Denver Catholic

39 • FENCES • DECKS/COVERS • GARAGES • WINDOWS/DOORS • CONCRETE • DESIGN/BUILD • BASEMENTS • BATHROOMS • KITCHENS 720.217.1263 aldermanbuilders.com parishioner Matthew Alderman Full Service General Contractor Premium Remodels and Additions ADU FREE ESTIMATES: 303-232-0324 • INSURANCE CLAIMS • EXPERT REPAIR WORK • SEAMLESS ALUMINUM GUTTERS • LICENSED AND INSURED • SPECIAL SENIOR CITIZEN DISCOUNTS 2221 Gray Street, Edgewater, CO 80214 www.millsroofingcompany.com A NAME YOU CAN TRUST & AFFORD FOR OVER 40 YEARS 7 DENVER CATHOLIC | APR-MAY 2024 And it's not just about knowing chapter and verse. It's about knowing the Gospel, and coming to know Jesus intimately through prayerfully devouring Scripture. St. Jerome puts it this way: "If, as Paul says, 'Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God,' and if the man who does not know Scripture does not know the power and wisdom of God, then igno- rance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." FINALLY, YOU'LL NOTICE THAT I SAID PRAYERFULLY DEVOURING SCRIPTURE. That's because St. Paul calls upon us to "pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication." In these moments of evangelization, when someone is asking or challenging, you need "air support." This is for two reasons. First, because you're not equipped to do it well enough on your own. The devil is a predator, and what do predators do? They try to get you away from the herd. They want you alone, so you're defenseless. So when the devil tells you, "You've got this, don't worry about praying!" he's saying, "Come over here, without God." But even more than that, it's because faith is a gift from God. A friend of mine was a fervent and brilliant anti-Catholic (he went on to clerk for a Supreme Court justice, and is now a lawyer working for the White House). As a young man at Hillsdale College, he would argue his Cath- olic classmates out of the Church. Eventually, enough of the Catholics around him started praying for him that he underwent an incredible spiritual transformation and he became Cath- olic. There wasn't some particular argument that he encountered that he'd never heard of before. Instead, as he put it, it was like the scales just dropped from his eyes one day, and all of his resistance to Catholicism was gone. Don't underestimate the power of prayer. No matter how good your arguments are, you cannot give someone faith. The most you can do is learn to remove some of the intellectual barriers (and, by holiness of life, remove some of the nonintellectual barriers). The only one who can give someone faith is God, and so we need to be praying for people by name. We might also need to join this with fasting for them, because that's a powerful spiritual combination (Mark 9:20). I would encourage you right now to take a moment to let you pause and ask God if there's anyone you need to be praying for in this way.

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