Two weeks ago Pat and I celebrated our 16th anniversary.  I just noticed an allusion to our vows in my post, Happy Anniversary, Baby from that day.  In honor of the sacramentality of our marriage, we often repeat our vows to eachother.  I found myself repeating my vows to someone else to whom I pledge my life.  Am I being unfaithful?  No!  By all means am I being faithful. 

During a profound adoration experience at a youth conference with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, I repeated my vows to him.  Is this too personal to share?  This is what I said: “I, Alisa Angela, take you, my Lord Jesus Christ, to be my Lord and Savior.   I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.” 

What could be more personal relationship than that of a spouse?  I shared this profession of fidelity to Jesus with Pat who thought it was pretty cool.  Although I said these vows to Jesus, it was he [Jesus] who professed his love for me first when he became my Good Shepherd laying his life down for little lost me.  Now that’s true love!  …and so is the sacrificial love of my sweet husband.  I have much to learn from the men in my life about true, sacrificial love, but I’m trying to do more and more unselfish acts every day to become more like the one who loves me.

I have been thinking a lot about my personal testimony.  What is my story in my journey of faith?  I spoke to a youth who I sent to a training called Leadership, Evangelization and Discipleship.  He called me the other night “on high” for the Lord.  It was so gratifying to hear his enthusiasm and zeal for Christ and his desire to share the Good News with others.  I asked what they had been learning and he told me that they were learning how to write their testimonies.  How to write a testimony, I thought, is exactly what I need to know; perhaps since I have been thinking about the subject ever since my posts about Fr. Jose’s Despedida and Intentional Discipleship. 

Have I done it? No. But I am still thinking about it, and now I know how to do it.  First, describe your life before your conversion. Second, tell what event pushed you toward the Lord.  Third, describe your life after having discovered the love of God in a personal way.

Knowing all that it takes to prepare a testimony is all well and good, but the real reason I haven’t done it because the truth about me is hard to tell.  My selfish pride keeps me from telling about the amazing grace that saved a wretch like me.  Then, I heard another woman tell my story.  I was listening to a talk from World Youth Day in Sydney where Chrystalina Evert eloquently told my story though it was her own.  Thanks for breaking the ice, Chrystalina, it is time for me to face the truth about myself and put my trust in the Lord who has so much grace in store for others who will hear my story, too.

I wrote in a previous post about our goodbye party for Fr. Jose and the testimonies that were told at the event.  I just listened to an iterview with Sherry Weddell from the Siena Institute about the subject available here.  She talks about the Pew study, personal relationship with Christ and intentional discipleship. 

I have been reflecting on how God has changed my life and I will post a brief, 3 minute testimony on one of the ways He has transformed me, my own Magnificat. More things to do. 

ps. we’re goin’ campin’ today.  Winthrop, Concrete, Marysville, Maple Valley, home

I just got home from meeting Jesus in the mass.  I just have to share our after-communion prayer from St. John Vianney that expresses the burning desire for a personal relationship with Christ.  This relationship is NOTHING NEW to Catholics indeed!  Check this out and pray it with tears as our family did today.

I love You, O my God, and my only desire is to love You until the last breath of my life.  I love You, O my infinitely lovable God, and I would rather die loving You, than live without loving You.  I love You, Lord and the only grace I ask is to love You eternally…My God, if my tongue cannot say in every moment that I love You, I want my heart to repeat it to You as often as I draw breath.” 

AMEN AMEN AMEN, a thousand times AMEN.

What a wonderful gift of St. Paul we are celebrating this year!   Beginning today, June 29, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, we celebrate a Jubilee Year of St. Paul.  Pope Benedict XVI has declared this feast year to commemorate 2000 years of St. Paul; he is said to have been born between 7 and 10 AD.  PBXVI has delivered rich catechesis on St. Paul . 

This is an awesome opportunity to join with our separated brothers and sisters to focus on the essential Jesus that St. Paul proclaimed.  PBXVI is really taking this eccumenical thing to heart by making it an important focus of the year as shown by the opening of this Jubilee year from Asia News:

“Bring us back together again, from all our divisions”: Benedict XVI’s prayer for Christian unity marked today’s opening of the Pauline Year, which is intended to celebrate the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of the apostle to the gentiles.  The desire for unity was also expressed in the few words spoken by ecumenical patriarch Bartholomew, after the pope.  With them, as a concrete image of the journey of ecumenism, was a representative of the archbishop of Canterbury, who was unable to attend the ceremony, and of other Christian churches and communities, and patriarchs of the Eastern Churches, including that of Russia.

What I love about this more than anything, though, is the insistance on our PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP TO CHRIST!  And how do Catholics need to hear this message ever more, especially in light of the Pew report of late that states Only 60% of self-described US adult Catholics can clearly affirm that they believe in a personal God with whom it is possible to have a relationship.  Here is what the Pope says on the subject, so please listen (again from Asia News):

“Who is Paul?” This is the question that the Pauline Year, in the words of Benedict XVI, addresses to us today.  “Teacher of the gentiles, apostle and proclaimer of Jesus Christ”, the pope recalled, “this is how he characterises himself in a retrospective look at the course of his life.  But with this, our attention is not directed only to the past. ‘Teacher of the gentiles’ – this title is open to the future, to all peoples and all generations.  Paul is not for us [only] a figure of the past, whom we recall with veneration.  He is also a teacher, apostle and proclaimer of Jesus Christ for us as well.  We have therefore gathered not to reflect on a history left behind forever.  Paul wants to speak with us – today”.

“In the letter to the Galatians”, he continued, “he provided for us a very personal profession of faith, in which he opens his heart to the reader of all times, and reveals the deep driving force of his life. ‘I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me’ (Gal. 2:20).  Everything that Paul does begins from this centre. His faith is the experience of being loved by Jesus Christ in a completely personal way; it is the awareness of the fact that Christ has faced death not for some anonymous person, but out of love for him – for Paul -  and that, as the Risen One, he still loves him.  Christ has given  himself for him.  His faith comes from being transfixed by the love of Jesus Christ, a love that shakes him to his core and transforms him.  His faith is not a theory, an opinion about God and the world.  His faith is the impact of the love of God on his heart.  And thus his faith is itself love for Jesus Christ”.

“This love is now the ‘law’ of his life, and in this very way it is the freedom of his life.  He speaks and acts on the basis of the responsibility of love.  Freedom and responsibility are here united in an inseparable way.  Because he stands in the responsibility of love, he is free; because he is someone who loves, he lives completely in the responsibility of this love and does not take freedom as the pretext for willfulness and egoism”.

In the “search for the interior physiognomy of St Paul”, Benedict XVI then evoked the words that Jesus spoke to him on the road to Damascus, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”, in order to highlight how in these words there is an “identification” between Christ and his Church.  It is “the Lord himself”, then, who asks: “How could you have lacerated my body? Before the face of Christ, this word becomes at the same time an urgent request: Bring us back together again, from all our divisions.  Make this a reality again today: there is only one bread, because we, although we are many, are only one body”.

Wow.  What a message.  Thank you, Jesus for this message!  May many hearts turn to you and stay ever closer to you through St. Paul as they have for 2000 years!