Saint George Catholic Church

Donation link for Elaina Wegleitner, St George parishioner who is participating in NET MINISTRIES for the next year. Thank you for your donation!

In the ancient Church there was an idea that a true theologian is one who does not only study and know the truths of the faith, but is one who has had an experience of the things he studies.  He doesn’t just know about but directly knows God.  This has been missing in the modern Church in many ways.  We end up substituting knowing the basic tenets of the faith (at least somewhat) with the need to know Christ personally as a friend.  Without knowing God as a friend, the rites, prayers, and teachings of the Church fall hollow.  The beauty of Catholicism is how consistent it is.  We have celebrated the same sacred rituals for thousands of years and we hang onto the truths of the faith even if the stormy winds of the   culture try to blow us off our course.  This great beauty is also what can make our faith challenging.  We go to the same Mass every Sunday, we celebrate the same great feasts every year, we gear up for our celebrations by fasting, we go to  confession and repeat the same prayers and formulas (and often the same sins).  The consistency and repetition should help us to burrow deeper into these practices and truths and to find greater healing, freedom and grace.  These practices are like diamonds that can be viewed and studied from many angles, each angle magnifying the beauty of the whole thing in a new way.  But for many of us, repetition is synonymous with being dull. 

These are the reasons we are introducing Alpha this January.  We will hold this program after the 8:00 Mass every week from January through the first half of March.  You can come to all of the sessions or some of the sessions.  Each session will have time for fellowship with coffee and breakfast for roughly 30 minutes or so before we dive into the topic for the week.  We will have speakers and videos that walk through the most basic tenets of the faith followed by time for some discussion with the friends you came with led by a small group leader.  Whether you are someone who has been part of the blessed repetition of the faith and want to burrow further into the mysteries, or you are harboring some doubts and skepticism, this program is for you.  Alpha is geared towards those who have doubts or those who wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves very religious.  But it is also a good primer for those who do consider themselves devout practitioners of the faith.  Alpha is a place for your deepest questions.  We can never gloss over what we view as the basics of the faith.  Every time we go through the basic gospel message, we can find new riches or reencounter Christ there.  God becoming man is anything but boring. 

Whatever the state of your faith is, I would ask you all to consider this invitation that comes right from one of the Alpha Youth videos:

If you live to be at least 70 years old, on average this is how you are going to spend your life: You will spend 20 years and 3 months asleep, 10 years and 5 months watching TV, 7 years and 6 months eating and drinking, 5 years and 9 months in some form of transportation, 18 months waiting in line, and 6 months sitting at red lights.  Put this way, it is shocking that many people will spend more time sitting at red lights than they will considering the important questions like “What is the meaning of my life?” or “Who is God?” or “How can I trust the Jesus is who he says he is?”.  We are inviting you to spend less than 24 hours of the 570,000 hours many of us have to live at Alpha pondering some of these questions.. ~Zach Krueger