Lay Evangelist
Till Christ Be Formed in Every Heart
BG-1.jpg

Blog

FOR PROPHETS AND APOSTLES

Community and Evangelization, part 1

My New Little Series on Evangelization and Community.

I've been thinking lately about two things: evangelization and community, and how they are inter-related. Here's some posts that will follow along these thoughts as I have them. As always, any series that I do are sporadic and incomplete. They are intimations and suggestions towards answers, not the answers themselves.

The Idea of Community

Most of my ministry is devoted to the cause of the new evangelization. I am trying to get a sense of where the Spirit is moving the Church today, of how He is transforming things like parish ministries, outreach, the marginalized and forgotten, the active and the devout. The new evangelization seems to suit me because I enjoy the idea of reaching out to Catholics who aren't really all that Catholic. The Mission Ad Gentes is too remote and I'll leave it to better, smarter, holier people to do authentic mystogogy. 

Community is more difficult for me because I am a nerd and a bit of a loner when it comes to ministry stuff. Heck, this whole website is somewhat of a testament to that - it's just me typing away in my makeshift office all alone. But community is important, and so I need to focus my energy on developing a sane and helpful approach towards "fostering the Christian community", whatever that means.

Read More
Church Life, MoralityMichael Gormleycommunity, evangelization, salvation
Retreat Insights - Theme and Tone

So I figured that I have directed, wrote, and/or contributed to at least 50 retreats in the last six years. Some of those retreats were my own babies from top to bottom, and some were those where I was just plugged in to the speaking role of someone else's baby. To say that I love retreats is an understatement. Retreats are beautiful opportunities to tell the world to shut up so that God's voice can resound in your heart. 

I like to tell the teens or young adults that a retreat is a unique time to withdraw from the world in order to hear more clearly three voices: God's voice, your own voice, and the devil's. Too often we confuse the three (usually I think I'm God).

Here are a collection of insights that I came up with for retreat making that I think are pretty important. And most of these are for high school students, which is the majority of retreats that I do. I will post on a variety of topics to keep the blog posts a little bit shorter for your consuming pleasure.

Read More
Church Life, SpiritualityMichael GormleyInsights, Retreats, theme, tone
a stumbling block for the Revised Roman Missal

I was at a gathering of ministry leaders the other day and I found out why some people had such a huge resistance to the new Roman Missal English translation. The sad thing is, it is all based on a huge misunderstanding, which means there is an opportunity for solid catechesis.

First thing's first, the people who were angriest were the oldest. They represented the mid-60's and older crowd. Not a single young adult or middle-aged person was upset about this third revision. As I noticed this, I began asking some questions to them as to why they were angry.

That's when I discovered the huge misunderstanding.

Read More
Catechesis, Church LifeMichael GormleyLatin, Liturgy, old people, roman missal