John Crudele Presentations • 9100 W. 137th Street • Savage, Minnesota 55378 (952) 835-0008 • www.johncrudele.com • [email protected]Pope Francis: "Rediscover the infinite mercy of the Father, who welcomes everyone and goes out personally to encounter each of them. Throw open the doors of your hearts to Christ. Are there situations where justice and truth prevent some expressions of mercy and forgiveness? Embrace fully and courageously the goodness and mercy of God, who surpasses our human calculations and wants nothing other than that 'all would be saved.’ Leadership is not about power, but about service. "We must never forget: for the disciples of Jesus -- yesterday, today and forever … the only power is the power of the cross," he said. And the cross, he said opening the Year of Mercy (Dec. 8, 2015 – Nov. 20, 2016), is the clearest sign of God's mercy, love and willingness to forgive sinners. Do not forget that God forgives all, and God forgives always. Let us never tire of asking forgiveness. It’s the transformation of the heart that leads us. The Sacrament of Reconciliation Indeed, allows us to draw near to the Father with trust to have the certainty of his forgiveness. He is truly “rich in mercy” and extends it abundantly upon those who appeal to Him with a sincere heart. Often, the hardest truth to understand is that - God Loves Me. “With how much love Jesus looks at us! With how much love He heals our sinful heart! Our sins never scare Him.” We want to live in the light of the word of the Lord “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36) Lord, give me the courage to ask for forgiveness, and help me to let you heal me. “I will arise and go to my father …” (Lk 15:18) Presentation by John Crudele February 20, 2018 I Will Arise … Catholic Man in a Secular World
Transcript
John Crudele Presentations • 9100 W. 137th Street • Savage, Minnesota 55378 (952) 835-0008 • www.johncrudele.com • [email protected]
Pope Francis: "Rediscover the infinite mercy of the Father, who welcomes everyone and goes out personally to encounter each of them. Throw open the doors of your hearts to Christ. Are there situations where justice and truth prevent some expressions of mercy and forgiveness? Embrace fully and courageously the goodness and mercy of God, who surpasses our human calculations and wants nothing other than that 'all would be saved.’ Leadership is not about power, but about service. "We must never forget: for the disciples of Jesus -- yesterday, today and forever … the only power is the power of the cross," he said. And the cross, he said opening the Year of Mercy (Dec. 8, 2015 – Nov. 20, 2016), is the clearest sign of God's mercy, love and willingness to forgive sinners. Do not forget that God forgives all, and God forgives always. Let us never tire of asking forgiveness. It’s the transformation of the heart that leads us. The Sacrament of Reconciliation Indeed, allows us to draw near to the Father with trust to have the certainty of his forgiveness. He is truly “rich in mercy” and extends it abundantly upon those who appeal to Him with a sincere heart.
Often, the hardest truth to understand is that - God Loves Me. “With how much love Jesus looks at us! With how much love He heals our sinful heart! Our sins never scare Him.”
We want to live in the light of the word of the Lord “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36)
Lord, give me the courage to ask for forgiveness, and help me to let you heal me.
“I will arise and go to my father …” (Lk 15:18)
Presentation by John Crudele February 20, 2018
I Will Arise … Catholic Man in a Secular World
John Crudele Presentations • 9100 W. 137th Street • Savage, Minnesota 55378 (952) 835-0008 • www.johncrudele.com • [email protected] 1
THE WATERING DOWN OF DISTINCTIONS
1. Move beyond indifference and seek truth. 2. Be willing to embrace brokenness.
A. Compassion is not tolerance. A. Water down the truth à Either/or
B. Understanding is not endorsement. B. Repress the truth à Perfect/imperfect
C. Acceptance is not approval. C. Share all truth à Both/and
3. Seek the good of others.
A. Love is service. Success is humility.
B. Pure leadership is to serve by example.
C. The purpose of life? (To know God and make him known & to be known, to love & be loved, and to grow/become your most authentic self & contribute)
WHAT MAKES PEOPLE LISTEN?
1. Relationships - Who You Know 2. Sacrifice - How You Have Lived 3. Insight - What You Know 4. Success - What You Have Done 5. Ability - What You Can Do
3 Connecting Questions 3 Connecting needs/elements of dialogue
1. Do you Care for me? 1. Feel listened to. 2. Can you Help me? 2. Feel taken seriously . 3. Can I Trust you? 3. Feel significant .
Key Concept: Connecting begins when the other person feels valued. Question: “What can I do to increase my value of others?” Action: Build an action plan that creates daily habits of increasing value to others. To Connect on Common Ground, Ask...
1. Do I feel what you feel BEFORE asking “Do you feel what I feel?” 2. Do I see what you see BEFORE asking “Do you see what I see?” 3. Do I know what you know BEFORE asking “Do you know what I know?” 4. Do I know what you want BEFORE asking “Do you know that I want?”
Key Concept: Know, feel, hear and see the reasons you and your listener want to communicate and build a bridge between them. (Care, Connection, Compassion) Question: “What is the bridge you need to build to connect on common ground?” Action: Begin focusing on and building bridges in key relationships and situations.
John Crudele Presentations • 9100 W. 137th Street • Savage, Minnesota 55378 (952) 835-0008 • www.johncrudele.com • [email protected] 2
HOW DO YOU SEE GOD THE FATHER? HOW DO YOU SEE YOU? (JN 10:10)
THE QUESTION IS OFTEN (DO) THE BETTER (BOTH/AND) QUESTION IS TO “SHIFT” (BE)
1. How am I to find God? 1. How am I to let myself be found by Him?
2. How am I to know God? 2. How am I to let myself be known by God?
3. How am I to love God? 3. How am I to let myself be loved by God?
FROM MY DEMONTREVILLE SILENT RETREAT NOTES & REFLECTIONS – GUIDED BY FR. LARRY GILLICK, S.J. 12/06 & 12/15
1. Life is a struggle and God loves us in tension.
2. Need to be available to what God wants to give you and wants to take away, so something else can be brought to you.
3. Need to invite times of silence for reflection, planning, thinking and prayer.
4. Where do I need be bolder and stronger in the ways that I show up in my relationships?
5. Am I aware of places of dancing and pretense? Can only pray with what’s real. How am I? What’s in my burden bag? What’s my truth?
6. Need to ask the bigger questions. Do I husband well? Parent well? Father well? Catholic well? Brother well? Neighbor well? Employer or employee well? Son well? Do I do well with the things that are close to my heart?
7. Do I believe that God says the same things about me that I do? What does God say about me?
8. Am I open to God’s agenda for me? How will I discover it? God asks us to make decisions and then trust in Him. “Work in me Lord. Teach me how to pray.”
9. What questions are waiting patiently for you and what questions have no right to go away? Receive the sacrament, the gift of the present moment.
10. What does God say is good for me? Spiritual growth is about awareness. We keep impressing upon the familiar to keep Jesus out. God needs to get close enough to attract us and not so close to force us. Relationships can’t be forced.
11. What is God’s will for us? It is to receive and trust God’s love for us. The need for certainty makes God obsolete. God’s will for us is for us to make a decision and then trust God. (vs. referee, principal, judge, or Santa Clause). It’s God’s will if it increases my trust in God and make decisions that invites me to trust him more. Many see Jesus not as a savior, but as an indicter … “We often think, do this or else.”
12. Difference between importance and significance. Importance is often a sign to us and significance is a sign to others. I gain significance from who I am, importance from what I do.
13. Can I love myself in the process of becoming more, or do I believe need to become more to love myself? Spell relief: Acceptance and gratitude.
John Crudele Presentations • 9100 W. 137th Street • Savage, Minnesota 55378 (952) 835-0008 • www.johncrudele.com • [email protected] 3
HOW DO YOU FIND SELF IN GOD? “WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?” (MK 8:29)
1. If dependent on God for your identity then free from things and others. (Matt: 3:17 - This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.) Jesus finds His identity and then is tempted to prove His relationship with God.
2. Accept your identity and start living it. The martyrs knew who they were to the point of speaking it unto death. We do what we are.
3. Marriage is a vocation for mutual creation. God uses instruments to create us.
4. Jesus says, “Come follow me and then says … we are going into mystery.”
5. Temptation is to say, “If I didn’t have this humanity I’d be spiritually well off.”
6. He mingles Himself with my humanity so he may dignify me in His divinity.
7. God says I love you the way I find you and I will not leave your there. Admit your truth and God can meet you there … others can as well!
8. Grace is that you can live beyond the reality of you. The sacraments exist beyond my ability to keep it or live it. God says, I will be with you even when you want to run away from yourself.
9. I often don’t want a Savior; I want an approver. Sin is where I have not been authentically myself and not been grateful for God’s creation of me and my life. Sin separates one’s soul from one’s self. Become “Dis-Integrated"
10. God says, “You are not alone. Come and be a part of this holy enterprise.” When using your gifts there is joy.
When we come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The voice gets louder, prove that you are worth something, do something relevant, spectacular or powerful. Look to scripture, prayer, the sacraments and Church teachings to guide you and your imagination. Faith is the use and fear is the misuse of one’s imagination.
GRATITUDE BEGETS GRATITUDE AS LOVE BEGETS LOVE (1 COR 13)
1. Keep unmasking the world around you. (What is and isn’t) This is a world that keeps trying to convince you that you must prove that you are worthy of love.
2. Keep looking for people and places where your truth is spoken to you and where you are reminded of your deepest identity as chosen by God.
3. Look at your tendency to blame others. (No one is brought to life through curses, gossip, comparison, accusations or blaming) Love is life giving! Move to responsibility.
4. Celebrate your chosen-ness and say “Thank you” to God and to those who remind you of your chosen-ness. Let God in.
5. Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring and renewing.
6. The lack of forgiveness is a poison that we take hoping that it kills the other person. There is much frozen anger among people.
7. The true return to God the Father is the return from the false dependence we have on
John Crudele Presentations • 9100 W. 137th Street • Savage, Minnesota 55378 (952) 835-0008 • www.johncrudele.com • [email protected] 4
the human father (and world) who can’t give me all I need. Our heavenly Father says, “You are with me always and all that I have is yours.”
8. So we let ourselves be found by God and healed by a daily practice of trust and gratitude.
Q: How can you show gratitude, trust and live your faith daily in your work, family, life?
STEPS TO PRAYER – WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO FOR YOU? (MARK 10:51)
1. Begin by asking self, “How am I?” (Not how were you?) Begin with your truth.
2. Not fishing for God. Where is God fishing for me? Start with the goodness of God and you will end up there. Sit down, show up, shut up and let God love you where you are.
3. About the call, the invitation. What is your truth before the call and then after? Be available to have God’s truth meet your truth.
4. To pray productively, anything that is destructive to your spirit, don’t get angry at it. Pray with it. Stay-awake a while with it. Turn it over to God. We turn it over to God and he turns it back to us and says, “Deal with it.”
5. Our Father is easy up until, “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” Now our lives come into tension again.
6. He’s saying, “I don’t hold your past against you; I hold your future in front of you.”
7. Ask, where am I being sent to be a blessing and a sacrament in the world?
8. The goal of prayer is not for God to convert bad to good but from very good to more of your real self.
9. Pray, “Father help me see me as you see me.” Many of our troubles are found in our inability to accept waiting and longing.
10. Can you stand in your own presence and dance with yourself? People who can experience mystery, doubt and uncertainty vs. fact and reason are the happiest.
HOW CAN I LIVE MY ANSWER? HOW DO I MODEL MY FAITH IN MY LIFE?
There is a God. God is love. Love is outgoing. Created to receive love and give love. Can’t give away what I do not already have or don’t like. Self-donation leads to generosity. Jesus made ‘me’ into a ‘we’ and mission is a consequence of vision. Jesus was sent to send us. He was born to die. He is our example of life. Love is life giving! Do not stay selfishly protective. We are being invited to wash feet, be un-tombed and to go and free others. A comfort for one is an intrusion for another. Every situation is better for having you be there.
Encounter the person of Jesus Christ and learn to desire what God desires for you (Rom 12:2)
1. Attend mass, and when possible daily mass. 2. Receive the sacrament of confession. 3. Daily prayer (morning and night). 4. Have a spiritual director. 5. Read the Gospels (Mass readings for the day). 6. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of God.
John Crudele Presentations • 9100 W. 137th Street • Savage, Minnesota 55378 (952) 835-0008 • www.johncrudele.com • [email protected] 5
7. Eucharistic Adoration. 8. Live a life of virtue … Lean into virtue. (Virtue leads to Truth à Freedom à Love) 9. Spiritual reading. 10. Hang out with good, Godly men. (OLG Men’s Club)
1. Be a witness to your faith in your life and work. (Show up, stand up, speak up. Gal 1:10) 2. Be grateful for your blessings, even in the struggles. 3. Don’t hide your faith, apologize for your faith or be wishy-washy in your faith. 4. Learn, know, grow in understanding and love your Catholic Faith.
Can we let go of the temptation or presumptuousness of saying “The Church is wrong” and embrace the mystery, with humility, and own your journey by saying, “I am struggling to understand, believe, get my head around, trust, live … Yet, I follow the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Church.” Anything else is to create church in my image and likeness and to define God’s will on my terms. The bride of Christ is His Church. Embrace His bride. Be Bold! Arise!!!
Go be you! Connect with yourself, others, Christ and His Church Be Bold … Be Catholic in a Secular World!
Men of God – God of Mercy ARISE!
ACT – ACTION/CHANGE/TEACH NOTES
1. What does it say?
2. What does it mean?
3. How/why does it matter?
What’s the one thing that I can …
1. Practice daily?
2. Discuss with others?
3. Interview on next month? (What happened?)
Everyone needs a mentor (The four questions to always ask)
1. Why are you successful?
2. What are you passionate about?
3. What are you learning?
4. Speak into my life. What one thing would you say to me?
Each Morning and Evening …
1. Who can I add value to?
2. How can I add value to them?
3. Did I do that today?
Leadership is accepting people where they are, and then taking them somewhere. What is your vision for yourself and for your team?
1. Bring authenticity into the room and to relationships.
2. People resist change, yet are open to growth. Commit to grow together.
How can I encounter the person of Jesus Christ and learn to desire what God desires for me, in union with His Church, more fully today? How can I show Mercy to myself and to others?
