Enriching. Informative. Explore the depth and breadth of the Catholic faith at St. Mary's One Topic One Night evenings. These evenings provide our parish community a platform to foster dialogue, cultivate enriching ideas, and continue an appreciation of learning as an active and lifelong process.
What is One Topic One Night?
The One Topic One Night Speaker Series provides our parish community a platform to foster dialogue, cultivate enriching ideas and continue an appreciation of learning as an active and life-long process. Speakers present a topic and allow time for questions and answer on that particular topic, finishing within an hour. The format and topics will vary, but the idea is to provide opportunity to dialogue, grow and learn together.
Tuesday evenings, 7:00PM. See bulletin for dates and topic.
one holy catholic apostolic church
Recent One Topic One Night
The most recent One Topic One Night focused on living holiness. We all are called to live holy lives, to “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect”. Yet it is not an easy task in this fallen, messy world. Father Keith proposed one method, Living Holiness through the Transcendentals. Truth, beauty and goodness, the timeless and universal attributes of being, reflect the divine origin of all things and the unity of all truth in God, and in turn lead us to holiness.
Here are some highlights from the evening.
The evening began with a reminder that it is not just the ordained religious who are called to live a life of holiness, it is a universal call, a universal invitation from God to all of us. Holiness is perfection of life, a life patterned on Christ. It is impossible on our own, but “for God all things are possible” (Mt 19:26). We find models of inspiration and guidance in the lives of the Saints. And in their lives, we also see that holiness is a process, a life-long effort to receive God’s grace and better conform our life to His. It involves ‘active receptivity’, engaging our mind, body and spirit. Saint John Vianney, patron saint of priests, called it a ‘working out of a life of holiness’. In this description, we see the way in which our efforts and choices intersect with the openness and receptivity necessary for grace. Additionally, a life of holiness is not for our own sake, but for the glory of our heavenly Father.
But how do we do this? How do we live lives of holiness? There are many spiritual practices, liturgical traditions, and theological considerations, but Father Keith proposed one manner: Living Holiness through the Transcendentals: Truth, Beauty and Goodness.
Truth stands for itself. Christ said, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Truth becomes an organizing principle for all we say, think and do. We conform ourselves more to God, who is truth itself.
Beauty captivates the human heart, the core and soul of our being, not for the object itself but for the way in which it resembles God. Beauty becomes an organizing principle for our journey to holiness as we live the Beatitudes.
Goodness is not a thing but a habit of action, an interior disposition of actions that reflect the virtues (i.e., faith, hope, charity, prudence, patience, fortitude, etc.). Goodness becomes a guiding principle as the more we “do good” the more we become good.
We all can choose to respond to God’s call to holiness. We have the Saints as models and guides. And we can follow the organizing principles of truth, beauty and goodness.