August 28
"Pray! Pray! Undertake nothing without prayer!"
-Emil Neubert, SM, STD
Today’s Reflection:
Many a marvelous work for the Lord has crumbled because it was not sustained by prayer. It is the most effective and easiest form of apostolate. Do you pray as if your work, especially your work as a member of the Church Militant, depended on it?
In his book, Queen of Militants, Father Emil Neubert teaches Christian militants that no attempt to spread the message of salvation to a soul should be attempted without prayer. But once we've done so, he lays out a plan on how to evangelize like Christ in a way that only Mary can teach us.
The next two days mark the feasts of two great saints of the Church, a mother and a son, whose lives give testimony to a sure-fire method of evangelizing those we love.St. Monica (August 27) is the mother of St. Augustine (August 28), though Augustine was no saint when Monica began her earnest intercession. At that time he was a pagan and a member of the heretical Manichean sect. He was known to be a carouser who lived with a woman to whom he had fathered a child. A brilliant mind, he was "devoted" to his views and his lifestyle, and had no intention of converting to the Catholic faith.
St. Monica was distraught about her son's dissolute ways and decided to do something about it. She prayed. And in the end, her prayers won the soul of her son.
What was it that made St. Monica's prayers so effective? I think five strategies are primarily responsible. Perhaps you can implement them as you seek to evangelize those you love.
Ever since Marianne Williamson, a well-known New Age guru and cheerleader for A Course in Miracles, entered the presidential race, there have been many articles written about the Course, some of which are very misleading.
J writes: "Are you familiar with this technique invented by a Dr. Bob Marshall called QRA (Quantum Reflex Analysis)?"
We find ourselves now well into that lengthy liturgical period termed Ordinary Time. For some of us, there is a tendency to take this season at its name, to treat these weeks as a ho-hum, colorless gap bridging the feasts of Corpus Christi and Christ the King. Give us Lent and Advent, when we can focus on the tough stuff!
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