Learning to be Quick to Listen

Developing a profound and personal relationship with Jesus Christ is at the very heart of the Catholic faith, and the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) provides a clear pathway for this spiritual journey. This path is often understood through a four-step pattern for Christian life: Encounter, Conversion, Communion, and Mission. It begins with a personal encounter with Jesus, meeting Him in a real and transformative way. This leads to conversion, the crucial process of becoming more like Christ by turning away from sin and striving for holiness. While this relationship is intensely personal, it is also fundamentally communal—an encounter that happens through the Church and draws us into the Church. This uniquely Catholic approach ensures that our personal relationship with Christ is nurtured within the body of believers. The subsequent steps of Communion and Mission are notably prominent in the documents of Vatican II, particularly in Lumen gentium . Communion is the ...

On the surface, the Catholic practice of " closed communion "—restricting the Eucharist to Catholics in good standing—can appear scandalous, especially when many Protestant communities practice "open communion." Critics often ask: if Jesus freely received tax collectors and sinners at His dinner table (Luke 15:1-2), why do we refuse them the Lord’s Supper? The fundamental difference lies in understanding what the Eucharist is. Unlike a casual, hospitable meal, the Last Supper was an intimate, covenantal affair reserved for Jesus's chosen twelve, serving as the fulfillment of the Jewish Passover. The Passover was a decidedly "closed" event, requiring entrance into the covenant community (Exod. 12:48). Therefore, the Church doesn't treat the Eucharist as an act of generic hospitality, open to all, but rather as an act of marital intimacy—a profound union reserved for those in full covenantal relationship with the Church, the Bride of Christ. This exc...

Second-grader Taylor Garrison got the best birthday present ever April 12 -- her first Communion. She received the sacrament at St. Mark's Church in Edgewood on the day she turned 8. Her journey to meeting Jesus in the Eucharist wasn't easy, but came about through a combination of hard work, modern technology -- like an iPad and the Internet -- and God's grace. "I feel really excited," she said told The Witness, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Dubuque, in an interview a few days before the special ceremony. "It was a little difficult, but I really wanted to have my first Communion." As a member of a military family, she currently lives at Fort Knox, an Army post in Kentucky, where her father is stationed. Because the Catholic resources there were lacking, Taylor's parents, Pam and Shane Garrison, looked elsewhere to enroll their daughter in a preparation class for the sacrament. "There are no religious education teachers here," said the mot...