One of my dearest friends was about your age when she got one. It has saved her life more than once. I pray tonight for the success of these treatments Brian. That you may take up your wonderful work again and stay healthy.
My cath lab RN for today’s catheterization was a fallen away Catholic born again non denominational Christian. Really good guy. He had a slow day. We talked for two hours, then he walked me out to my ride and we talked another half hour. He didn’t “revert” to Catholicism but I convinced him to go to Eucharistic Adoration! I just texted him some resources explaining the scriptural and early church basis of the Communion of Saints as an explanation for why we ask Mary for her prayers for us. This kind of stuff is almost becoming common lately. A couple months ago I was driving 120 miles to an area of Maryland Southeast of DC. I was stuck in traffic and wondering aloud why I was “wasting my time” with such a long trip to get a used trailer. When I got there I talked with the owner about Trump, conservative politics and belief in Jesus Christ for over an hour. I can carry on a conversation with born again Christians, evangelicals, fundamentalist and main stream Protestant Christians such that they never suspect I’m a hard core Catholic. THEN I told him I was Catholic and he sheepishly admitted he grew up Catholic but had fallen away years ago and went to an independent Pentecostal church. So then I talked to him for another hour, and tried to convince him to return to the Church, mainly by quoting John 6:52 and onward. I talked to him about finding and attending Adoration and going to a Latin mass. He called me three days later on a Wednesday and said he had found a traditional Latin mass ten minutes from his home, gone to mass that morning, and went to confession, although he couldn’t receive absolution due to his marital status. His wife subsequently became Catholic and they had their marriage blessed in the church a couple weeks ago, and regularly receive the Sacraments at a Traditional Latin Mass now. So even though I’m living through chaos and there’s enormous trouble in the Church and the world, God is acting in our day in ways I’ve never seen before! Keep your eyes open for real miracles even in the midst of the troubles we’re witnessing!!!
Was it St Francis de Sales in Benedict MD? That is Southern Maryland. Things happened fast for his marriage to be regularized. I think they may have appeared on that church’s Facebook page. lol That’s the TLM I attend at times.
It’s good to hear this story Brian. You might have helped save a soul! A great example of how God wants us to spread the gospel!
All I know for sure is that his name is Chris and he lives in St. Mary’s County Maryland. I don’t think he had any major impediments to getting his marriage blessed and I suspect his wife being brought into the Church was much faster at the TLM parish than a typical Novus Ordo RCIA Program.
Brian, thanks for the update prayers for you continue. Yes it was Free Republic back when I had Web Tv and during Y2K, lol. After awhile I found the religion section and with you and a few others on the forum I found Jesus and the Catholic Church! God Bless you and all here! Mary keep us.
Awesome! Thank you so much for sharing this! We had a very good collection of amateur Catholic apologists there in the early 2000s. (I ended up getting banned for exposing the lies of a notorious poster there who falsely claimed to be an active Catholic deacon (to give more weight to his opinions) because of his nastiness and heterodox posts. That forum did not tolerate exposing another poster’s personal information but he was leading so many people astray with his posts that something had to be done.)
What a testimony! I almost missed this, Brian. Decided to come in here to see new posts and here it was. THIS is evangelization in action—SO inspiring! Keep up God’s work. You are in my prayers. PS-For anyone reading: How can I set it up that new posts come to my alerts or email? I’ve only ever gotten alerts/emails from those threads on which I am currently active. If I want to see anything new anywhere on the forum, my only recourse is to keep remembering to click on New Posts. Is that how ya’ll do it? Seems tedious and something that one needs to constantly remember in order to stay on top of and/or respond to the latest post. Thanks.~AN
When your primary hobby IS Catholicism this kind of stuff comes naturally. And when I pray the Rosary each day, after each decade and the Fatima prayer, I include a prayer attributed to Fr. Gobbi: Come Holy Spirit, Come by means of the powerful intercession Of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Your well beloved spouse. I hope after praying that prayer daily for several decades, the Holy Spirit does guide me and frankly, settle me down and make me more charitable, because when I used to engage in apologetics at FreeRepublic and elsewhere, I was a bit of a bull in a China shop, more arrogant than charitable. @"Quis ut Deus" can you answer AN’s question about notifications?