The Family Room (The Quest)
Join co-hosts Mari Cleveland from St. Jude the Apostle and John Gordon and Craig Wesemeyer from St. Peter Chanel as they speak with authors, theologians, and local priests and lay leaders to provide your family encouragement, resources, and hope. Enjoy heartfelt stories and engaging conversations with Catholics who are excited to share their life experiences and acquired wisdom to help your family continue to live out your faith with joy.
Jul 6, 2022
Surrendering to God
Marc Greenberg, Jewish convert to Catholicism
Marc Greenberg shares his beautiful story of conversion that begins as the beloved great-grandson of a Russian Orthodox Jewish immigrant and is completed upon meeting his Catholic American wife and surrendering to the love of Jesus. Marc shares the ways that God continues to weave his Jewish heritage into his ministries as a Catholic husband and parishioner – from teaching Christians the beauty of Seder suppers to surrendering to God’s love in pre-Cana classes. Marc encourages us to point ourselves to Jesus, seek after God, and surrender our will to His.
Resources
- Tefillin/Phylacteries: small square leather boxes containing Hebrew texts on vellum worn by Jewish men at morning prayer as a reminder to keep the law. The boxes are strapped to the left arm and to the forehead of Jewish men during weekday morning prayers with leather straps according to interpretation of the instructions from Deuteronomy 6:8 and 11:18. Jesus refers to the potential of hypocrisy of the teachers and Pharisees when He says, “All their works are performed to be seen. They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels.” (Matthew 23:5)
- Seder meal; the Passover meal. The instructions were given by the Lord to Moses and Aaron in Egypt (see Exodus 12). Jesus’ Last Supper (Holy Thursday) was the Jewish Passover meal, a Seder, celebrated according to Jewish custom.
Scripture
- The Shema: A daily prayer in the ancient Israelite tradition from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 – “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength.”
- In John 3:30 John the Baptist points to Jesus – “He must increase; I must decrease.”
- Psalm 139 is a beautiful expression of how God knows us!
- Philippians 2:10-11 – “At the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
