Mike Landry: Catholic speaker, writer, & music minister in Alberta, Canada HomepageMike Landry: Catholic speaker, writer, & music minister in Alberta, Canada

Faith Questions

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Living in the Word of God: Start Reading the Bible

 

Inspired by Archbishop Richard Smith’s pastoral letter, Living in the Word of God, I’ve recently been encouraging students and adults alike to spend more time reading their Bibles.  I believe we would all benefit by making a commitment to read at least one chapter from the Bible every day, and this post is a resource to help people do just that.

Here’s three simple tips to help you get started:

1. Obviously, if you want to read the Bible,you need a Bible.  The Catholic Youth Bible is a great print edition for students, while I personally use the Didache Bible at home.  If you prefer to work from your devices, Olive Tree has an excellent app that works across all platforms.  NOTE:  If you’re buying or downloading a Bible, keep an eye on the edition – both to ensure you’re reading a good translation and that all the books are included.  Good Catholic translations include the New American Bible (NAB), The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB), the Revised Standard Version (RSV), or the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) – which is the edition we use for readings at Sunday Mass in Canada.

2. If you’re going to read the Bible, it helps to know where to start reading.  While there are many Bible Reading plans (the Great Adventure Bible Study is one of my favorites), the easiest thing to do is to read the New Testament first.  If you read one chapter per day, this will take you 9-10 months, but will help you in a reading of the Old Testament, as many events in the Old Testament make much more sense if you know where you’re headed.  I also have a handy checklist to keep track of what you’ve read, chapter by chapter:

I’ve also found Dr. Scott Hahn’s book, A Father Who Keeps His Promises to be a very valuable tool in understanding what it is that I’m reading.

3.  Finally, there is great value in learning to pray your way through the Bible, rather than just reading your way through it.  There’s a simple process for praying with Scripture called Lectio Divina.  Good books to help you with this include Pathway to Our Hearts by Cardinal Thomas Collins and The Better Part by Fr. John Bartunek.  I’ve also got a small handout based on the work of Cardinal Collins & Fr. Bartunek which you are more than welcome to use:

Know that I am praying for you as you begin, begin again, or continue this journey of living in the Word of God!

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Is God Really out there?

It’s one of the questions I get asked most often in class, so I’ve put together my three best answers to one of the basic questions of our faith… is God really out there?

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Lent 2016: Unfinished Business

By JCD1981NL (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Photo Credit: JCD1981NL [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I’d like to say I’m a gamer – but it’s probably more accurate to say I’m a wannabe gamer.  I’ve almost always played on outdated consoles – I had the original Nintendo when other people were running 16-bit systems; and today I’m still the proud owner of a Nintendo Wii and about a dozen games that I play occasionally – mostly on nights that I can’t sleep.

One of the great frustrations on the original Nintendo was the fact that many of the best games had no  save points – meaning if you ran out of lives, you were forced to continue or start over, without the benefit of either the progress you had made or any upgrades/achievements you may have unlocked.  It was incredibly frustrating – and more often than not, I would just turn the system off and walk away.  Luckily, this was a challenge that went away as gaming systems progressed – so much so that many of today’s gamer’s probably consider this memory to be ancient history – right up there with rotary dial phones and black and white TV’s.

While I can’t blame the technology anymore, my gaming habits haven’t changed much.  I’ve got at least ten games started that I’ve never bothered to finish – partly because, as a husband and father, I now have other priorities – but if I was to be completely honest, it’s also partly because I find them hard and I can’t be bothered to dedicate the time and effort required to get better at it.

You might be reading this and saying “So what? You’re a grown man now, a father of five… who cares about your inability to master video games?  Aren’t you a little old for this?”

If it was just video games that get treated this way, I’d agree with you.  But this lack of perseverance carries over into many other parts of my life.  I’ve got a stack of books on my dresser – 26 to be exact – that I’ve been meaning to read (some of which I’ve had for more than four years!)  I’ve got two virtual courses (public speaking and music lessons) that I’ve been putting off for months.  There are many things I’d like to do to build up my spiritual life or  to improve my general health and well-being… but my good intentions don’t always end up producing great results.

Fortunately for me – and you, if this sounds like you -it is the perfect time of year to do something about it.
[Read more…] about Lent 2016: Unfinished Business

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Is it HARD to get to Heaven?

Photo Credit: Erika (Creative Commons)
Photo Credit: Erika Szostak on Flickr  (Creative Commons)

On the night our parish youth group kicked off a semester of youth ministry programming on the Church, our guest speaker took questions from teens.  One of them went like this: “You mentioned that it’s hard to get to Heaven.  Do you really mean ‘really hard?”

A better word than ‘hard’ in this case might be ‘impossible.’  It is impossible for any of us on our earn merit to get to Heaven.  This is why Jesus had to come.  The Old Testament tells the story of the people of God who, after being created by God to love broke their relationship with Him (by sinning), and were never able to properly reconcile that relationship.  God tries over and over again, covenant by covenant (think Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David…) but humanity is never able to uphold their end of the bargain. [Read more…] about Is it HARD to get to Heaven?

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Audacious Faith: “This IS my body…”

Leonardo da Vinci [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Leonardo da Vinci [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Every Sunday, from the time I was seven years old, I would walk up the aisle of my local parish Church.  When I got to the front of the line, the priest or auxiliary minister of communion would hold up a flat, round, white host and declare reverently “The Body of Christ,” to which I would reply with equal reverence “Amen.”  What did all of this mean?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that afterwards, I was to return to my pew, kneel, and say a prayer of some sort.

In spite of the fact that I had attended Mass from the time I was a child, and that my parish priest had tried (in vain) to explain to me what was really going on at the Mass, this ritual was meaningless to me up until my teenage years, when I found myself on a retreat asking someone what the term “Blessed Sacrament” meant.  The answer?

[Read more…] about Audacious Faith: “This IS my body…”