Hey, everybody. This is Father John Ricardo with Acts 29. And in the middle of all the craziness

and the uncertainty that's going on right now, it seems from our perspective as a team that it's

worth using these days to reflect in a more deliberate way on the scriptures every day, which

for many of us now is the only spiritual food that we're receiving. And so we're going to do a special podcast series simply entitled,

Be Not Afraid, God's Word in Uncertain Times.

And we'll try to post something every day, usually reflecting on the scriptures,

so that we can listen in on what God is trying to say to us in these days.

Again, today, as we get closer to Pentecost and the conclusion of the celebration of

the Easter season, we have front and center the figure of St. Paul in the Acts of the Apostles.

And as I mentioned yesterday, what's important to remember one of the things that's important to remember about Paul and about us as disciples and disciple makers is that Paul wasn't trying to teach people what to think.

He was trying to teach people how to think. He was trying to teach people how to bring their minds into conformity with the mind of God. Again, that's what repentance means to change your thoughts, to change the way you think, to think in accord with reality. And so I've been mentioning off and on for the past week or so this extraordinary

book, which was just recently published by the University of Mary, entitled, From Christendom to

Apostolic Mission, Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age. It is an exceptional book, and I keep reading

from it because, well, because it says better than anything

I could say. What I want to say, especially right now as we get to the conclusion of this

extraordinary season that we're in. And so the author says at one point, too often Christianity

is presented to the mind of the modern believer or inquirer as a set of rules one follows,

or as a number of unattached doctrinal statements one accepts, or as an organization one belongs to,

just do a quick check if you're a parent or a teacher or a priest. How often do we talk

about the faith that way? Or did we perhaps in years past? Certainly, many people perceive Christianity

as a bunch of rules or just a bunch of unattached doctrinal statements or as an organization.

But it doesn't provide, the author says, a way of seeing the whole.

...