. Who do you think your daughter's gonna listen to? What is it saying in scriptures? Therefore, a man leaves his father and mother, leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife. She's going to listen to him and you won't see your grandkids anymore. The last thing your kids need to hear when they leave your house, no matter what happened in that house, argument or whatever, when they walk out the door the last thing that needs to come out of your mouth is I love you and I'm praying for you. That is the last thing they need to hear when they leave your house. I love you and I'm praying for you. Loved, now, loving them doesn't mean you approve of their actions, right? What's the Catholic principle? We love everyone, but we always don't love their actions and we judge actions, we never judge people. So by loving them, you're not saying I agree with your decision not to practice faith. You're not saying that. You're saying I'm your mother, I'm your father, I love you totally, completely, unconditionally even though I disapprove of your lifestyle choice decision, I still love you. See, the problem is in our culture today, right? They're conflating my behavior defines who I am. Who I have sex with defines who I am. What color I am defines who I am. What gender I am defines who I am. That's garbage. I'll give you an example. Some people say to me, well, you're a black Catholic. I say, oh no, I'm a Catholic who's black. Nope, when I die and stand before Jesus Christ he's not gonna ask me how black I am. Did you pick up your cross and follow me? I gave you talents. Where's my 10-fold, 50-fold, 100-fold return on the investment I made in you? That's what he's gonna ask. Now, does that mean I deny my blackness? I love being black. I thank God every day I'm black. I love my Caribbean heritage. I still love our food. I love our music. I still speak our dialect. I love everything about that, but that doesn't define who I am. A deep intimate relation with Jesus Christ defines who I am. I don't let this culture define who we are. Jesus Christ defines who I am. Number three, so we got, don't argue with them. Love them more than ever before. Number three, prayer, which I spent the first part of talking about and fasting, we keep forgetting about the fasting piece. We are horrible, horrible fasters as Catholics. Think about this. Our big penitential season is what? Let, how many fasting days do we have in Lent? Two, some people say more. How many? One, good Friday is not in Lent. Lent ends with the start of the mass of the Lord's Supper on Thursday night, Holy Thursday. Fridays are abstinence days, no meat, not fasting days. The only day is Ash Wednesday. So for 40 days, we have one fasting day. Muslims, for Ramadan they fast for 30 days every single day. We got a lot of work to do. Now, every Ash Wednesday we hear the reading from Jesus. When you fast, not if you fast, when you fast. There was an expectation that you were fasting. In fact, look what's happening now. 2023, the culture is finally catching up with fasting. What's the big health thing right now? Intermittent years to us. But why is that combination so powerful? Remember, when Jesus went, one of the accounts where the 72 came back, they were saying, Jesus, we can do all this cool stuff. But those demons over there, we couldn't cast them out, what happened? Jesus said, oh yeah, those dudes right there, they're gonna only be cast out by prayer. And so there are certain evils, certain things in our lives that are gonna only be cast out by prayer and fasting. Now, I fast every Friday for my wife and kids. Every Friday I fast for my wife and kids. So fasting can take the form of not eating full meals or not eating meat, well, that's cool. But here's the beautiful thing, we can get creative as Catholics, especially outside of Lent. Because there's plenty of room for example. You may want to fast from something that you enjoy. So for example, you say from Jersey, so let's say I'm not gonna watch the Giants for a whole month, the football, New York Giants. I'm not gonna watch them for a whole month. And some of you are looking me like, I was with you till you said that. I mean, I can't watch my favorite team. What are you willing to give up for your children? No, by not eating food or not watching your favorite, what are you doing? There's a hunger and a desire there, huh? And that physical manifestation of hunger or that yearning, oh, I wanna be watching my team right now but I can't because I'm fasting. That yearning, that longing, that desire, that hunger points toward what our ultimate hunger and desire is for, intimacy with God. Fasting is a powerful reminder of our desire for intimacy with God. So prayer and fasting, that combination together, lights out, lights out. Again, that's not me, that's Jesus who teaches that, not me, prayer and fasting. I'm telling you, you start making a commitment to fast, you will start to see changes in your life and the changes in your children's lives because God will honor your sacrifice. Just like you honor his son's sacrifice and what are we supposed to do? Pick up our cross and, so when we do that, God will also honor our sacrifice. But here's the thing, my friends, you go, okay, I'm gonna start fasting and I know God's gonna do something in 30 days. Ha ha ha. You know, here's the thing, God works in his time and God's timing is always perfect, it ain't our time. Sometimes we just gotta wait on God. Next, know a little something about your face. Me, because your kid's gonna ask, well, wait, why do you go to Mass anyway? How could a piece of bread be God? How can a man forgive sins? Like for example, I was just on pilgrimage, I was in Croatia and Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Italy and some wonderful places. And they say, Anthony of Padua, they had his jaw bone. All right, they have his actual jaw bone in a reliquary and his tongue in a separate reliquary. Now, one of the husbands of one of the pilgrims is a Protestant. He was looking like, Deacon, what's up with this? He goes, help me understand because you Catholics, for example, you allow cremation now, but you can't take the ashes and scatter them. Right, you have to keep all the ashes together in an urn and bury them in the ground or put them in a columbarium. Okay, I get that, but his body's over here somewhere. His jaw's over here, his tongue's over here. He's like, what's that about? And I'm like, dang, that's a good question. I mean, it looks crazy, right? I mean, like, why are we worshiping, why are we venerating this guy's tongue? You know what I mean? But here's the thing, when people that we love die, especially for us the saints who have gone before us as the priest says in Eucharist prayer, marked with the sign of faith, we're gonna hold on things to them, right? So for example, I have a crucifix, not this one, but a special crucifix I wear that has my mother's miraculous metal attached to it. My mom, she was the first Catholic in our family. She came into the Catholic church in Barbados when she was a teenager. She was Methodist, became Catholic. When she came into the Catholic church, someone gave her a miraculous metal. She never took it off. I can't remember ever seeing my mom without that miraculous metal. That's the only thing I wanted when she died. So that helps me to hold on to her memory and remember her love and her commitment and her sacrifice to us kids. So in the same way, we have these saints who we know are in heaven. And, you know, so like St. Adler Paddle is one of the greatest preachers in the history of the church. So we got his jaw bone to remember. Not like, wow, look at that structure of his faith. No, nothing about that. But just like that little metal, my mom's miraculous metal, we wanna hold on to these to remind us, right? To remind us of our commitment to continue the work that they started. It's just a reminder. We're not taking his body and throwing all over. I mean, but that's the problem. This guy was one of the greatest preachers in the history of the church. Look at that. That jaw bone looks no different than mine. So all of us have that same commitment, right? It's beautiful. So we have to, now how's the best way to learn about the faith? Come on, Father Mike Smith's Bible in a year, Catechism in a year. Come on, bite-sized chunks. You got the St. Paul Center over here with amazing resources. Incredible class, catechetical classes. It's awesome. There's no excuse, especially with technology these days, there's no excuse for not learning about your faith. And here's the way you do it. Sometimes you'll have, you know, sit down and listen to things for an hour, but how many of you spend time in your car? Drive around, spend time in your car, right? 15, 10, 15 minutes. Instead of listening to music, instead of like, I hope you're not doing this, listen to political talk radio. Oh, good Lord, don't do that. Why? Every single person I meet who listens to that stuff, they're angry all the time. I don't want to be around anybody like that. How about this? How about taking those two minutes, maybe while you're changing your granddaughter's diaper, or while dinner is cooking, to take that time to listen to something that's gonna strengthen your faith? 10 minutes, a podcast. I show on my phone's back there, but on my phone, I've got at least 20 podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis. Why? Deacon, man, you know all this stuff about the faith, you write books, you go, that's true. But you know what I found? The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know. So here's an opportunity to take what I call, what I call junk time or slop time, right? Just take that little extra time of your day and fill that with time for God. Take 10 minutes, 15 minutes to learn something about your faith that you didn't know before, right? Easy way to do it. Then finally, pray that God brings someone else into their life besides you, right? Because they've heard you their whole life. What you have to pray is that God brings someone else into their life that's gonna bring the message that you've been trying, because sometimes you're too close. You're a mom and dad, so they're not really listening. They're hearing you, but they're not listening. So God brings someone else into their life. Let me give you an example for my own life. When I made the decision to leave my career, and I was doing very well financially, you go into a situation like, leave all of that to talk about Jesus. So we had kids in Catholic school. So my first daughter was in high school, then my second daughter hit high school, and when that happened, the tuition went whoop, and we're like looking at the numbers, we can't do this. We can't make it work. So our decision was to pull the twins out of Catholic grade school and put them in a charter school. That way we can afford the tuition for Catholic high school for the other girls. So we went to the principal to tell him our decision. The principal said, wait, let me talk to, let's bring the pastor in. So brought the pastor in, now it's not my pastor, my pastor's a tiny little pastor, so we don't have a school or anything. So the pastor, we talked, explained the situation. The pastor said, look, before you do that, let me talk to some people who have helped out families in need. Now I said, no, mm-mm, I don't wanna do that. I don't want people knowing my situation. I'm embarrassed. I used to make a lot of money before now. I'm not, I don't want, I'm embarrassed, honestly. So I said, don't worry, I won't use your name. Let's just see if I get somebody to help. Okay, Father, do what you need to do. So he goes to talk to a few people. He has one guy that's interested. He said, I'd like to help, Father, who's the family? Oh, Father said, well, I wanna protect their privacy and stuff, but trust me, I would not be coming to you if this family was not in need. I appreciate that very much, Father, but who's the family? So seeing no other way around, he said, well, it's Deacon Harold. So the guy says, Deacon Harold. He said, Father, my son was away from the church. No matter what I did, I could not get that boy to go to church. I heard that that Deacon Harold guy was gonna be speaking someplace. So I called my son and I wrote him a check and paid him to go see Deacon Harold. Now, I didn't know any of this. The young man never spoke to me. Whatever event that was, the young man never spoke to me. He goes, I don't know, I wasn't there. I don't know what that Deacon said, but here's what I do know, that my son is now back in the church. He's part of the men's group. All the grandkids are now baptized. How much does he need? And Father told me that man on the spot wrote a check for both twins' tuitions for the entire year. Now, that's, no, no, no, don't clap, don't clap. Cause people gonna say, oh, they clapped. That means he's like preaching a gospel of prosperity. No, that's not what I'm doing, okay? I'm just saying the whole point of that was sometimes God needs to bring someone else to bring the same message you bring in, but because it's not you, they're hearing it differently. It's hitting their heart differently. They're more open to the message, huh? That's what you pray for, that God brings someone else into their life besides you. All right, so again, the six, don't argue with them. Love them more than ever before. Prayer and fasting. Show, Catholic apologetics, oh, I forgot one. Show the joy of the Lord. I talked about this in the last talk, right? Joy, not walking around like, oh, look how happy I am, I'm a Catholic. Not that kind of joy, but a spiritual joy, huh? Spiritual, for example, I was on a plane coming back from Florida, we're across the Rocky Mountains and everything was fine, the flight attendants were in the aisle, serving drinks, all of a sudden, the plane felt like it hit something. And we all say, what was that? And all of a sudden the plane tilted to the left and started diving. It was the only time, and I fly 250,000 miles a year, I'm on planes literally almost every week of the year. I've never heard people screaming until then. The cart, stuff was flying off the cart, drinks were spilling, I was sitting on the aisle, the guy's laptop that was next to me slid down, so I had one arm on the back of the chair in front of me, I had the other arm grabbing his laptop. And I was just calm, I'm like, okay, Lord, if this is the end, okay, let me meet Jesus quickly. And I'm praying, I'm confident, and people are screaming, so when the plane finally leveled out, by the way, the pilot said we hit a mountain wave. I'm like, a mountain wave, I've never heard that before, but anyway. So then, again, the first time I've seen flight attendants go to every single person, are you okay? Are you injured? Are you okay? Are you injured? So I gave the guy back his laptop, he goes, you are pretty calm during that whole thing. I said, yep, because if this plane goes down, I know where I'm going. Here, here, here, here. That's the spiritual joy that I'm talking about. We need to exude that as Catholics, huh? We have the fullness of truth, Jesus Christ. We should be joyful in the Lord, huh? So okay, prayer and fasting number three, enjoy the Lord, study the Catholic faith, and pray that God brings someone else into their life besides you. Because what are we trying to do by doing this? You know, in the Bible, the Jews have different parts of the body that aren't just have anatomical functions, but have spiritual functions as well, right? So the kidneys, for example, is where your intuition lies in your body. Your stomach is where your life resides in your body. And, Leb, your heart is where your desire for God lives inside of you. So what God is trying to do through prayer and through effective evangelization is to change hearts. And that's extremely important. Think about this, in a second Samuel, first Samuel, chapter 16, when we first meet David. Remember, Samuel is sent to the house of Jesse to anoint the new king of Israel, because Saul is not doing what God needs him to do. So he sends Samuel to the house of Jesse to anoint the new king. Now, why is that important? What does it say? Isaiah, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of, oh, by the way, where does Jesse live? Bethlehem, Beth, Lachem, the house of bread. Jesus said, I am the bread that came down from, what? Catholic faith! You see those beautiful connections, Old Testament, come on now. Right, so he goes to the house of Jesse. Jesse has seven sons, he has eight sons, actually, eight sons, but he only lines up seven of them, Eliab, Abedadab, Shema, four other sons. What son was not included? David, why? He's a kid! He's out there with the sheep! Yeah, he's like, oh, this is before the lion stuff, this is before all that. But here we go, here we go though, hold on, hold on. So Samuel goes to the first on Eliab, doesn't describe him, but he's probably tall, handsome, good looking guy, not like me, I'm short and dumpy and wear men's warehouse, okay, that's right. He goes, this guy looks like a king, he goes to pour the horn of oil of anointing, Lord says, nope, not him! Samuel's confused, he goes, all right, I'm at the right house, here are the sons, there's Jesse, what's the problem? What's the Lord say to him? Do not look on his stature or his hydrant because I have not chosen him, because man does not see as God sees, man looks at the outward appearance, the Lord looks on the heart. That's what God sees when he looks at you, he sees your heart because the heart is a place where God can completely change your life. So when we're talking about effective evangelization, we're talking about with the help of the Holy Spirit because we look and we can't change hearts, only God can do that. But God is using us as vehicles, as instruments, God's a musician, when people clap at the end of the talks, like for example, the amazing musicians, right? When you clap, are you saying this? Guitar, you did a great job tonight! Guitar, oh drums, oh drums, you were fantastic. You don't clap for the instruments, you clap for the musicians. We are instruments, God's a musician. So all we're doing is allowing God and the Holy Spirit to use us as his instruments so the musician can change hearts. He left work for us to do. And this is the challenge. This is why we can't be afraid to talk about our faith. We can't be afraid to witness the power of God's love. But we're afraid. People might say this about me, they might, they might befriend me. They might not like me anymore, so what? I don't care what anybody thinks about me. I know some people say some ugly things about me because I'm not afraid to stand up for the beauty and truth of the Catholic faith. I will die for this faith. But why are we so, what are you afraid of? You know what, I'm a, you know why a priest the way they do know what I'm afraid of? Standing before him and trying to make excuses. Let me see if I got this straight. I gave you one of the talents that I gave you was preaching and you were afraid to preach the truth about my son and what my son teaches because you were afraid that people were gonna write bad things about you or complain to the bishop or you, let me say, I died on that cross, the most horrific death imaginable for you and you couldn't stand up when somebody called you a name. You couldn't stand up and defend me. Ooh, I ain't gonna take my talent and bury it under the ground. We need to take what God has given us and multiply it for his glory. So just a couple of little short things to end here putting this all together. You know, every once in a while get a little email after a parish mission or something like that. And this one was after a parish mission in Illinois. Just ran into a friend of my niece who went to your parish mission at Holy Cross. She told me that she dragged her 10 year old to it even though he had no interest in going. After your two hour talk, so I spared you guys, the mom loved it. But the 10 year old wanted to buy up all of your books and CDs. His mom told me he has listened to you every night. Just wanted to give you an example of how you're changing lives. I ain't changing nothing. I'm just the instrument God's the musician. Last one, you spoke at the high school this past week where my son is a ninth grader. Whatever you said resonated. Immediately following your talk, he started self regulating his video game playing which had become a real source of concern for his mother and me. And he began going through to the tennis courts to practice for two hours every day on his own initiative. Further, he's been more engaged with us. It is definitely connected to your talk. And in a very uncharacteristic manner, he spoke about it to me at length. So thank you. You are making a difference, like look. Again, every single one of us by our baptism in the Holy Spirit is called to share our faith. Maybe not the way I'm doing it. Traveling 250,000 miles to be in 29 different countries. You're not called to do that. But you are being called. And we can't be afraid. What does it say? First John 419, perfect love cast out all fear. Now perfect there is tilios in Greek, a tau meme in Hebrew. Doesn't mean without error or fault. It means mature, whole and complete. A mature faith, a whole faith, a complete faith. So my brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord says whoever exalts himself will be humbled and who humbles himself will be exalted. Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself. It means think of yourself less. In your prayers, openly share with the father of mercy, your sorrows and your joys, your hopes and your fears, your aspirations and your dreams. For his love and his truth will never fail. So through the work he has given us to do each in our own way and by our faith in cooperation with the grace of the sacraments and not being afraid to witness and to share what God has done in my life with others, we will come to know and to love and to serve the Lord in this life so we can be with him together forever in the next. And I leave you with this. The great American writer, Mark Twain, once said the two greatest days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why. So I wanna challenge each and every one of you to allow the power of God's Holy Spirit working in and through his church and in the sacraments and this amazing weekend that we're spending with each other together to give you your why. Amen. God bless you guys. Thank you very much.