Colleen: Nothing that we can ever know will substitute for the power of God in our life. And what we do with what we know is more important than what we know. We don't need to know everything about God before we take action on what we do know about God. Emily: Welcome back to another episode of Open Door Policy. I'm your co-host Emily Mentock, and today I'm joined by Fr Patrick: Fr Patrick Gonyeau. How's it going, Emily? Emily: I'm doing great Fr Patrick, how are you? Fr Patrick: Oh, wonderful, it is a couple of days after Pentecost. And I'm just so grateful for the grace of Pentecost that we just dove into on the feast of Pentecost in the Catholic church. Don't don't mind me, I'm going zero to 90. The Catholic church teaches, you know, when we celebrate the liturgy, like the mysteries are not repeated, but we enter into the mystery. There's a grace in the liturgy to enter into the mystery that we celebrate so that we can participate and receive an outpouring of that mystery we're celebrating. So we just entered into the mystery of Pentecost and received the grace of outpouring. It is awesome. And so now, now I'm all fired up for these you know, the parish where we kidded that, but we're serious--like the Pentecost challenge took 50 days to get the Pentecost. Now, now will you press in for more the next 50 days and turn away from anything in your life that will cool the fire of God's love that was poured out at Pentecost? So that's what's cooking over here. What's up with you Emily? You can have it too! Emily: Well, staying on our Pentecost theme--so we got kind of a similar message from Fr Mario at, at St. Aloysius this past weekend, he was like--he started his homily and he was like, I forget exactly what he said--he's like, are you like, when you say, come Holy Spirit, like, do you mean it? Or like, are you ready for celebrate Pentecost? And everybody's like, yeah, yeah, we are. And he was like, I'm sorry, are you asking come Holy Spirit? Like, we need to get some energy up in here, people. Like we're going to be singing. We had masks off--vaccinated people had masks off for the first time, and he was like, we need to invite the Spirit into here for real and gave this really inspiring homily that's kind of similar to what you just said Fr Patrick of like, it's not--this isn't the end of the Easter season. We're asking the Holy Spirit to come and push us through into the next phase of our lives as joyful missionary disciples. So I walked away feeling super inspired, I think--I mean, Pentecost. I mean, it's the birthday of the church, right? So people will celebrate it in the whole universal church, but there's something so special about it here in the Archdiocese of Detroit, the Unleash the Gospel movement. Fr Patrick: Yes. Hey, let's give a shout out to the archbishop. When he wrote in Unleash the Gospel that, that southeast Michigan, the six counties would become a place, a place where the manifest presence of God would be known. And you think about Pentecost, like, the birthday of the church, a group of people turned into the Body of Christ when the Holy Spirit filled them and animated him. And I--when I read Unleash the Gospel, it's a prophetic letter. And the sense of when the archbishop says that southeast Michigan would be a place where the manifest presence of God is known--that stirs my heart. We all want to carry, you know, we're temples of the Holy Spirit. We want to have the presence of God so rich in our lives, that the fruits of the Holy Spirit are bounding. And I love the archbishop's vision that like when anybody would even cross in--I know it might sound like, oh, you're dreaming--but everything's possible with God so that when people even came into any of the counties, like the manifest presence of God, they would just start to think different because the land is so saturated with the presence of God. Oh man, this is already a good episode. Emily: Amen, amen. Well, speaking of being saturated with the presence of God and just the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, I am so excited to have be joined by our guest today, who I'll introduce shortly, who is a beautiful example of a joyful missionary disciple, who is connected to our region. So our guests today want to start with our three fun facts. I think it's fun. I love learning these things about people who we have on the show because they, I don't think they realize that we're going to use them on the actual show when we ask them to fill it out. So it's always fun. So here we go: our guest today, so she's bad at having hobbies, but her husband's good at it. And so he's into all these things and then she gets to join in on his hobbies, including banjo old-fashioned, letterpress printing and building vintage road bikes, which is super cool. It sounds very crafty, like a kind of Mumford and Sons type of craft hobbies. She also loves to work out, really likes working out. In a lot of different forms. We also had a lot of athletic people on the podcast this season. I feel like--and feels that, you know, exercise really grounds her. And I think that's really true. I, I love--maybe not like intense working out--but I do like to stay active, go for walks and things like that. And then also fun fact, her husband and I met when she was on active duty in the army in Iraq. And now she's still in the army reserve heading 17 years of military service and can be you know, a tough job, but something that really surprises people. So without further ado, I am excited to introduce our guest today. Colleen, Vermuelen welcome. Colleen: Hey Emily. Hey Fr Patrick. Thank you so much for having me. Fr Patrick: Thank you for coming onto the program. Colleen it's so great to have you. Emily: Colleen, are you are you a daily exerciser? Colleen: I try about five to six times a week. Emily: And what is your favorite thing to do for working out? Colleen: You know, so like kind of like you, I wouldn't say I love the actual working out itself, but I like the way it makes me feel. It makes me feel really relaxed afterwards. I feel energized afterwards. I feel happier. So I like the effects of exercise, but I'm not one of the people who actually probably truly loves the hard work itself. Emily: I like to just think of exercise, like anything that gets your body moving. I like to end my days often by and like leaving my little home office. Cause we're still working from home and going, having like a little dance party in the kitchen while I get dinner ready, like blast, the music. And that's what I call exercise some days or go for a walk by the river, which Fr Patrick and I have talked about on the podcast as well. Fr Patrick: Ah, I love it--the dance party in the kitchen. Well, Colleen, how did you come to know Jesus? We'd love to hear your story. Colleen: Yeah, so I had probably a pretty ordinary Catholic upbringing. I w I went to public school. I grew up in New Jersey, went to mass every week, made all my sacraments on time. So kind of did all those normal Catholic things. And I was even pretty involved in my parish. I got involved with music ministry in middle school because my mom had the kind of wonderful inspiration to say that, Colleen you've been playing the violin now for a couple of years, if you want to keep playing it, you need to find a way to give back. So you should probably play in our parish, or I could take you to some nursing homes. So she kind of kicked me off the bench into parish ministry that way. Fr Patrick: Wow. Colleen: But through all of that, by the time I got to high school, I didn't really have a personal relationship with Jesus. You know, I didn't pray outside of mass or, you know, kid's faith formation. It wasn't a live real thing to me. I think I probably just felt at that kind of started my early teenage years that being Catholic meant being a good person, you know, trying to like follow the rules and follow the 10 commandments and mostly be a good person. And that was about it, you know? So like nothing, nothing that was supernatural, nothing that was eternal and nothing that was like that really like glory and fire of the Holy Spirit that we've been talking about with Pentecost. So that changed for me in high school, my junior year, when my very good friend on the way home from an away soccer game, we were both on the varsity soccer team, and on the--on the way back from the game on the bus, she asked me if I was to die, did I know if I was going to heaven? Emily: Wow. Tough stuff. Colleen: The classic are you saved question that many Catholics have wonderful answers to, but I didn't. I had never really thought of that before. And, so she started then to tell me, like, you know, a good evangelist to tell me the plan of salvation and to ask me if I believed that Jesus was God, if I understood that he was the lamb of God and he was the sacrifice. And she was really surprised that I knew all the right answers. Wow. Like I knew he was the Lamb of God. Like, yeah, we say that at mass, I know these things, I've learned these things, but I had never connected it to like how it relates to me. To mean anything out of this world. Like beyond the physical realm, it was just knowledge information from, you know, catechism from CCD. And so, I guess I'm kind of a skeptical person because I didn't necessarily believe her. That, you know, God was offering a free gift of salvation in relationship to him and this grace to be poured into me if I would only just open myself up and say yes. That did not meet my kind of mental-model, you know, I kind of felt like, well, no, you need to, you need to work and earn it. And I don't know, that seems kind of like wishy-washy, so I didn't instantly believe her, but you know, the Holy Spirit used her to convict me, because I got really curious and really interested and I wanted to figure this out. So as a junior in high school I decided, okay, I need to figure out what is true here and not true because if this is true, this is really important. And I want to say yes, and have a relationship with Jesus, because I want to start living in that grace. But if it's not true, I need to really reject this and know why. So I started that pursuit, which mostly meant opening a Bible for the, really, for the first time as a quasi adult, as a teenager, trying to look there quick side note--that was really confusing because I didn't have any, I didn't have any background or anything to guide me. You know, I didn't have like, like the great Bibles that a lot of teens have today with awesome study notes. I think I had that white precious moments first communion one, right? Yes. Which is great for a gift for the shelf, but it doesn't have a lot of great, like, study notes inside of it. It's kind of like really thin paper, not actually great for reading. So that started my journey. And once I got my driver's license, I started going to her independent fundamentalist Baptist church. And so that's where I started hearing altar calls and, you know, an example of how to give your life to Jesus. And this was really, really filling me up. And I was trying to learn about the Catholic faith too, at the same time. So this was like right before the turn of the millennia. So this is in the late 1990s. And so, I remember using the internet to try to--the nascent internet--to try to find a catechism cause I had never heard of a catechism. I didn't own one. So I think I found like an old Baltimore catechism that someone put online, Emily: I was going to ask, did you find the category? What did you find on the internet pre 2000 for the church? Colleen: It wasn't--some of it was kind of good. Like there, there were some really early apologetics websites out there, but you also couldn't find good information like today. So it wasn't all that helpful. But it didn't really lead me astray per se, but--so what started to happen, you know, the more I went to became a regular at Sunday night and Wednesday night Baptist church services, the mass on Sunday morning was coming alive to me. Like suddenly it clicked that this plan of salvation that I was learning about. I really remember it in the Gloria, just like listening to the Gloria and really listening for the first time, which I know sounds weird because like, as a musician, so like theoretically, I was actually really paying attention to it cause I was playing the music, but it wasn't hitting my heart. So as a teenager, the Gloria really hit my heart and you know, this is us responding and praise and song to this, this gift of grace, this salvation and it, and it's our yes. And it's a joyful. Yes. And so I think, you know, the Lord was keeping me Catholic in that moment because I was being fed elsewhere, but the liturgy was now a way that I was encountering Jesus. So that's how I finished out high school being fed and kind of thoroughly rooted in this Baptist community that was teaching me about the scriptures, they were teaching me to pray, they were taking me out door to door evangelizing to share the Gospel with other people. But I was encountering Jesus also in the mass. And so, you know, just so grateful to the Holy Spirit for just weaving that together because I think a lot of people might expect my story to be about, you know drifting away into one of our brother and sister churches and not, you know, still being Catholic, but that helped root me in the Catholic church as I went off to college. And so when I went to college going to mass was a regular thing and also finding a Baptist church so that I could kind of continuously-- Emily: You sought out both even in college? Oh, that's so cool. Speaker 1: I sought out both in college. I sought out both once I graduated college and went to my first and second military duty stations. So, seeking out both was a part of my life for about the next decade. Fr Patrick: You know, Colleen, you are an awesome witness to something that the archbishop wrote about in Unleash the Gospel that he said about our--about non-Catholic Christians. He says we have much, we can learn from their evangelical fervor, their evangelical fervor. And when you went, you know, when you went to that community that, that young disciple who took the risk of, of evangelizing on the, on the bus, on the way back from the soccer game, and then you're going to her community, honestly, in, in John chapter one, I mean, sometimes as as Catholics, you know, it, it, it can be a temptation to write off a certain community because that's the church with the drums and the loud stuff and this and that, or whatever the whole, like the criticisms that are common. And it's almost like when Philip, you know, Phillip found Nathaniel and told him, we have found the one about whom Moses wrote in this, in the law, you know, and then Nathaniel said to him, can anything good come from Nazareth? And sometimes there can be that like, can anything good come from blank congregational church or whatever Phillip said to him, come and see. And so your experience of, of this evangelical community and the fire that they had for Jesus at an altar call is his response, drawing forth the response and how that stirred your heart is a beautiful witness to the gifts that God has sovereignly given to, to Christian communities across the world. And yes, we all want to be at one big mass together and share the Eucharist. And we always want to offer the gift of the Catholic faith to everybody--that fullness of the Eucharist. I think you're a beautiful witness to this Colleen, and that like, you love your, your Catholic faith and you also have been deeply touched by the evangelical fervor of a non-Catholic Christian community. It's awesome. So when you got into college, you went to which university?I went Colleen: To Cornell university in Ipic, New York. Emily: Cool! Fr Patrick: And then, so you, when you got, when you got there, you just kept going after going after more. Colleen: Yeah. It's it's a large secular university, so it's a really diverse place. But you know, I think it's a great opportunity when kids--when young people go off to secular universities to get, to actually make a choice, you know, like mom and dad, aren't there, you're choosing to be Catholic. You're choosing to go ma--to go to mass. And so I think you know, a lot of times people look at that as like a risky time for falling away from the faith, but I think it's really, it's the opportunity to make that like adult intentional discipleship step. Fr Patrick: That's awesome, praise the Lord. Emily: And you said that, so at, at the university you were still seeking out both Baptist and Catholic, is that--that's how your relationship with God was growing, and even when you were in your first, is it, was it station? I guess I don't know the correct terminology. Colleen: Yeah. Duty station. You go to different places, Emily: I guess. I want to ask not to jump ahead too far, but are you still going to Baptist church now? Colleen: No. I eventually figured out how to offer up that. Emily: Well, can you maybe, can you explain a little bit about that? Like what kind of brought those worlds kind of together into it, to where you are now? Yeah. Colleen: So it's another person, which I think, I mean, this isn't special about me, but I, you know, for so many people conversions and deeper conversions and the way the Lord is going to work is through someone else accompanying you, you know, we'd say accompanying you today, but you know, like my friend on the bus, we're still friends and I'm just so thankful. Like if she hadn't said that, you know, the Lord could have found another way to reach me, but I'm just so glad that he did reach me through her. So, when I was post some of my initial military training, I was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And I had a friend from college that I knew who was also an army officer there, and we started dating and in--he is a devout Catholic--and in that friendship, he asked me a question. You know, so Colleen, you go to two churches, you're really faithful and involved in both. How would you see yourself raising kids someday? Emily: Fair question for the guy you're dating/being really good friends with right. Colleen: Fair question. We were like, I think 24 or so. So we're, you know, we're old enough to be talking about those kinds of things. And I didn't know the answer to that. I had no idea. And for whatever reason, you know, the Holy Spirit really convicted me of it at that moment. And I think that shows a lot like how God works with us patiently, because I, you know, I trust that the Lord knew that maybe at age 18 or 21, I wasn't really ready to wrestle with, well, what kind of Christian am I? You know what I mean? Like, it was just important to be in the church broadly speaking. So that got me thinking, okay, well, I don't know what I would--I don't know. I really comfortable in both of these communities. And so I guess kind of still being of like that analytical mindset that I was as a teenager, I went out to Barnes and Noble in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and they had a catechism on the shelf. Emily: Oh my gosh! Colleen: You know, they had a cat--they had a Catholic section and they, you know, by that point, The Catechism was published pretty widely. You know, like actually don't even know if like the catechism from the 1990s would have been on a lot of bookshelves in the late 1990s in secular bookstores, but by this point it was, and so I picked up The Catechism and I decided that, you know, Catholicism was first historically. So I ought to just read the catechism cover to cover and write down everything I disagreed with. Emily: Very strategic plan. Like that is a strategy. Colleen: So I started that journey, And I had never opened up the catechism before. And I was just totally won over by part one. You know, the creed. Yeah. Like reading that part one, it was just a sense of wow. Everything that the Baptists, these other Christians have shown me through their practice, through their prayers, through their witness, through the Bible is here and true, and it's all summarized and it's beautiful. And it's, you know, God's gracious gift to us, him rescuing us and redeeming us and giving us that grace and Holy Spirit. And so it was, you know, the good news, the good news that I had come to know through the scriptures was present here. So I was pretty won over with part one. Emily: Did you actually--I have to just ask--did you read the catechism through, in order in order? Colleen: I did, in order. Emily: Wow. I am, like, so impressed. I I've recently been like, re-exploring The Catechism too. And I, it's not what I expect. It's not what I remembered from high school. So I think it's super awesome that you did that and found a beauty in there that I think that a lot of us who maybe have encountered it as like a reference book in the past or something like that would not even know like kind of how, how to break it open like that. So that's just a really cool thing. I haven't heard many people share that about their face journey before. Fr Patrick: So as you read it--really quick time before we continue--as you read it, did you notice, do you remember, I mean--you have a great memory though. Some of these powerful things like the bus and your friend evangelizing, do you remember when you were reading it right out of the gate? Like there's so much scripture, like the catechism referencing a lot of scripture. Do you remember that? Colleen: I don't remember it consciously, but I think like the reality that I was discovering in here, yeah, this is the plan of salvation. This is what people who only use the Bible, like have been saying, but it's just so beautifully put together and interwoven. Now--so as I continued through it, I, I would say like the part the, the moral life and some of that stuff got a lot more complicated because it's really a depth and there's a lot of different areas, but I walked away knowing that I wasn't going to leave this. That I was, that I was, that this was truth. And I was called to be in this church in some way, even if I didn't exactly know what that looked like, and this happened to be in November. And then I got this incredible confirming sign in December, and it was actually the, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, which being a faithful Catholic I was at, I was at mass for that holy day of obligation. And I remember after that mass, you know, just feeling called to stay and pray a little bit, and parts of that doctrine where some of the things that I struggled with, you know, like it didn't quite make sense or didn't understand like why this has to be--the intricacies of it. And, and I remember staying after that mass to pray just, just because, and having a powerful experience of meditating on the creed and that line, I believe in the church. And it kind of just hit me then that I could say that truthfully and authentically. And that was it. Like I could say, I believe in the church as an act of faith and the details really didn't matter if that makes sense. Fr Patrick: Yeah. It's amazing. It's--Colleen, what's so beautiful I think is like, you clearly have an awesome God given intellect, which you're using for God's glory and, you know, teaching in the Catholic Catholic biblical school in Michigan. And did I say that right? I did write Catholic? Yeah. And like having a knowledge of the word. And yet also in that moment, meditating on the creed, being able to say, I believe, and that, that faith, I know faith is not opposed to reason, but there are times where I don't need to know all the details. I just know that I know because he's put it on my heart. Does that resonate? Colleen: Yeah, it was exactly like, it was that sense of I'm totally at home. And I know that this is the, the place, the Holy Spirit is calling us to unity in this church. Even if I don't, like, I don't know if I fully agree with every intricate detail of say the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, or some of the moral teachings, but I believe in it all. Yeah, if that makes sense. Emily: So the gift--the gift of faith, it's, it's a mystery, the mystery of faith, the gift of faith it's yeah. It's, I think it, it, I think it's something that a lot of people can relate to that at any given moment. Could you say, explain in a reason based way all the different intricacies or every paragraph of the catechism, but in your heart, or because by the grace of God, do you know it to be true with a different kind of knowing than just using your, your mind of being able to explain it? We haven't had a conversation like this before. Thank you so much, Colleen, for kind of being honest about what it was like to wrestle with that and to make that, that leap from knowing and learning into really believing in your heart in that moment and to recognize what that moment was. Colleen: Yeah. And I discovered something really cool about that moment many years later. So I actually just pulled something up so I could look off words. So, cause I had put this on my blog at some point. So back in on the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 2016, for some reason, you know, taking our kids to church, we had two kids at the time, I was just thinking about that conversion because it had been 10 years before it was that feast in 2006. And for whatever reason, I was motivated to go back and pull out my sermon journal because as a good Baptist, like they really emphasize taking notes during sermons. Oh, that's awesome. Which is a great practice for any all Christians. But I had been in the habit of doing that. And I was just--I just wanted to flip back through to see if I had any notes from that mass. And I didn't have any notes from homily, from the homily at that mass, but I did from my Baptist preacher sermon on the Sunday prior. So just before. And he had given a teaching on a passage from Ecclesiastes days and some of the quotes that I had written down from him, my Baptist preacher, were, "nothing that we can ever know will substitute for the power of God in our life. And what we do with what we know is more important than what we know. We don't need to know everything about God before we take action on what we do know about God." So I was just amazed to discover that 10 years later that, you know, just like that, that evidence, that the Holy Spirit had been working, and prophetically working in my Baptist pastor and like preparing for this moment. Wow. Emily: We use a lot of basketball analogies on this podcast and that was like a total slam-dunk moment. That's so beautiful and awesome. And yeah, what a gift to be able to go look back and see how in that moment--reflect on over those 10 years--how you were living out what you knew, rather--not just learning more and knowing it, you were living it out even without having to write it all down. That's that's so awesome. Thanks for sharing that. And I'm glad you were able to pull that back up, thank God for the internet and blogs right? So we can always capture that moment forever. Colleen: Right, cause yeah, eventually I might lose the sermon journal, but, but that's what gave me the confidence to just know that this is the church, this is where God is calling all of his children together. And so from that point on, I knew that my destiny was in the family of the Catholic church. And I was very involved with my Baptist church. You know, even knowing that I'm Catholic, they had asked me to lead the children's ministry. So I wasn't going to like step back from that service. So I continued to do that until I moved from North Carolina. And then, you know, the next place I landed was Indiana and I didn't find a Baptist church just Catholic, so that's how that off-ramp happened. Very beautifully. Fr Patrick: I'd love to ask you a question for a moment: when you spoke about reading The Catechism--studying The Catechism and truth, that there was truth that. I I'm going back in my mind to John chapter eight, when Jesus speaks about if you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, you'll know the truth and the truth will set you free. Not that--I don't mean it in any derogatory way by being set free from any practicing non-Catholic Christianity, it's clear, God works powerfully in in non-Catholic Christianity and we have much, we can learn through their evangelical fervor. And yet, we also still want to show the full richness of, of the reality that Jesus said you are Peter and upon you I'll build my church and the Lord had something in mind. What for that church, when he, when he said that. So when you were reading The Catechism--when I, when I read John 16, 13, 12, and 13, when Jesus says, I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes the spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he'll speak what he hears and will declare to you the things that are coming. When you were reading the catechism and discovering that truth, were you having--did you find that it was similar to, like, I know what it is to hear the voice of the Lord in scripture and to, and to hear his truth speaking to my heart and something like that is happening here? Colleen: Yeah, because it was much more of a sense of like God working than an intellectual rational argument, you know, I mean, not the catechism is laid out in a really organized way and I love that about it, how the sections interrelate. But it, it was a consolation, and I think like the freedom that was happening, you know, cause like you said, I wasn't moving from like a non-Christian to Christian in the sense of, you know, I wasn't enslaved to like a particular mortal sin, you know what I mean? But the freedom was really that freedom to be missionary and to be more of an evangelist because I had, when I was you know, in high school and college doing that door to door evangelism with the Baptist community, I had felt like a deep sense of calling to that, but I had never moved forward with really stepping out to be more missionary. And I probably couldn't have told you why, but I think it was because I knew that there was, there was something deeply true in the encounter with Jesus at mass and the liturgy and that, that was calling me. So I would say that experience of reading The Catechism and knowing like, wow, the truth is fully Catholic. That is a freedom then to go discern, what is God calling me to do kind of in a new, free way, if that makes sense. Fr Patrick: It does. I need to alley-oop it to a--to Emily, but I have to ask you really quick--was there an "aha moment" with the Eucharist for you? Colleen: Hmm, not really, cause I didn't not believe in the real presence of the Eucharist. And I would say, I guess having stumbled into a fundamentalist Baptist church in high school, they placed a really high particular way of thinking about the literalness of scriptures in a way that's very different than Catholics, but being in that setting and reading John chapter six-- Fr Patrick: That'll help. Colleen: Right. Right. Yeah. So right in high school, the Baptists were like absolutely cementing real presence of the Eucharist through John six, praise God without knowing. Emily: That's awesome! Well we--so there's one thing I want to ask you about just briefly is your work continued work with scripture through the Catholic biblical school of Michigan? So this is the year of scripture, right? A lot. So many places are doing like Bible in a Year. We've had our own, even like through Unleash the Gospel challenge to try and invite people, to engage with scripture more. I would just love to hear from you, like, how are you experiencing this year? What--how are you, how is scripture still--which we haven't talked as much about it in this episode, but still is such an important part of your current life as a joyful missionary disciple? And your work maybe with Catholic biblical school, Michigan? Colleen: Yeah. So obviously, and this is something that the archbishop makes so like compelling and beautiful in some of the way points. And key points in his letter is about how the Scriptures are. They're absolutely essential in the life of a disciple. Like they are not an optional add on, you know, it's not that special Catholics, you know, should know about the Bible and use it in their life and use it for prayer. But no, this is like, this is our fuel. There's so many ways to hear and experience the power of God, but as people work, we're communicators. Like, we're naturally about communicating, using language. And so it is such a beautiful gift that you know, I think sometimes it's, we do a lot of reflection on the gift of the incarnation, how God becomes a helpless little baby to save us, but God also becomes the Scripture. So word--and this is words to communicate with us because we experience reality through communication, through language. So the Scriptures are that language from God and it's meant for everyone. So, you know, every missionary disciple has to find a way to encounter God in the Scriptures. Like it's not optional. But it's not always easy. So I would say that's where the Catholic biblical school of Michigan, where our lay apostolate is really able to minister to help people break down the barriers so that the word of God really can be inspirational daily fuel--something that is revealing to them, how God is working in the world, you know, revealing to them how Jesus wants them to see the world, how Jesus wants them to see the person who's closest to them maybe, or the person who's most annoying to them. So what the Catholic biblical school of Michigan does, and we've been doing this for just over a decade, is we lead classes that go through the entire Bible. So just a really, you know, in a sense, like a very non-creative approach that, you know, this is our, this is our special curriculum. We're going to read the Bible. Emily: So important. I mean earlier this year, archbishop released a pastoral note, you know, building on the Unleash, the Gospel letter about the power of the word of God focused on sacred Scripture. And he talks in the pastoral note about why good biblical scholarship or good Bible story--Bible study resources are so important to the life of the church because we need that emphasis on the study of Scripture and training for the faithful so that it can like unleash that sacred book and draw like different fruits from it. It's, It can't just to, for joyful missionary disciples to engage with Scripture. Yes, you can open the Bible and read it on your own, but probably like your experience back in high school, which is, if you just open it and start reading it, it can be very confusing and it might not actually help you maybe in that moment, that will be the way God uses to reach you, but it can be intimidating to a lot of people. And so good biblical and Bible study resources are important to helping all the lay faithful, engage with Scripture and grow in faith through Scripture to become joyful missionary disciples. Colleen: Yeah, absolutely. Fr Patrick: Colleen, I've heard of a, Catholic Bible school Michigan for years. So forgive me earlier when I said, did I say it right? I just didn't, didn't want to get a word backwards, but hey, as you share about the word of God, I think of the Emmaus story in Luke 24:32, when they say, "were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?" And even just listening to you talk about the word of God, makes our heart burn for the word of God to be continually renewing our mind and giving us a perspective of Jesus. Thank you. Colleen, there's clearly a gift on your life to teach the word. I have to ask you, what are your dreams these days? What's your dream? Besides keeping your family all together and healthy and what's the dream? Colleen: Wow. So that's a, huh. That's a hard question. And I don't know if maybe I'm just speaking to a lot of other people who are like parents of young children, like in their late thirties that I think just figuring out how to continually be growing as a parent. My kids are eight, six, and then one and a half right now. And yeah, I talked to a lot of people who are also in similar life stages and once your kids are starting to get into those elementary school years you know, they are the people who I am most meant to accompany as disciples. Like that's absolutely true, like objectively, objectively that the church teaches that it's obvious, it's obvious, like they are the people who I am around. So clearly God wants me to be forming them, but I think, and I think a lot of parents would relate to this. You know, sometimes the people you're with the most are sometimes the hardest to figure out what's the right way to do that. And you know, what does that look like in the daily life of like, hey, like we need to clean up a room. You know, we actually need to go to bed and get up for school at a reasonable time and, you know, figure out how to get along as siblings. That all of these things are part of that tapestry of growing as a disciple. But in some ways actually, I mean, I'd absolutely say this, it's a lot easier to share the Scriptures with adults who are kind of choosing to be there, whereas I think working in families is a unique challenge and, you know, praise the Lord, the sacrament of marriage gives us special graces for this. And so my husband and I very much do this together. But I think that keeps, I don't know, maybe for better or worse that keeps us really grounded in the immediate present. Like it's hard to imagine, huh, what does this look like in 10 years, but we'll get there. Awesome. Emily: Well, thank you so much Colleen for sharing all of your amazing wisdom and your beautiful story--a really unique story and your perspective. So thank you so much for coming on Open Door Policy and walking into our virtual studio and sharing all these things with our listeners today. Would you mind closing us in prayer? Colleen: Sure. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord Jesus, as we enter into this season, right after Pentecost, we ask that you would just continuously stir up those flames in us, help, help melt our hearts, make our hearts tender to every person that you're calling us to love that you're calling us to share a little bit of you with whether it's in words or actions Lord, that you would just make us newly aware of all of those situations. And we ask that you would bless, and protect and guide all of us, all of the Body of Christ, all of our local churches, as we reach out to love especially those who are far from you. We ask this in your holy name, amen. Emily: The Catholic biblical school of Michigan starts new classes every September to bring the Bible to life through discussion and presentations, whether you feel like a beginner when it comes to the Bible or greatly experienced, the Lord always has more to reveal to us. All are welcome with scholarships given to 100% of those who ask, check out an open house information night this summer, or visit CBSMICH.org for more information. Thank so much, Colleen. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning into another episode of Open Door Policy, where we share stories of joyful missionary disciples, living out their faith in many different ways in southeast Michigan,--how they encounter, grow and witness in their love for Christ. You can find more episodes at unleashthegospel.org\podcasts on Spotify, Google, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time.