Sharing your story to draw others to God

Your story has the power to draw others to God, so that others may come to know and experience Christ’s love.

Mar 28, 2019

IPOH: Your story has the power to draw others to God, so that others may come to know and experience Christ’s love.

MaryAnn Antonette Robert, from Penang, said this during her talk Sharing your Story, which is the third session of the Sharing Christ formation programme for Perak Deanery, held at St Michael’s Church (SMC) on March 16.

The programme, which started on Mar 2, is being held for seven weeks and is organised by the Penang diocese in conjunction with the Extraordinary Missionary Year 2019.

Sharing Christ focuses on personal or friendship evangelisation, sharing our relationship with Jesus in our daily encounters with people. The course aims to develop an attitude of the heart that moves us to be open to share Jesus Christ with others and to invite them to be a part of the Church.

In Perak, SMC is the host parish for the Sharing Christ programme. There are 90 registered participants now, with three from Taiping Catholic Church.

During her talk, MaryAnn said she wanted to live simply, go to Church for Mass, and help others discover God’s love.

“I spend most of my time outside the home in church work. I asked myself if Christ is within me, and found that I did not really reflect that in my church work.

“I spoke to a priest and gave up most of my ministries – and concentrated on just one. I went from being task-oriented to peopleoriented.

“My goal was to just love – for example, by bringing a sick parishioner to church,” she said.

MaryAnn also spoke about going from conversion to mission, and how she felt the story of the Samaritan woman at the well really touched her.

“We must bring those who can’t meet Jesus to Him,” she said.

She shared her experience of driving her mother, a communion minister, to the homebound.

On one of these trips, she felt it was a burden, but suddenly realised it was the opportunity of bringing Christ (in the Eucharist) to the homebound.

“It means having the courage to go out, recognising the face of Jesus, and bringing the power of the encounter to others by sharing your story,” she said.

“Your story of how you began a relationship with Jesus and what he did for you, teaching you some life lessons and moulding you.

“The next step is sharing your personal experiences of God working in your life,” she said.

MaryAnn started her involvement with the youth ministry helping youths discover God’s love, and the importance of their roles in being God’s witnesses through the Persons are Gifts (PAG) programme since 1998.

Her desire to journey and grow together in Christ with others continued through her involvement in the Focolare movement while spending a year in Tagatay, Philippines and a further one year in Loppiano and Rome, Italy.

In the parish, she reaches out to young people and the migrants through her involvement in the music ministry.

She is a facilitator for the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) programme and is also actively involved in the Basic Ecclesiastical Community (BEC).

Coming from a family of eight siblings, MaryAnn is the seventh child. Her passion and zeal is to be a humble servant of God in the simple ordinary things of everyday life, to live the Word of God by concretely putting it into action in her life through simple acts of love.

Her strength lies in her deep relationship with God which constantly moves her to reach out to share Christ’s love to those around her in simple and tangible ways.

After having worked in the corporate world for almost seven years, MaryAnn felt called to serve God in a more concrete way by serving in the Diocese of Penang since 2016.

She is currently completing her postgraduate studies on Leadership in Catholic Culture with the Australian Catholic University.

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