Christian and Catholic!نموونە

Both Christian and Catholic

I believe I am saved by grace alone, received by faith alone, apart from works.

I am also a practicing Catholic.

A Catholic

I love the Mass. Welcoming Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is a very personal meeting with God for me. I go to Confession once a week and this discipline has fundamentally changed the direction of my life. I bless myself daily with holy water to remind me of my baptism while I recommit my day and life to Jesus Christ. I am a Catholic.

Unearned Love from God

But I don't do any of these things to convince God to love me. I do them because God has already decided to love me, without conditions, on the cross – before I ever did a single good or bad deed. You see, I'm not Catholic so I can deserve God's grace. I'm Catholic in response to God's unearned and undeserved grace.  Nothing I can do can make God love me more. And nothing I can do can make God love me less. I am loved and saved apart from my works.  To many people that sounds Protestant or Evangelical, but to me that's just being a Christian and I can't even begin to understand Jesus or my Catholicism without this truth.

A Christian Catholic

I am a Christian.

I am also a Catholic. 

I used to wonder if it was impossible or dishonest to call myself "Christian" and "Catholic" at the same time – because that's so much of what the world, including much of the Christian world, says. My heart, however, wants nothing more than to be both. And I've learned that God intends me to truly be both fully as I walk with him through this life on my way to see him face to face in the next. Let me share my story and what I have learned with you.

How about you?

Are you a Catholic who has been blessed by Evangelical Christians and the message that salvation is a gift given by grace alone and received by faith alone apart from you works?

Are you a Born-Again Christian who wonders if your Catholic friends truly understand how God's free gift of grace saves us?

Read these passages from the Bible (passages both Catholics and Protestants believe in) and discover that as St. Jerome said, "God justifies us by faith alone."

Ask God to personally show you how he wants you to see your personal relationship with him, regardless of what church you attend, in a new light based on what you read in his Word now.