Coffee time!

Details: 18 October 2013

Good morning (perhaps). It’s coffee time!

The Office for Evangelization is once again hosting a "Catholic Coffee House" series, which is set to begin Sunday, Oct. 20, at 6:30 p.m. at the Blessed John XXIII Diocesan Center in Lincoln.

The theme this year is: "Family and the New Evangelization."

One of the prominent themes repeated by our modern popes is that evangelization efforts these days must necessarily be directed toward the family. In cultures throughout the world where traditional family values and structures are under attack, moms and dads and their kids need to be formed and catechized about their essential role in God’s plan of salvation. They are first the objects of God’s love before they become conduits of that same love for others.

The topics for this year’s Coffee House series will address various relationships that are built upon divine and human love and how those relationships are interconnected. The first talk, entitled, "Sons of the Father in a Fatherless Society," begins with the sad admission that many children grow up these days in a fatherless home. Oftentimes, those who do have dads at home experience a fatherhood that reflects neither God the Father’s love nor the authentic human roles associated with genuine fatherhood.

Part of the remedy for this dire situation is to appreciate and experience a true filial relationship with God the Father that makes way for the possibility of total entrustment to Him. By entrusting ourselves to the perfect Father in heaven, we begin to see how God desires that we relate to our earthly fathers. Those with the privilege of fatherhood themselves can also develop a sense of how to relate appropriately to their own children.

The second session of our monthly series will focus on spousal love. Blessed Pope John Paul II was a master at describing expressly what this love should look like. He spoke often of how the total self-gift of one spouse to another formed the foundation upon which marriage and the family is built. He brought out the fact that, as spouses give themselves to each other, they come to a greater knowledge of themselves in the process, and of God as well.

In a culture in which the concept of love is so gravely misunderstood, it behooves us to revisit often what true love looks like, and God chose spousal love as the specific human relationship through which His own love could best be reflected and revealed.

Parental love will be the topic of the following session. As spousal love bears fruit in the gift of children, parental love comes into play. God the Father’s love for Jesus can and should be reflected in the love of parents for their children. The discipline exercised by the Father as well as the mercy offered to His adoptive spiritual children serve as models for the kind of relationship that is possible—and desirable—between human parents and their offspring.

Family prayer will also be highlighted in the series to underscore the important balance needed between individual and communal prayer. Prayer itself is a means of relating with other persons with whom we share a special bond, be they human, angelic or divine.

A final presentation will focus on how this new familial way of relating to God and to one another plays out in the New Evangelization. In other words, how should we respond to Jesus’ call for us to make disciples of all nations in light of our duty to love one another as God loves us?

If you are able, please consider joining us for this journey of faith and love, so as better to appreciate the dynamics of how God’s divine family (The Holy Trinity) relates to, and is reflected in, our own.