Evangelization through youtube

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dinokino

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Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I need some help from you.
I am 19 years old, and I live in coutry (Czech Republic), where is catholic faith (and christianity in general) dying. In Czech Republic, there is lack of quality materials for growth of catholic faith. So I decided to translate quality videos from youtube. I believe, that I can at least slightly help catholic faith through that. But there is some issue. I learn english for 11 years, but I still have some deficiency. Mainly I don’t understand, when someone in video speak fast. So I have question:
Is here any willing catholic, who want to help me to “propagate” catholic faith in my country through translation of videos? I think somebody, who will transcribe spoken word (from YT videos) to text, alternatively help me to better understand that text (for example unknown phrase)?

Only one video per week (or less). Usually only short videos (about 5 minutes).
So? 🙂 I would be very grateful… 🙂
Thanks.
 
Hello! While not a brother in Christ, I would be willing to put to text one or two YouTube videos. Perhaps someone else seeing that would then be able to help with further videos. Send me a link or two of videos you want done, and I’ll send you a transcription back.
 
Here you go. I had to break it up into two posts.

That was awkward silence.

Hi, my name is Fr. Mike Schmitz and this is Ascencion Presents. Speaking of awkward silences, I want to just… let’s talk about silence. So many of our lives have just so much noise and so little silence that I think we’re missing something as a culture.

Years ago Pope Benedict XVI he said that, “God’s first language is silence.” But think about this. Think about when was the last time you ever had any kind of sense where you actually chose to enter into silence and didn’t distract yourself by introducing noise? When was the last time when you entered into silence and didn’t then just kind of at some point have that awkward silence; and so you just had to say something, do something, distract yourself by some kind of noise whether that’s actual noise (like audible noise), or visual noise, or just kind of mental noise? But God’s first language is silence, because God speaks in silence.

You know it’s actually in silence that God reveals himself. I used to grow up thinking like, you know I’d hear about these saints who you know had actual audible messages from God, that God would speak to them. I think that’s what it is to pray, to enter into this time of prayer and God would actually speak and then realizing, “Wait, wait, wait” that sometimes happens but God’s first language is to reveal himself through silence. Not only reveals himself in silence but He also reveals ourselves to ourselves in silence. God reveals us to ourselves in silence.

Think about, that’s one of the reasons why we don’t like it. We don’t like it to be quiet. In fact, we used to have a lot of students who would come to our holy hour every morning. You know we have a holy hour every morning here on campus, so it’s basically an hour of silence. An hour of silent adoration in front of Jesus and the Eucharist. There would be so many students who would come to me they were super perplexed afterward.
“I don’t know what’s going on. I go into adoration and I’m just so mad. Father, like what’s happening? Should I not go?”
I go, “No, keep going to adoration.”
“I keep going to adoration, Father, and I have these crazy thoughts, like, and it’s kind of like these feelings of lust and these thoughts of lust. Should I not go? Should I avoid prayer because I think I have these crazy thoughts when I’m in prayer. Should I just not go?”
“No, no, keep going.”
“But Father, I go into prayer and all these things. I’m, I have this anxiety or this fear, and maybe I should just avoid going to prayer because I think that prayer is causing me to have these thoughts of anger, that prayers is causing me to have these thoughts of lust, that’s causing me to have all these anxieties and these fears.”
"So, no, calm down.|
The silence. The prayer’s not causing those things. Silence is a great magnifier. What silence does is silence reveals what’s already in our heart. Silence expose – remember silence reveals us to ourselves. So when you go into prayer and you have that time of silence, and you realize, “Man, I’ve got this anger. 'Cause usually I’m distracted from the anger. But now in silence I can’t distract myself from the fact that my heart that has a bunch of anger in it. Or, I, in silence I find myself thinking about all my possessions, thinking about wanting to get more possessions.” Not because silence is creating that. Silence is simply revealing that. Whatever is in my heart gets exposed and magnified in silence. I think that’s one of the reasons why we don’t like silence, because we don’t want to have to deal with the stuff that’s going on our lives…
 
In fact, Blaise Pascal, was this you know, was a 16th century philosopher, mathematician, what-not. He was a Christian Catholic man. And he had said this. He said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit by himself in a room for one hour.” All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit by ourselves for one hour in silence. You know, again that’s a pretty big statement. But to say, “Like wait a second. Is there any truth in that statement? Do I have the ability to just sit in silence and just actually think my own thoughts? Do I have the ability to sit in silence and actually feel my own feelings?” That’s one of the reasons why we distract ourselves all of the time. I don’t want to think my own thoughts. I don’t want to feel my own feelings, because what happens to happen is that I have to deal with those things. I have to do with those thoughts. I have to deal with those feelings. So I want to avoid those feelings and thoughts by distracting myself.

And yet what would happen? What’s the worst that would happen if you entered into silence, specifically silence in prayer, let those things come to the surface, and then invited God into them? Man, Lord, I have so much fear in my heart. I just, I didn’t realize it was strong and so paralyzing. OK God, it’s there so I’m inviting you into this fear. Reveal it and reveal yourself. God, I have these crazy thoughts of lust and I don’t know what to do with them. OK, God, OK come to the surface. You, I’m inviting you into them. Like reveal what’s going on? What’s beneath this? Because it’s not that. It’s some other kind of brokenness. It’s some other kind of wounds. Some kind of something going on. I have so much anger. OK, let that come to the surface. God, come into the anger here. I’m not sure what to do with this.

So many of us spend too much time distracting ourselves, even in prayer, so we tell God the things we think he wants to hear rather than the things that we need to invite him into. We tell God about all the stuff that’s going on in our daily lives instead of like actually letting what’s really in the depth of our heart be exposed, revealed, magnified so we can say OK God that’s what’s really going on. OK, come into this. Help me make sense of this. Come in and heal this.

You know, one last thing that silence does – what silence is I guess maybe you say – silence is boring. Not just in prayer. I’m like talking about the rest of our days. I’m making some supper, so what do I do? I need to put an episode of whatever on Netflix. Or I’m making some supper so I’ll put a YouTube on blah, blah, blah. You know this kind of thing, I’m gonna put Ascension Presents on and watch myself talk. That’s not true, I’m just making that up. But how many times, I’m doing something so I got to listen to music. I’m doing something so I’m going to listen to a tutorial. I’m doing something so I’m going to have something to distract myself from the moment.

Here’s something interesting when it comes to boredom. My parents, my mom and dad would always say this. When we were kids, you know a summer break or whatever, we’d say, “Mom and Dad, this is so boring!” My mom and dad would always have one response. They’d say, “Things aren’t boring. People are.” Things aren’t boring. People are. And if I find myself unable to be creative on my own, unable to think my own thoughts, unable to feel my own feelings, unable to in some ways be bored, and then let creativity come out of that boredom. To be bored and let the Lord speak in that boredom. To be bored and in that boredom, in that silence, to let something incredible happen I might be short circuiting the contribution I can make, not only to the world in a big way but to the moment, to the day,. A critical ingredient to creativity is boredom. A critical ingredient and recipe to for boredom is a lack of distraction. A critical recipe and ingredient for a lack of distraction is silence.

So, don’t be afraid of silence. Get used to silence. Be drawn to silence. Because silence is God’s first language where he reveals himself to us and reveals us to us.

For all of us here at Ascension Presents my name is Father Mike. God bless
 
I’d be happy to help. 🙂 You can contact me via Private Message. I can hear a video and transcribe the text and send it to you via RTF document.

I am not a native speaker, but I did major in English, and I am pretty comfortable with English whenever it’s spoken. I’d love to help you revitalize the faith over there!
 
I speak English fluenty…that’s pretty much it. Anyway, I don’t so much try to evangelise through Youtube (although I certainly DO evangelise), I just try to get people to at least understand my position, even if they disagree with it. I don’t get thousands of views, but I don’t care. I just care people hear the message of the gospel.
 
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