It's easy to feel that sharing who we are wand what we believe is not normal in today's world. No one wants to offend people right? What if sharing your faith was a central aspect of what it truly means to be a Catholic. What if people really need to hear about Jesus and what if your profession encourages those around you. Today, I am going to share some insights from St. Cyprian that can help us realise how we need to profess with faith and courage.

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Well, hey there, my friend Jonathan Doyle with you.

Welcome to the Catholic Teacher Daily Podcast.

As I often say, one of the beautiful things about praying the divine

office, the daily prayer of the church.

I'm not saying you have to, I know that all of my listeners have different

ways of praying, but uh, this has been a real foundation for me for

many years, and as I said yesterday, the beauty of this liturgical prayer.

For Catholic educators and Catholic leaders is that it grounds us in

kind of the rhythm of the church.

And it's not just that.

It's also that you get to encounter some really interesting Saints,

saints that you don't know too well.

And remember that saints are simply people that responded fully and graciously to

the call of God on their lives and became all that they were capable of becoming.

In the service of God and their fellow men and women.

If you've ever seen me on stage, you'll probably remember how I really

stress the point that saints are not sort of necessarily preordained.

There is no saint factory in heaven where God just ordains that this

particular person will be a saint.

They roll off the conveyor belt from the saint factory.

They land in cribs with their hands peripherally, clasped together,

and they end up in stained glass.

That is not how it works.

Saints are.

Ordinary people exactly like you, exactly like me, who simply respond to

the call and the graces of God in their lives, in particularly heroic ways.

And the good news is that, uh, there's a test to see if

you can still become a saint.

And you know what that test is?

Let me, let me help you with this.

Just with me now.

Just check something.

Are you in fact breathing?

Okay.

If you noticed you were breathing, then you are not

ruled out from becoming a saint.

Okay?

So there is still time no matter what you think you've done or who you are.

I always love how St.

Paul refers to himself as a sinner.

Uh, sinners amongst who I am Chief.

So the second greatest Christian in history after Mary, always

remember Jesus wasn't a Christian.

Always have to stress that.

'cause people go, wasn't Jesus the greatest Christian?

No.

Christians are followers of Christ Christ.

It wasn't following himself, okay?

He was Christ so second greatest Christian in history.

This is like Catholic trivia today, uh, St. Paul, and he referred to

himself as the chief of all sinners.

So I always share that because if he was the chief of all sinners and

became one of the greatest missionary or the greatest missionary and

evangelist, then you are not excluded.

All right?

Today what I'm getting at is the feast day.

Of St. Cornelius and Saint Cyprian Saints, I'm sure you know really, really well.

I'm sure that you have, uh, icons of Cyprian and St. Cornelius by your bedside.

I'm probably talking to the one person that actually does,

but it is their feast Day Day.

But I wanna focus a little bit just on Ian and what he might just have remind us as

Catholic educators and Catholic leaders.

So, Cian was born around about two 10 AD. Uh, and it sort of,

uh, became bishop of Carthage.

Carthage, of course, was the ancient city on the north coast of Africa.

That was the great enemy of Rome, more Catholic trivia.

It's interesting that there's very little left of modern day Carthage, and

given that it was a great rival of Rome, it's kind of interesting, isn't it?

Where did it go?

I mean, Rome still there.

You can go and see the Coliseum and, and all the bits and pieces,

but, uh, the cast of these Carthage, there's almost nothing left.

Why?

Because when the Romans actually finally wiped it out, they salted it.

They actually got vast quantities of salt and just, just destroyed everything.

So nothing could ever grow again in the soil.

Um, so there you go.

If next time you're at Catholic trivia and someone says, what happened to

ancient Carthage, you will be prepared.

So since Cian becomes a bishop late in life and uh, becomes a Christian

late in life and was converted quite late in his mature years.

The Divine Office says, but he became a great bishop at a time of real upheaval

and confusion and chaos in Carthage.

I had some friends around, uh, for drinks the other day, and

we're sitting around off fire and.

We were talking about some of the challenges in the church.

I don't know if you've been paying attention, but occasionally the church

and the world has problems and challenges, and I said that always and everywhere.

For me, the challenges, the problem of courage, uh, I'm not pointing

fingers here, but when, uh, when bishops or priests or lay people

in leadership often are lax.

Or permissive or let things slide and don't address difficult problems.

It's usually a lack of the virtue of courage.

Here's me pontificating as if I'm perfect, but you get the, I I think

you'll agree that courageous leadership is a very important and powerful thing.

And so Cyprian on the north coast of Africa was doing a remarkable

job in holding this, uh, this diocese together, this Christian

community, early Christian community.

And I just wanna talk about two things that, that are from the Office of readings

today, um, for Saint Cian and Cornelius.

So there's a letter here that we actually have from Cian

writing to his friend Cornelius.

And Cornelius was kind of symbol, uh, similar in, um, the way that he

professed faith pretty late in life.

There's a beautiful line here.

It says, um.

Your faith by confessing your faith.

You showed the way to your brothers and sisters one more time.

In confessing your faith, you showed the way to your brothers and sisters.

So this, this really resonated with me, this concept of professing the faith.

Now I'm recording this, of course, in the studio here in Australia.

The Australian Catholic education context is very different to all

my wonderful listeners in the us.

My experience being in the US is.

That my American listeners in the Catholic education context tend to be

much more comfortable in talking about their Catholic faith and sharing their

Catholic faith here in Australia for complex historical and other reasons.

It's harder to do, but what I wanna draw our attention to is that the power of

professing our faith, being courageous.

What's the word?

Convinced and coherent from the church documents.

Convinced that we're convinced of our Catholic faith and

we're coherent in living it.

Coherent, like if the church offers us something to live

up to, that we are coherent.

There's no huge gap between what we profess to believe

and how we actually live.

Now we're all gonna sin and we need confession, but.

We wanna be convinced and coherent.

But what Cyprian's saying here is this beautiful idea of professing our faith.

And when we do profess our faith, it encourages our

brothers and sisters in faith.

So I wanna encourage all of us listening today as we go about

our work in Catholic education.

Don't be afraid to profess your faith.

I've often told the story how I had, um.

A lot of friends in business who were not Christian, and I had this group of

friends, I still do, who I used to do a lot of cycling with fantastic people,

some very influential business people, and I could tell through different ways

that they knew I was Christian, but I was always, you know, kind of not hearing

this country, you don't wanna sort of ram it down people's throat and you don't

wanna, and I was always kinda a little bit reticent until without being over the top.

I got to a point where I'm like, well, this is who I am, you know.

And I get to this point of like going, well, these people dunno, Jesus.

Like, who, who is the one here that should be, that, that, that, you know, there's,

there's no need for me to shrink back.

I don't have to like stand, you know, at the street corner necessarily

and, and sort of prophesy to them.

But I got to this point where professing my faith and being

clear about my faith was important.

So I want you to all to understand that today that professing our

faith, speaking about it, trying to live it publicly encourages our

brothers and sisters around us.

Some of you would probably be very aware of the um.

You know the story of Danny Abdullah.

It was, it's been in the, you know, in the news a lot.

Of course you'll remember he lost his three children.

He and his wife lost their three children to a drug and drink affected driver.

And that, uh, and they offered forgiveness.

They offered this incredible forgiveness, and it's been on TV a lot, and it's

been all over YouTube, where even recently, I saw yesterday in the

Catholic Herald, there is this beautiful image of Danny Abdullah and the guy

that killed his son, kneeling next to each other, receiving communion.

And my point here is that the, the profound witness of Christian forgiveness

encourages and blesses so many people.

You see what I mean?

Like when, when we actually profess something, when we do

something, it actually doesn't.

It could turn some people off, but in general, encourages

everybody else around us.

All right, so that's, that's the central thing I want you to think about today

is don't be afraid to profess and live your faith in Catholic education.

You know, God's got your back, right?

So it's all gonna be fine.

Just let's, we need that courage.

The world is in a complex, difficult, dark place.

And you know, Cian and Cornelius, well, Cian, particularly faced martyrdom.

And I pray that you won't face martyrdom, but there's different kinds, right?

There's the martyrdom of losing people's esteem or losing popularity

or feeling isolated or ostracized.

But in standing for Christ, we may face a kind of martyrdom, but that

martyrdom incredibly strengthens the people around us, right?

The last thing from the readings today is this beautiful line from CPR to Cornelius.

He says, um.

Where is it here?

Um, we clinging to each other and we fast watch and pray with all our people.

Unceasingly.

These are the heavenly weapons which help us to stand and

persevere bravely in our faith.

These are the spiritual defenses and divine weapons, which are our protection.

So this fasting, watching and praying, fasting, watching and praying.

What's watching?

I think it's, I, for me it's that contemplative aspect.

It's that the, the watching, the being with Christ, the sitting with

Christ in maybe Eucharistic adoration.

But Cyprian is saying to Cornelius, look, the weapons that we have in this

difficult time are not weapons of force.

They're not weapons of popularity or, you know, political rule.

They are the weapons of fasting, of being and watching with the Lord and of

praying passionately and consistently.

And friends.

The weapons that Cyprian had in the third century are no different to the

weapons that you and I have today.

Fasting, watching and praying.

It's early in the studio here, but I've.

Already been up and prayed the divine office and prayed the rosary and my rosary

every morning is a rosary of intercession.

It's just praying for people.

So I'm using the same tools as c. And you can use the same tools as Cian.

So that's it.

I hope that's a blessing to you.

Could you do me a favor?

If you like anything you've heard today, please share it with people.

Just grab the link and, uh, and just share it around.

Put it, uh, on your, your, your ex feed or your Facebook feed or wherever.

You can send this to family and friends, to encourage people.

'cause we need Catholic people, Catholic leaders, and educators to really be living

out their faith at this moment in history.

The world needs the message of Christ so passionately.

If you're hearing this on a podcast version, please subscribe.

Spotify, apple Podcasts, it's all there.

Um, YouTube, you can find me at one Catholic teacher and if you wanna

book me to speak, you can find everything about me on the website.

Jonathan doyle.co.

Jonathan Doyle, J-O-N-A-T-H-A-N, Jonathan doyle.co.

I'm gonna be speaking in the US in October.

I'll be in Phoenix in November.

I'll be in Texas, and then we'll be in the US for a month in January.

So God bless you my friend.

I hope it's been a blessing to you.

My name's Jonathan Doyle.

This has being the Catholic Teacher Daily podcast, and you and

I are gonna talk again tomorrow.