St. Joseph the Worker Pastorate

Every parent has the serious responsibility of raising their children to love the Lord, and of making sure they do everything in their power to get them to heaven. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, "Through the grace of the sacrament of marriage, parents receive the responsibility and privilege of evangelizing their children. Parents should initiate their children at an early age into the mysteries of the faith of which they are the 'first heralds' for their children" (CCC 2225). A simple, but profound daily practice that parents can utilize is the daily blessing. You have spiritual authority over your children, and can call down God's blessing on them as often as you wish. This will leave them feeling safe, protected and loved. A parent can say one of the following brief blessings at basically any time, such as when a child is going to play or to school, or when the child is going to bed each night. The parent makes the sign of the cross on the child's forehead or heart and can say one of the following blessing options offered by the USCCB: May God bless you. May God keep you safe. God be with you. God be in your heart. May God bless and protect you. Or you can offer your own personally worded blessing. One of our staff members likes to say "May God bless you and keep you today and every day of your life." Either way, this practice will likely help your child live in peace, and may help ensure their practice of the faith down the road. This evangelization tip was brought to you by St. Paul Street Evangelization. To learn more or to enroll in our online classes, make sure to visit St. Paul School of Evangelization at evangelizationschool.com.

We invite you to find help through Retrouvaille, (ret-tro-vi), where husbands and wives are helped to re-discover each other. In Retrouvaille, couples discover they are not alone. There is hope and grace. Madison’s upcoming Retrouvaille program is January 31 – February 2, 2025 at the Green Lake Conference Center. Follow up sessions will be in Madison. Call (920) 369-8836 or check our website at www.helpourmarriage.org Your confidentiality is always respected.

This week in our continuing series on evangelization tips, we’ll be talking about how to evangelize your family. They say that the hardest people to share the Gospel with are members of your own family. For those of you who have tried, you likely know it’s all too true. Remember how Jesus’ own townsfolk treated him when He told them He was the son of God? They were the people that knew Him best, and they tried to throw Him off of a cliff! How do we approach this seemingly monumental task? Well-known Catholic apologist and pilgrimage guide Steve Ray has lots of experience with this topic. Over the years, he’s formulated seven rules to follow: 1. Don’t argue. Family members can get defensive very easily, and will only wind up putting up a wall. (If you do get into an argument or come across too strongly, make sure to apologize.) 2. Love them more than ever. As he puts it, “Love is an argument you can’t argue with.” When you love people, it disarms them. People will listen and engage with you because you love them. 3. Show the joy of the Lord. People are attracted to joyfulness. They often wonder “what do they have that I don’t have?” And that opens the door to sharing the faith. 4. Pray and make sacrifices. Nothing is more powerful than when we pray and fast. It will get God’s attention. When we pray with expectant faith, wonderful things will happen. 5. Study. Do your homework and be prepared for any objections that people may have to the Catholic faith. As scripture says, “Always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you about the hope you have” (1 Pet. 3:15). 6. Patience. This can be a hard one for most of us. We must be patient and let God work. He is outside of time and works in the absolute best way possible, so we need to trust Him. 7. Ask God to Bring Someone Else into Their Life. This helps us admit that our family member(s) probably won’t listen to us. Use these common sense rules and God will help you, in one way or another, to bring your family back into the fold. This evangelization tip was brought to you by St. Paul Street Evangelization. Take our course on 7 Ways for Relating to Non-Catholic Family & Friends on evangelizationschool.com. © Copyright St. Paul Street Evangelization 2024

This week in our continuing series on evangelization tips, we’re talking about how to share the Gospel message. To do so, you need to know and be able to verbalize the kerygma, which simply means “proclamation” in Greek. The kerygma can be divided into four-parts: God’s loving plan for our lives, the problem of sin, the saving work of Jesus, and the invitation to repent and embrace Jesus by faith. It can sound something like this: God created everything, but made humanity special. That’s because he gave us free will to choose whether or not we want to live in relationship with Him. Unfortunately, man fell because of the original sin of Adam and Eve, and now we try to live without God. Everything that separates us from God is what we call “sin.” The consequences of sin are death and ultimately eternal separation from God. But thankfully His love for us is so great that God sent His only Son Jesus. Jesus became a man, died as payment for our sins, and rose from the dead to give us eternal life. God invites us to repent of our sins, to believe in salvation through Jesus, and to reform our lives by obeying His commandments and living according to Jesus’s loving example instead of following our own selfish desires. We are invited to live in a loving and joyful relationship with God now and forever in heaven. The choice is ours. Which path will you choose? This is just one example. Make sure to put it in your own words, and be authentic. But the kerygma has power not because of our words, but because God puts His grace behind it and makes us His instruments for salvation. We share the kerygma to help save people from eternal death, for eternal life with God. Many who hear it will be “cut to the heart” because the kerygma speaks to the desires of the human heart, uncovers hidden guilt for sin, and gives hope for forgiveness and salvation. This message is brought to you by St. Paul Street Evangelization. Take our course on Intro to the Kerygma at evangelizationschool.com.