One thing that Catholics are always doing is rediscovering Jesus; it’s in our nature, and, if you will pardon the pun, it’s in our blood.
We meet Jesus in Scripture, we discover Him again in the Church, we find Him yet again in each other, and we meet Him always in the real presence of the Eucharist.
Along comes a book by Matthew Kelly that tells us we can rediscover Jesus yet again. The book is titled, “Rediscover Jesus: An Invitation.”
Kelly is a motivational kind of guy who helps people become “the-best-versions-of-themselves,” and he is a New York Times Bestselling author, probably because people want to become the best versions they can be; with Jesus, we can, as the advertisement goes, be all that we can be.
Kelly calls this process of rediscovery an invitation because it is a 40-day’s journey from the busyness and loneliness of our lives to the complete and everlasting happiness of knowing the Lord.
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‘Rediscover Jesus: An Invitation’
Author: Matthew Kelly
Publisher: Beacon Publishing
Length: 187 pages
Release Date: July 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1942611196
Order from: dynamiccatholic.com/rediscoverjesus
[/quote_box_right]Once I began reading, however, I began to feel a bit uneasy and found that I needed to work past what I thought was a bit of presumptuousness on Kelly’s part because he wrote: God wants this for us, God wants that for us, and God wants us to do one thing or another. I come from the standpoint of Scripture where Paul writes, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to counsel Him” (1 Cor 2:16)?
But Kelly finally admits this, though he continues the Tony Robbins approach. Maybe the motivational technique works for us rediscovering the Lord like it does for sales or self-esteem but I still feel this great sense of mystery shrouding the whole question of life (1 Cor 2:1) and that is its beauty.
To his credit, Kelly outlines a process for rediscovering Jesus for those of us who don’t have the time to spend in an hour of Adoration. He presents each chapter with such topics as “New Beginnings,” “Getting to Know Jesus,” “The God Claim,” and “Jesus was a Radical” among them. He then provides us, in every chapter, a Point to Ponder, a Verse to Live, a Question to Consider, and a Prayer; tight bits and pieces that we can carry with us in our day-to-day lives.
What Kelly does is what every prophet did, every apostle, every pope and bishop — in fact, the whole magisterium of the Church — he calls us to understand God through His son, Jesus. If we need this kind of high-octane approach, it’s there.
One theme that Kelly consistently demonstrates is radicalness: Jesus is a radical, our call to holiness is radical, our lives need to change radically, and the path God calls us to be is radical. And who among us can argue with that. Our western culture is increasingly secularizing, increasingly relativizing, so that we are pushed further and further away from the Lord.
Matthew Kelly, however, brings us back with a megaphone and a white board, drawing out the pathway of the Lord in a way that counters all the boogie-woogie advertising and programming that those of us who don’t watch EWTN 24/7 are forced to endure.
With this book, thus, Matthew Kelly gives us hope.
