HADDON HEIGHTS — An estimated 400 people from the Camden Diocese, as well as Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, came to St. Rose of Lima Parish here on Saturday, July 9, to hear Matthew Kelly tell them of the importance of “Living Every Day with Passion and Purpose,” in a culture that “doesn’t want (us) to hear the voice of God.”
Kelly, born in Sydney, Australia, began his ministry in 1993 and has spread his message to more than 3 million people in more than 50 countries. His 13 books, which include “Rediscover Catholicism,” “The Seven Levels of Intimacy,” and “The Rhythm of Life, have appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. He is also a partner at a consulting firm whose clients include Pepsi, McDonald’s, Ernst and Young, and more than 35 other Fortune 500 companies.
Breaking up his presentation into four sessions, Kelly grabbed the audience’s attention with personal stories, humor and challenging facts on Catholicism.
One of the keys to living with passion and purpose, he said, is to be “highly engaged.” Too often people at work and at Mass, and even in marriage, are living “engaged and disengaged,” in attendance but not putting much effort into their experience.
Those Catholics who are highly engaged, he said, are those who “take time to listen to God” — which can be hard when the predominant culture “doesn’t want us to hear the voice of God.”
And when we think God has stopped talking to us, he says, we are mistaken; “It’s that we’ve stopped listening.”
Noting that today 70 percent of American Catholics don’t attend weekly Mass, Kelly said Catholics have “forgotten our story, and allowed the media to tell it for us,” with a negative slant.
Calling society “the age of the abdication of responsibility,” Kelly said that 6.5 percent of church parishioners perform 80 percent of the church’s volunteer activities. In order for parishes to become more dynamic, they need more energized Catholics, ready to help their church in spreading the Gospel, he said.
Each attendee, upon entering the church, received a bag with an event program, rosary, and Mass journal. Kelly spoke of the Mass journal he has brought with him to church for the past decade, every week jotting down one way God has called him to be the best version of himself, and he encouraged the audience to do the same.
Kelly urged the audience to be “dynamic Catholics,” who engage in daily, routine prayer; study Scripture, and read Catholic books; give generously of their time to others; and become evangelizers of the faith to all, in word and action.
Most importantly, he said, is to “get to know the shepherd,” Jesus, through prayer and study.
Bookending Kelly’s sessions was Eliot Morris, an Alabama-born singer and guitarist, who entertained the audience with music.
For the past 10 years, Kelly’s ministry has been mostly concentrated in the United States, speaking to school students of all ages, and to lay adults, priests, and seminarians.
“If you want to have an impact in the world, you have to swim upstream,” he said. “America is upstream, and it’s having an enormous influence on the world.”
at the bottom and then tap “Add to Home Screen”