A while back, my husband's aunt gave us a set of DVDs by Michael Cumbie as a gift. Last night we finally got around to watching the first of them. Michael is a very entertaining and passionate convert to Catholicism. He used to be an Evangelical Protestant Minister. We watched his conversion story where he tells how he was brought back to the faith through the study of the early church fathers and the Eucharist (works every time!).
He has a vision for himself and others of evangelizing Catholics and Protestants alike which he calls the Micah Project (after the prophet Micah - who was a prophet to both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Israel). I found it interesting that we watched this now, when I have been reading so many things that are saying the same thing that he was saying: that America is headed for disaster unless we, the Christians, do something about it. In his case, he was saying that we need to educate both Catholics and Protestants about the true church that Jesus founded - the Catholic Church - and that in order to save our country, we need to unite together under the Eucharist. This is very similar to what Mark Mallet has been talking about for awhile now. If you have an interest in this topic of the unification of Christians, I would definitely recommend checking Mr. Cumbie out.
I would like to share with you an example he gave in this talk that I had never heard before and found quite compelling. He was discussing how his Protestant brethren could not believe that he had come to believe that mere bread and wine were actually changed into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, even though it still looked like bread and wine. He would tell them, yes, he did in fact believe in this miracle, even though he did not understand it and could not prove it. He went on to talk about how Protestants have no problem believing that a person who does not believe in Jesus Christ can have an encounter with the Holy Spirit that completely changes that person's heart and makes a believer out of him. Even though the person looks the same on the outside - he still looks like the same old person he always was - they believe it possible for a miracle to have taken place within that person that changed his heart and made him into something new. So, Michael will point out to them, if that can happen to any ordinary man, why can it not happen with some bread, wine and Jesus himself?
I would like to try this example out on someone who is Protestant and see if it makes as much sense to them as it does to me. If anyone has ever used it before, I would love to hear what the outcome was.
God Bless!
