'Show your faith,' Deacon Burke-Silvers urges Catholics

Friday, Apr. 15, 2016

SANDY — Deacon Harold Burke-Silvers, evangelist, author, and inspirational speaker, gave three presentations at Blessed Sacrament Parish the weekend of April 8.

The first, a men’s conference on Friday, expounded on the idea that “there’s a lot of grace that flows through the family in the relationship that a man has with his family and with his wife, and he also emphasized how important it is for the man to really recognize the beauty of his wife and the relationship that they have,” said Monsignor Robert Servatius, the parish’s pastor.

Several of the men returned the next day with their wives, when Deacon Burke-Silvers gave two talks, one on the pursuit of happiness, the other titled “Truth and Freedom in Challenging Times.”

Those presentations also spurred a number of parents to send their children to the “Dialog with Deacon Harold” on Sunday, which was a gathering for youth ages 13 to 21 that brought about 80 participants from various parishes, said Sharon Jackson, who co-chairs Blessed Sacrament’s evangelization committee.

During his talk on happiness, Deacon Burke-Silvers distinguished between happiness and joy.

“Happiness is something that’s on the outside. Joy is something that’s on the inside,” he said, and while happiness comes from the world, “focusing on the things of the spirit lead to joy and peace.”

Modern culture emphasizes power and prestige and possessions, while conforming one’s will to God’s will leads a person to become who he or she was created to be, he said.

Using the analogy of a violin string, he said that culture views the string as restricted by the pegs, so it frees the string, but unattached to the instrument the string is useless, the deacon pointed out.

By contrast, the instrument of faith, including the Commandments and the Bible, “help tune us to the perfect pitch for which we were created” and make harmony with others, he said. 

Many Catholics are good at showing their faith inside the church walls, but don’t carry the message to the outside world or to their children, he said. “We’re afraid to show our faith. That’s why our kids leave the Church. … Your children are fans of Jesus, not followers. They don’t know Jesus in here,” he said, pointing to his heart. “They know stuff about Jesus in their head, but they don’t make the connection between their head and their heart.” 

Children need to see their parents living the faith, and be encouraged to live it themselves, so that it becomes their faith, not just that of their parents, he said.

In his wide-ranging presentation, Deacon Burke-Silvers told several stories about his family. One reason he believes in prayer, he said, is because when his wife gave birth to their first child, both mother and baby suffered complications. The deacon and his pastor began to pray, and immediately his wife stopped bleeding. While the nurses attributed it to the medication, “you can’t tell me that it’s just a coincidence that the Platosin finally kicked in after we started praying,” he said. “God was with us in that room that night.” 

Loving relationships strengthen those involved, Deacon Burke-Silvers said. “When you are in a relationship of covenant love and intimacy, you don’t lose anything of the individual person that God created you to be. You don’t lose yourself, you find yourself. Because that other person that you’re in the covenant relationship with helps you become more of the person who God created you to be. Even the secular culture recognizes this: ‘She brings out the best in me.’” 

The deacon referred again and again to Scripture and the magisterium of the Church as guideposts to a fulfilled life. 

“We’ve stopped seeing each other through God’s eyes, and we need to recapture that sense again and get back to who we are, and the way we do that is by opening ourselves deeply to everything that the richness and the beauty and the truth of the Catholic Church has to give to us,” he said. 

This was the third year that Blessed Sacrament Parish has brought in a nationally known Catholic speaker “to help our people better understand their faith life and what they can do to be solid Catholics in the Church,” Msgr. Servatius said. “Having something like this is a shot in the arm and a spark to motivate people to say, ‘I want to look more into this, I want to be more a part of this, I want to really appreciate my church and my part in it.’ It affects not only our parish but the diocese.”