Lara Piszar, Author at SteubySTL 365

https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/cdn.simplecast.com/audio/0aef55/0aef5517-c964-443d-b50d-35f6f723aa1c/15ea2397-e2e7-4090-b1e0-5324ae4a2e29/belong-together-family-ties_tc.mp3 Nic Frank spoke to us this afternoon about families and the impact that we can have on our own family. He began by making a comparison to Canada’s own All Dressed Ruffles. If you took out any of the flavors, these chips wouldn’t be the same. Something would be missing. The same can be said for our families. If we took away any of its members, they would be changed. Something would be missing. Everyone’s family is different, but regardless of the family you come from, our hearts long for family. We were brought into this world through family and they are all around us. That being said, it is easy to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to the families we see on TV shows and social media. It can be easy to begin asking ourselves “Is this as good as it gets? Could it be better?” Additionally, some families have been taken down a path that no one intended. The path of divorce, addiction and other hurts can be devastating. Even families we see in the Bible have their share of issues. Families throughout history have seen lies, abuse, death and deceit. Even the Holy Family wasn’t exempt from these pains. Take comfort in the fact that Jesus can understand everything you are going through because he went through a lot of it himself in his own family. Nic urged us to believe this one thing: “If you have one take away from this talk, let it be this: your family should be one of the more important things in your life.” Yes, YOUR family. Right here, right now, your family is important and you are an important member of it. Nic encouraged us to re-commit and re-claim our role in the family. If you do this, the impact that you can have on the family is going to be greater than you can even imagine. Our impact can be great because the family we came from is great. With Christ as its head and God as our Father, our eternal family is great. God wants to give you life, His heart, His grace…He wants to give you everything! Why? Because His hands are stretched out wide to receive us and invite us in. Time and time again Christ proclaims His love for us in the gospel. He tells us that He loves us where we are, but He loves us too much to let us remain there. So He says “Come and follow me”. That’s part of what the invitation is. He’s inviting you into a new way of life when you are ready. He meets us first where we are at. No matter where you are or what you believe, you belong. You belong because you are part of the family. Being part of God’s family gives us grace that can transform not only us, but our parents, siblings & friends. This is the Heavenly family that we’re all invited into and it’s the Heavenly family that is going to transform our family here on Earth. Nic offered us some practical steps to impact our families FAST: Forgiveness – holding onto past hurts prevents us from being a vessel of love, and this hurts not only us but our family as well. Make steps towards forgiveness of family members that may need it. Affirmation – our words have power! Use them wisely and affirm the good you see in your family members. Thank them for the graces they bring into your life. Serve – small acts of kindness open ours and our family’s hearts to be receptive to love Time – make time to invest in your family BONUS! Prayer – pray for your family! If you don’t feel like you can forgive, or don’t think you have time to pour into your family, nothing is stopping you from praying for them. Praying for their safety, health, and happiness will open you and them up to the graces the Lord wishes to bestow. If we can learn to FAST and pray for our family, the impact we can have on them will be greater than we can ever imagine. So recommit to your family now. Look to the future and begin to form the virtues you want your family to have for generations to come. They will be blessed by the decisions you make today. The things you choose to do have an impact on your family and we have no idea how far that impact will go. The post Belong Together: Family Ties appeared first on SteubySTL 365.

https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/cdn.simplecast.com/audio/0aef55/0aef5517-c964-443d-b50d-35f6f723aa1c/2419fcd9-ce49-432e-8ce8-1df2f4f9de2a/called-to-belong-lisa-cotter_tc.mp3 Lisa Cotter shared her heart with us this evening as she told her testimony of finding where she belonged. She began by visiting her teen years and telling us of a “Jesus filled” Spring Break trip she took where she never quite felt like she belonged. Like many of us, she found herself asking “Where do I fit in? Do I belong here?” Upon coming home she found herself living in two separate worlds – her Friday night party world and her Sunday night youth group world. Two competing worlds which again left her asking “Where do I fit in?” The Calling of St. Matthew The good news…we’re not alone in this thought! In fact, struggling to fit in and know where you belong even extends to the Saints in the Bible! In Matthew 9: 9-13, we read about the Calling of St. Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector, and was widely considered a crook and a thief. However, Jesus calls Matthew His and claims him for Himself. Our Father is the God of the universe and He doesn’t just love us, He IS love, and all He wants to do is give this love to us. Jesus didn’t come for the put together and the perfect, rather, He came for the broken, the sinners, the messy; people like Matthew, people like you and me! God desires unity with us always. When Adam and Eve’s sin separated us from Him, He set a plan into action; a plan that would reunite Him with His people so we could be with Him again. A plan to win His people back. A plan that culminated with Jesus on the cross. By Christ’s death, the power of sin was no more, and we were once again united with Him. This is truth, but if you don’t believe it, if it’s just a “story”, then none of it matters. You won’t feel like you belong until you can feel it and know it in the depths of your heart. Know that God loves you and He wants to be with you! You Belong Here Lisa encouraged us to picture ourselves in the Calling of St. Matthew story. What worlds are you living in? Which world sparks joy? Which world do you belong in? The world of fear, chaos, guilt, shame and sin? Or the world of love, support and forgiveness? As a teen, Lisa had to let Jesus into her two worlds so He could transform them. She let Him in so He could take His love from shallow depths to one as deep as the ocean. For the first time she committed to ‘really follow’ Him, not ‘fake follow’. For the first time she knew where she belonged. If you find yourself asking “Where do I fit in?” know this; if there is anywhere you belong, it’s here. Here, where you are surrounded by your big, crazy, sometimes messy, Catholic family. Welcome Home! We’re glad you’re here! Moving Forward Lisa left us with a challenge for the weekend; she challenged us to hold our relationships, friendships, sins, addictions, feelings and hurts up to the Lord and ask ourselves, ‘Is this where I belong? Is this where God wants me to be? Does He want better?’ The Holy Spirit holds all of the answers to these questions. He wants to work in your life in new and radical ways this weekend. Just ask. Invite Him to tap on your heart in a new way. Holy Spirit, come. The post Called to Belong: Lisa Cotter appeared first on SteubySTL 365.

https://steubystl365.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/07/jimmy-truth-revealed-2018.mp3 In his session this afternoon, Jimmy speaks on truth. In his talk he gives us permission to wrestle with the truth, but urges us not to settle for less than it. Jimmy Mitchell: Truth Revealed Jimmy is from Nashville and is founder of Love Good, a company which supports and invests in artists and songwriters with the goal of evangelizing culture with beauty that is rooted in truth. The logo for this company is a heart with an arrow through it. Beauty pierces the heart and, once wounded, the heart cannot help but want to trace that wound back to it’s source. The wound often in our culture is truth. The source? God. Jimmy firmly believes that “Beauty can save the world. It is an incredible tool in the evangelization movement, but if it’s not rooted in truth it will not ‘wound’ the soul enough for that person to want to trace it back to it’s source.” He speaks of three men who greatly influenced his search for the truth. Pope Benedict XVI What is truth? What does is mean to believe in the Church’s objective truth? More specifically when that truth is a Person? These are some of the questions Jimmy found himself asking when he entered college and began his search for truth. Up to this point, his “truth” was rooted in an understanding that everyone had their own truth. Nothing was definitive, everything was objective, if you believed it and lived it well then it merrited being called truth. The world believes in a truth of relativism. During his senior year of college Pope Benedict XVI came to America and spoke these words: “A dictatorship of relativism does not recognize anything as definitive. It’s ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.” In a society where the highest of all virtues is tolerance, Pope Benedict’s words are helpful in understanding the dictatorship that is relativism. He preaches that truth is on objective reality and calls out what our culture has settled for (relativism). The Church, however, has a different goal: the Son of God, the True Man. He is, and always has been, the measure of true humanism. The measure of truth. To seek truth is to opt into the fullness of life. To opt into joy, freedom, and the glory that was won for us. Winston Churchill If Pope Benedict XVI is helpful in understanding the dictatorship of relativism, then Winston Churchill is helpful in knowing how we can battle that dictatorship. His words fall during a time of war, when most people’s approach was to appease the enemy, to simply make peace with the “dictator”. In Churchill’s case, it was Hitler during WWII, for us, it is the battle for truth and all those who go against it. Churchill claims: “You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in it’s mouth.” If we do not start calling out the dictator of relativism in our society today it will clench everything that we hold dear and true and eventually destory it. Relativism does not set anyone free. We are set free by truth, specifically, the objectie truth of God’s love. It is only in His love can we taste the glory of what it truly means to be sons and daughters of a King. GK Chesterton GK Chesterton once said: “It is always simple to fall. In fact there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, but only one at which one stands.” He understood the immensity of how easy it is to buy into falsehoods. How many ways in which we can fall short of truth. There is only one way in which we can stand in truth. That way is the Church. There is nothing more exciting and adventurous than the truth of God’s love . It carries the church through the centureis but also carries you; through every blessing, joy and trial of your life. The gospel states that everyone who commits a sin is a slave to sin. Slaves do not remain in a household forever, but us, sons and daughters, will always remain. As beloved children of an everlasting God, we have been blessed with a Church who is a good Mother. She will always show up with all of the answers; but first we must seek them. To conclude, Jimmy urges us to ask for the grace to believe in truth and not to settle for tigers that already have their mouths around our neck. He urgres us to stand strong in the truth of God’s love.   The post Jimmy Mitchell: Truth Revealed appeared first on SteubySTL 365.

https://steubystl365.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/07/fr-dave-7-14-18.mp3 Today’s Mass was celebrated by Archbishop Peter Wells and we are so blessed to have him with us this year. He serves as the Apostolic Nuncio to Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland. We all desire to feel loved, important, cared about. It is in our nature. We want to know we have people who see us for who we are. We desire to know our worth, but at what cost? In his homily this morning, Fr. Dave Pivonka challenged us to examine our true worth. What is our worth? Fr. Pivonka started his homily by defining worth as what one person is willing to pay for something, and what one person is willing to sell something for. As he addressed the youth he stated, “As a high school student your world is all about defining worth: you are a starter on the football team, you got an A on a test, you are in theater. You say that is what gives us value and worth, but brothers and sisters those are not the things that define us…you are worth more.” This was the resounding message of Fr. Pivonka’s homily: YOU ARE WORTH MORE! The world we live in tries to define us for our worth: the size of our home, the car we drive, the money we have, the clothes we wear. Our world makes it so easy to assign a value to someones worth. But as we heard in today’s Gospel, we are worth so much more than that! Where does our true worth come from? John Chapter 10 states: “Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet none of them falls to the ground without the Father’s knowledge. Even all the hairs on your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” Our souls are constantly in search of our worth. We move to certain groups because they make us feel worthy. They value us, but is it for what truly matters? We gravitate towards them because they tell us we are worthy. We “sell” ourselves to them because they notice us, they give us attention, they tell us we are beautiful and important, because they increase our status, our “likes” or our reputation. The reality is, though, that we are not property that can be sold or bought; regardless of what our world tells us. In doing this we begin to define ourselves because of the things we have done or what others tell us is important, and not by the One who gives us value. The One who truly gives us worth. Fr. Pivonka ended his homily with an analogy of a penny’s worth: Pennies go through a lot of “stuff”. They get passed from person to person, stuck in the mud, left behind, but no matter what they’ve been through, their worth always stays the same. Pennies are just like people. Some of us are shiny, some are dirty and beaten up; but we are all of equal worth and we are all loved. Our worth in the Lord Jesus tells us that we are worth more. How much more? So much that the Son of the living God came to earth to offer His life for us; regardless of our past or our history. We are worth so much that Christ was willing to take on flesh, become vulnerable, and to die for us. We have been purchased at a great price. In the eyes of our Maker we are worth more than anyone could ever imagine! “Allow the Lord to speak to your heart in safety this morning. To tell you that you are worth more.” The post Saturday Morning Mass – Our True Worth appeared first on SteubySTL 365.