An Invitation

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rwoehmke

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From our parish bulletin:

AN INVITATION

Has your life been enriched by someone who chose you, someone who invited you on a date, for a meal, to the theater, into a relationship? Jesus often sends his invitation into relationship with him through a friend. Do you know someone who might be waiting to be asked to meet Him in an RCIA group, perhaps in the Sacrament of Confirmation or First Eucharist?

You can be the voice of Jesus and extend His Invitation to friends, acquaintances, or family members who might otherwise not hear His voice calling them to join or return to the Church, to meet Him in the Sacraments; to be in relationship with Him and His people. Not everyone sees, reads or responds to invitations in our Bulletin. Some are waiting to be invited by you. Invite someone today. It only takes a moment and may change someone’s life forever; for all eternity.

Contact …👍

Do such invitations actually work? I would love to hear stories.
 
I also believe that God sometimes introduced us to people. I guess the most powerful instance in my life occurred some years ago. There was a discarded or lost ten-year-old ordination card that several times came to my attention during my visits to the church to pray. I had committed myself to praying for priests a year or so prior to this, believing I seemed to be called to do so.

In the end I finally whimsically said, “Okay Lord, I’ll pray for him then!” I continued for about a year, and then wondering if he had maintained his vocation and was flourishing I contacted the Catholic Centre and asked for a phone number. By some extraordinary grace the priest didn’t think I was crazy but spoke amiably and trustingly with me. I gained the impression of a very decent, good priest.

A couple of weeks later he phoned me to ask my prayer. “I am sick and getting sicker, thin, and getting thinner, and hostital tests don’t reveal what is wrong.” I prayed. He phoned from time to tme. His voice was flat and sad…but he trusted me with his difficulties. After many months he expressed his intention to leave the priesthood. He thought he would like the companionship of marriage. He was unhappy, and he wasn’t recovering from his illness. “Even my fellow religious say I should leave if the priesthood is making me ill. You are the only one who is defending my priesthood” he said.

I met him eventually, and asked him to lunch, but when I saw tears in his eyes when he saw I’d made him a roast dinner, I thought, oh no! Not helping the cause! He was a dear young man, actually very charming and handsome, which I observed…but it didn’t worry me at all. I argued after lunch with all the gentleness and fervour of my respect for the priesthood, but he went away, still intending to leave the priesthood. I was so sad.

So I played my last card…naturally he had a fondness for me, which made more effective the 6 page letter I sent him regarding some of the anguish I had in some periods of my marriage. I think the letter quite shook him. "Two weeks later, a phonecall, “I read your letter two or three times. And I have been able to recommit myself to Christ, this time with realism. I had been trying to do too much for God” …knowing that we can only do so much, God does the rest.
The priest’s voice now had a lilt in it, an enthusiasm that he had for a time lost. I encountered him by chance again, and hardly recognised him because of all the life in him…

Whatever failures whatever mistakes in my life, by chance but by invitation, I was given the privilege of a brief friendship that saved a priest’s vocation
 
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