CC4M: "Mercy Calls Us to Witness: Becoming a Contagious Catholic"

Copyright 2016 Catholic Conference 4 Moms. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

I had the great privilege of previewing Kimberly Hahn's video "Mercy Calls Us to Witness: Becoming a Contagious Catholic." I chose this one because the phrase "Contagious Catholic" really jumped out at me. I want to be this kind of Catholic and I was curious to see what Kimberly would have to say.

Before I dive into her specific talk, I want to say that I really appreciate how this conference is laid out. You can watch them when you have time. I had to pause the video four times to deal with kid stuff and that was okay. That's the kind of conference I need with three little kids at home. I also appreciate that video was fairly short, I'd say about 20 minutes. Kimberly packed a ton of wisdom into 20 minutes and honestly, if it had been one or two hours, I probably would have kept putting it off. So thank you, Catholic Conference 4 Moms, for knowing what we needed and giving it to us!

Kimberly dives right in to explain how important it is for all of us to become witnesses to Christ's message. And since most of us know that, she quickly moves on to the top reasons why we DON'T spread that message. Reasons like fear, excuses, thinking ourselves unworthy, etc.

She also talks about what weakens our mission and how the way we live our lives sends a message whether we mean it to our not. I was especially impressed that she came out and said that having uncontrolled children can damage our witness. And she says that people know children can be unruly, she doesn't meant your regular "kids acting up" type of things. But she says, "Are we actively trying to train them how to act, how to respond to others, how to care for others? And it is our responsibility as parents to do that."

She calls us to always be growing in our faith and even says if we're not growing in our faith, we're probably moving backwards. And the thing about Kimberly is that she says these things in such a gentle and sweet way that I don't feel pressured, I don't feel guilty, I feel softly moved to take her advice and to grow in my own faith.

My favorite thing Kimberly says is about protecting your kids from poison! I won't spoil it by typing it all up but it was fantastic and it really changed how I viewed teaching the faith to my children!

I would highly recommend this conference for moms! The only teensy, tiny drawback I saw was that I couldn't rewind a little bit if she said something great and I wanted to write it down. You have to start from the beginning. But this is such a tiny thing and in the end, I was happy to watch it twice because there was that much good stuff in it!