One Intentional Disciple Gives his testimony to an RCIA Class...

     If someone had told me 6 years ago that I would be up here talking, I would have said, “you're crazy, it would take an act of God to get me up there.”  Turns out it did.

     Five and a half years ago I was a regular guy living in the busy world.  I thought of myself as Catholic. I followed the rules. I went to church every Sunday and went to confession twice a year for lent and advent, because that is what Catholics did.  I had a great family with a nice wife, 4 kids and a good job where I could help people on a daily basis.  My prayer life was grace before dinner and at bed with my kids. 

      However, I was clearly longing for more.  I was always anxious about my job and money, even though both were great.  I was working 90 hours a week and running everywhere at 90 MPH and never stopped to rest.  I was rarely at home and when I was at home, I was working, thinking about work, studying for work or even worse, watching football.  I would get aggravated at the smallest inconvenience. I found myself yelling at people in my car if they were driving slowly. I was confused because according to the world, I had the perfect life, a nice house, the car I always wanted, a good job, more money than I needed, a loving family, but I was still unhappy, I knew it, but I did not know why.  I knew my marriage was missing something important. My wife and I would argue over little things.  I even read self-help books to try to figure it out. Guess what? I found out I couldn’t help myself.  I blamed everyone else for any problems I had, rarely looked at myself as the problem, and never even thought to look at my relationship with God.

     That is when God gave me a new men's group here at St Roberts called That Man Is You. Now I had been to men’s programs before without much help, but I started out with That Man Is You to see what it was like.  I thought every Wednesday at 6am was too hard, but watching the videos, it was like Steve Bollman was talking right to me, telling me just what my heart wanted to hear. So, strangely, I came back every week.  The meetings taught me what was wrong with the world and what it meant to be a man of God, to be a father and the exact steps I needed to take to fix my life.  By Christmas I was determined to be the man God wanted me to be.  I was still unsure how to do this, but I promised God I would do whatever I was told to do.  Clearly, what my life was missing was God.

     The first year Lenten exercise booklet came in and I bought it the first day it was available.  I some-how knew that God wanted me to follow these exercises completely.  So I did. Each week had a daily exercise. The first week’s exercise was listing how much time we spent doing everything for one week.  The goal being that we were supposed to tithe our time to God, 10% off the top, 2.4 hours a day.  I started doing the Divine Office of Prayers that took roughly 2 hours a day to complete.  I thought if it was good enough for the monks, then it was good enough for me. Needless to say, this was an effort. But I thrived at challenges.

     The third week involved daily prayer and no TV or media.  Honestly, the not watching TV was not hard, what was hard was trying to fill all the extra time at home once I stopped watching. Sometimes I just sat in silence, which I had not done for a long time.  Mostly I filled this time with reading the Diary of St Faustina.  Now, my brother Matthew had given me the book 12 months earlier and he made me promise that I would read it because he knew I wouldn’t. I didn’t because it was too long and I had not read any book, even short ones, for years (I thought I was too busy).  Taking into account my new found trust in God to do whatever people offered to me, I started reading this 700+ page book. 

     The Diary is the story written by St Faustina at the prompting of her spiritual advisor, I think because initially he thought that she was crazy and a nuisance.  While moving through the book, I was not sure myself whether St Faustina was crazy or not.  She had daily conversations with Jesus.  How is that possible?  My father once told me that only a few people had ever heard God talk to them, much less had conversations with our Lord and we can count them on one hand.  Adam and Eve in the garden, Moses in the bush, Elijah in a whisper, and a few others and they all had entire bible sections devoted to them.  How could this unknown nun be talking to God? 

     At some point while reading this book, God touched my dark and crusty heart that, like the Grinch’s, was 2 sizes too small. I started to believe that this saint was not crazy, and that she truly was talking to God every day.  I just knew that God wanted to have this same relationship with me! and just like that, there I was, in my bedroom, lying in my bed, weeping. For the first time in my life, I felt God's presence. Honestly, it was crazy and very embarrassing. I was afraid my wife would see me, balling like a baby. I cried off and on for 2 weeks whenever anything religious was mentioned, in the car, sometimes at work, I just could not help it. I suddenly knew that God loved me as He loves each one of you and wanted to get to know me, as He wants to get to know you, and wanted me to follow him, to become a disciple just as he wants all of you to be disciples.  I finally knew this is what life is all about, to know Him and love Him and serve Him.   I finished the book over the next few weeks, learning the Divine Mercy Chaplet and saying it regularly, knowing that God would have mercy on me a sinner. 

     The next week came and could not make any negative comments to anyone all week.  I barely said a word that week.  My wife thought I had laryngitis.  As the weeks went on God changed my soul and just before Easter 2011, I had my first real confession.  I confessed all of my sins, even ones that I had been afraid to share with any priest before.  God absolved me of all my sins.  I had an enormous weight lifted from my shoulders. I had finally come to our Lord and bared my soul.  I realized what it meant to be humble before the God of the Universe and love God with my whole heart and soul.  It was a wonderful gift.

     The program's second year taught me how to make my home holy.  I started to fully commit to teaching my children about God, about how to pray. We started praying at all meals including the ones at restaurants.  A weekly rosary on Sundays became part of the family routine and we expanded our bedtime prayers to include more appeals to the Holy Spirit to increase our faith in and love of God. We would read scripture passages at home. I learned that my family all are Christ and I need to love them at all times. Every day I offer myself in service to God and the Holy Spirit and try to have my children do the same. The previous frustrations in my family gradually went away.

     Since then, the Lord has called me to many things.  I have taken over TMIY a weekly men’s program that teaches us how to become men of God as well as the parishes baptism class. These gifts from God have brought me great joy to be able to share my faith with others.  The Holy Spirit has also inspired myself and 2 other men to start a group called Intentional Disciples, a door-to-door, 2 by 2, ministry where we share our faith with people in their homes.

     God has a plan for us in our life, we just need to listen to him and do it.  I used to live for the world and myself but now I live every day for God.  If I can do this, anyone can.  

Paul W.  -An Intentional Disciple