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Dear Men of CMCS,
As I meet with men I sometimes hear them say
"I'm not a good Catholic". Meaning that they feel they're far from living how they think a Catholic should. What I say back to them is ...
'and how exactly should a good Catholic live'?
The truth is, my priest friends tell me that many 'good' Catholic's often feel they fall short of God's will... myself included. And that God's will ultimately is that we depend on Him.
So the answer to this is, work to depend on God more and all is good. Don't be so hard on yourselves.
Have some hope. It's ongoing, until we see Him in Glory.
I've learned personally, and by meeting with men one-on-one, the fastest way to success is to replace bad habits with good habits.
One at a time, and don't make your expectations too high....baby steps.
Everyday that I pray, and look at the Crucifix, I"m reminded how us Catholic's have the crucified Christ on the Cross to remind us that it is through His suffering that we are called to suffer, and cause us to grow in our faith and depend more on God through that suffering.
Our expectations from how we see other Christian's living with 'blessings' get in the way of us seeing our suffering too as a blessing.
Keep the faith and know that Bishop Perry and The CMCS Team pray for you and your witness every week.
I would like to share with you some things we are working on here, and ask for your prayers and to support in it:
Firstly, mark on your calendar the next Chicago Catholic Men's Forum on Saturday, April 27, 2019. The Keynote speaker will be Fr. Tom McCarthy, OSA., you can find more
informion about the Forum here.
The highlight of our conferences the past few years has been the group discussion, as it seems you guy's thrive on connecting the dots with each other about how to live out our Catholic virtues. This is why the conference is now a called the forum.
We'd like to see each parish in the Vicariate sponsor a table of eight men, and to help you do this we've both provided a ticket discount as well as
this graphic (JPEG File) for you to send off to your pastor to pubish in your parish bulletin between today and the event date. We are also working with the archdiocese to provide same from that end of things.
But your bringing it up (with your parish priest's) would help establish testimony and invite action like no other.
On another front, we'd like to send you
special invitation to the Catholic Chicago Men Blog. You should have received a separate email recently (check your spam folder), as a subscriber to this CMCS mailing list, with a special invitation to follow
Catholic Chicago Men - A Blog to Nurture Catholic Men's Spirituality.
Here you will find regular blog entries with encouragement and support for
“Living the Goodness of a Catholic Man”, as well as Catholic articles from Bishop Joseph Perry, and others, as it relates to the CMCS Mission:
To foster local Catholic men in personal Holiness, and to make Jesus Christ the center of our daily lives.
Finally,
your donation to CMCS helps fuel our important work and mission to nurture Catholic Men's spirituality in Chicago Southland.
If you've not do so before,
can you chip in today?
If you have any questions, please feel free to reply to this email or
contact us. If you will not be able to attend the event,
donations are accepted to offset the expenses of offering complimentary tickets to priest's and seminarian's, and others who can not afford to attend.
If you read this far I thank you! So let me close with these appropriate words from the late Francis Cardinal George:
"The only thing we take with us when we die, is what we have given away."
Frank J Casella,
CMCS Executive Director,
Co-founder Catholic Chicago Men's Forum
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