PILLARS OF F*E*E*
by Richard Chung
By serving each other, and reaching out in mission, we enrich our own lives, and the lives of those around us. To do this, we learn, practise and live the 4 pillars:
First Pillar: P.C.I.A.S
Faith is more than knowledge about God, and is not just an assent of the intellect and the will. Faith must be lived as an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.
Living the Christian faith is to grow in holiness, i.e. to be set apart for God, which all the baptized are called to. “To be holy is to be humble, obedient, loving and yielded.
To be humble is knowing that God is God and we are not. It means we depend on God for everything.” [Rev. Dr. Peter Coughlin]
To be obedient is to obey God’s commandments to love God and neighbour, “knowing that God is in charge and he leads us to the good, what is true and just, what is according to his will for us.” [Rev. Dr. P. Coughlin]
To be loving is to express, in word and deed at all times, the concern, care and devotion of the Good Samaritan [Luke 10:25-37] no matter what the cost.
To yield is to allow God to be in control, to go first before us and we follow.
P.C.I.A.S (Pray, Celebrate, Imitate, Attitude, Spiritual Life) are 5 keys to help us live the Christian faith fully. They are an extension of the P.C.I. which Pope Francis talked about in his May 16, 2014 homily: “To get to know Jesus we must pray to him, celebrate him and imitate him.” Pope Francis said that it is a heresy “trying to understand with our minds and with only our personal light who Jesus is”, and that to know Jesus, i.e. to have an intimate relationship with Jesus, we need to open 3 doors. These are our first 3 keys.
(1) Praying is the first key to Jesus. “We must pray to Jesus to get to know him better… We’ll never know Jesus without praying.” Pope Francis asked how “prayer is proceeding in our life: but prayer from the heart is not like that of a parrot!
0 How is prayer of the heart?”
0 Do you have a prayer life?
0 How is it?
0 Is it stale?
0 Are you praying out of duty, habit or fear of punishment if you do not?”
(2) Celebrating Jesus is the second “We must celebrate Jesus through his Sacraments, because these give us life, they give us strength, they nourish us. Without celebrating the Sacraments, we’ll never get to know Jesus. This is what the Church is all about: celebration.
0 How is the Christian celebration in your life proceeding?”
(3) Imitating Jesus is the third key. “Take the Gospel, what did he do, how was his life, what did he tell us, and what did he teach us and try to imitate him.” Later, Pope Francis challenged us:
0 “And how is the imitation of Jesus in my life proceeding?
0 How must I imitate him?
0 Do you really not remember! The reason is because the Book of the Gospel is full of dust as it’s never opened! Take the Book of the Gospel, open it and you will discover how to imitate Jesus!”
(4) Having the right attitude is the fourth key to a full Christian life. We need to be a humble, compassionate, faithful servant who is strong in the Lord[Phil 4:13] and surrender to his control, plan and purpose for us [Gen 39:2-3, 21-23, 45:4-8]. We cooperate with God’s grace, listen to the Holy Spirit and follow his inspiration, guidance, and direction. Our motto is: Pray and Do our Best, Let God Do the Rest.
(5) Developing a spiritual life is the fifth key. We are all called to witness for Christ by the way we live our life. To be faithful Christian witnesses, we have to be intentional in how we speak, behave and act so that we reflect Christ to others, not our own peculiar weaknesses. That is why it is so important to develop a spiritual life, i.e. an interior life in addition to our prayer life.
The interior life is the activity of the soul which enables us to manifest the life of Jesus in us through our outwardbehaviour and actions so that we can claim “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” [Gal 2:20] To grow in our interior life, we need spiritual reading every day, and it is more than reading the bible. According to St. Francis de Sales “Spiritual reading is to prayer what oil is to the lamp”; it is our spiritual “multivitamin supplement”. It is needed so that we can live in the world but not be of the world as Jesus teaches in John 17:16.
Second Pillar: 4-Questions Discovery Method
The F*E*E* vision is to help bring people closer to Jesus. Often, under the zeal of the Holy Spirit , we make the mistake of offering lots of helping advice which is not what’s needed at the time. The 4-Questions Discovery method is to minimize such mistakes.
Instead of jumping with ardor to help, we may first need to remove barriers people may have about faith. In particular, we need to know whether the belief they profess to have is genuine or a smokescreen to get us to leave them alone! When we have helped them remove the barriers and they are ready to know Jesus we can then ask them to complete the 4-Questions Discovery process:
(1) What? What is the real issue? What’s holding the person back? Is it intellectual misunderstanding? Is it inability to make a decision to follow Christ? Is it a lifestyle issue?
(2) Why? Why does person have these beliefs? Is it ignorance? Is it pride, intellectual or emotional? Do they need inner healing?
(3) What for? What is the purpose, or end result desired, by the person holding these beliefs? Is it personal fulfilment or God-centered? Is it self-centered or other–centered, include family, community? Is it Jesus and me, or Jesus, me and His mystical Body, the Church?
(4) How? How to help helpee? What does helpee want? Bring helpee to inner healing? Connect to expert resources? Community fellowship?
It is important to note that a common mistake of people is to be stuck on the “Why” and therefore not experience the glory of the Lord. Jesus highlighted this when:
(1) “2 His disciples asked him, “Teacher, whose sin caused him to be born blind? Was it his own or his parents’ sin?”
(2) 3 Jesus answered, “His blindness has nothing to do with his sins or his parents’ sins. He is blind so that God’s power might be seen at work in him.” [Jn 9:2-3]
Let us, therefore, help people focus on the “What for?” and “How?” so as to become more Christ-like and fulfill God’s plan and purpose for us.
Third Pillar: 8-Steps Evangelization Method(T.S.A.G.R.I.D.I)
We know that reaching out to people to share our faith is not a human undertaking but a work of the Holy Spirit. When we have the urge to reach out, it comes from the Holy Spirit, not us, and we overcome the fear of talking to people about faith. Most often, in so doing, we stumble, get in debates and may antagonize people more than drawing them closer to Jesus! As a result, despite the initial Spirit-induced enthusiasm, zeal and boldness, we soon give up and quench the Holy Spirit in our life. The main reason is because we do not know when, what and how to say it. We were not equipped nor trained.
The 8-Steps Evangelization is a basic, simplified method in which we can train any person and which the person can master to start evangelizing.
NEVER GIVE UP Telling Stories or Inviting, i.e. planting and watering [1 Cor 3:6]
DON’T AVOID, but Be Prudent, in Using Questions or Talking about God.
Fourth Pillar: A.I.D.A.
A.I.D.A. (Attention, Interest, Desire,Action) is a framework which provides the basis for a systematic method to teach, learn,practise, be equipped and trained so that people can love, reach out, talk to people and bring them to Jesus. It is a framework which guides us in 4 stages to help us do things in proper order and to completion. For example, a common mistake is to ask people to read the bible (Action stage) before having given them the basics of what the Bible will do for them in their life, and some reading principles (Desire stage). Also, many people witness Christ in word and deed but do not ask for a decision (Action stage), i.e. not fulfill the purpose of evangelization.
We start people with mastering the 8-Steps Evangelization (T.S.A.G.D.I.R.I), and as the person matures or when special situations arise, we refer them to the more advanced A.I.D.A. documents for guidance. Here is how we can use A.I.D.A as a process to guide people over time to commit to Jesus according to the person’s stage of conversion in Sherry Weddell’s “Forming Intentional Disciples” book. Always remember the #1 principle is to fulfil our purpose, i.e. ensure that what we do and say helps to bring people closer to Jesus Christ and His church.
