Catholic Teachers Evangelisation And How To Offend The Devil

The Bold And Daily Proclamation of the Gospel

Catholic teacher evangelisation is the path that helps every Catholic teacher become a bold witness to the Gospel. Most of us have no idea how the devil hates the impact and influence of a single committed Catholic teacher who steps up to proclaim that the Kingdom of God has arrived and is in session! In today’s podcast I want to keep our focus upon Catholic teacher evangelisation and why daily prayer must become the bedrock of all that motivates our vocation.

Author

Jonathan Doyle is an international speaker, author, businessman and executive coach who has spoken around the world to more than 400,000 people on topics related to personal development, peak performance, leadership, Catholic school evangelisation, relationships and much more.

His recent keynote addresses include the NCEA National Convention in St. Louis Missouri to 10,000 delegates and he is a frequent keynote speaker in the US, Asia and Europe.

He is also the founder of an influential education and media business that delivers training content to hundreds of organisations and thousands of individuals around the world on a weekly basis.

Jonathan holds an undergraduate degree in education from the University of Canberra, a Masters Degree in Leadership and Management from the University of Newcastle and has also undertaken post-graduate study in philosophical anthropology.

He is the author of numerous books on relationships and peak performance and each day shares these same ideas with a large global audience via The Daily Podcast with Jonathan Doyle.

Make sure you grab a copy of my new book Finishing Strong. Just click the book image on the left and it will take you straight there.

Finishing Strong is a loud and clear call for every young person to make the very best of their final years of school. Based on hundreds of seminars around the world to a huge number of students Jonathan Doyle offers powerful, practical advice that can make a major difference.

Each chapter offers inspiring stories, clear principles and actionable steps for identifying and moving forward in study, life, friendships and each key area of life.

Jonathan also includes journal questions and guided reflections at the end of each chapter to maximise learning and ensure the ideas and principles can be made real, personal and achievable.

If you want to help your child or students make the very best of their final years of high school then it;s time to help them finish strong!

Catholic Teacher Evangelisation – The Power of Proclamation

TRANSCRIPT

Jonathan Doyle:
Well, hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you. Welcome friends to the Catholic Teacher Daily Podcast. This is the hub of Catholic teacher evangelisation for us all. I know we’ve been a little bit off schedule lately, but we’re getting back on track. And my job in this short message is to do nothing other than to encourage and bless every Catholic teacher listening throughout the world. I love what you guys do. I don’t know why it is. I know that one of my favorite speakers is Christine Caine, used to say that, “You can tell when something’s from God when you’ve tried to leave it alone, but it won’t leave you alone.” Which means I just have these thing for the amazing work that you do as a Catholic educator. Why? Because I think that through you, God changes the world, he genuinely does. I mean, how does the kingdom of God manifest, right? How does the kingdom of God, how does his reign and his rule into human reality?

Now God can physically manifest. I used to often say this in seminars. God can literally turn up in your classroom, and just the whole beatific vision, the glory of God manifested in physical presence. And then at that moment, none of your students are going to have a problem believing in the existence of God, right? And then I say that when I do seminars, I go, “Well, what if God doesn’t choose to manifest that way?’ The question becomes, how else has God going to show up in your classroom? The answer is through Catholic teachers. How many times have I said that beautiful quote from the church documents and education about the environment of a Catholic school. If you took Catholic teachers out of a school, what do you got? You got buildings, you got chairs and desks, you’ve got kids wandering around aimlessly. The power of Catholic teacher evangelisation is deeply linked to their presence in the school itself as living witnesses.

You don’t have a Catholic school. You don’t have a Catholic school without Catholic teachers. It doesn’t exist, it’s not a thing. And we can talk about all this fancy digital learning, but I’m sorry, it is the physical presence, the pastoral presence, the spiritual presence of amazing Catholic teachers that actually transforms a school and creates that school environment. So you guys are incredibly important. You are the jewel in the crown of Catholic education. Anybody told you that recently? Anybody said, “Hey, you are the jewel in the crown of Catholic education.” No, you probably haven’t heard that, well, I’m telling you, because it’s true.

And here’s today’s message. I pray the divine office every morning. So I’ve done it for years. I think I’ve got a deeply kind of monastic spirit. I’ve spent a lot of time on retreats over the years in monasteries. And I just love contemplative prayer. And I just love the beauty of the structure of the church and all the things that it does. And I love praying the office. Why? Because it just gives me a good structure to every day. You pray the divine office, you start your day by honoring God, by sanctifying time as the church documents say, sanctifying time that we as Christians, we as his disciples, get to sanctify time. Isn’t that incredible? What a beautiful idea. We’re going to sanctify time.

Jonathan Doyle:
So I was praying this morning, and after that I pray the rosary. I really just love praying the rosary lately. Why? Do you know why I love praying it? Because it is deeply offensive to the devil. It is deeply offensive to the devil. He hates it. And yes, the devil is real, and it’s about time we all realized just how incredibly influential he is at this moment in history. How incredibly influential he is in the church, in culture, in society, in media. And if you don’t believe me, then this is the wrong podcast for you. Thank you for listening. You can go and find something else, but I’m speaking to people who understand that there are great spiritual realities playing out. And it’s not just my opinion, it does appear in places like… Well, I don’t know, the Bible.

Jonathan Doyle:
In the Bible, there’s these constant references to the spiritual realities that shape our world. There’s that beautiful stuff in the book of Daniel, where the angel says that he couldn’t get to Daniel because the Prince of Persia, the demonic force, given the assignment of the geographical region of Persia at that time, stopped him from coming for over 20 days. Now, friends, people go, “Well, that’s just prophetic literature. They weren’t being serious.” I’m sorry, friends. Yeah, look, I get that the Bible has all sorts of different levels of interpretation, but I’m deeply convinced that there are spiritual realities. I mean, St. Paul tells us these principalities and powers. Jesus himself says, “I saw.” This is Jesus speaking, so this is not Jonathan just having a rant. Jesus said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven”.

Jonathan Doyle:
Now Jesus is either being highly metaphorical, but when he was being metaphorical, that’s when he was literally telling parables. He wasn’t telling a parable about the devil. He’s telling a truth about something that he had witnessed personally. So friends, that’s a tangent, isn’t it? And some of you going, “Jonathan, you’re crazy.” No, I’m just convinced that praying the rosary, that’s where I started on this, praying the rosary. Praying the rosary is deeply offensive to Satan. So I was praying it today, and it’s Thursday here in the studio. And Thursday is the mysteries of light, those beautiful mysteries given to us by Pope John Paul II. And in those mysteries of light, the beautiful… I think it’s number four. I always get these in the wrong order, number three.

Jonathan Doyle:
So we’ve got the baptism in the Jordan, the wedding feast at Cana. Then we’ve got the proclamation of the kingdom, then the transfiguration, and then the institution of the Eucharist. So in number three, the proclamation of the kingdom, I just felt it on my heart that God wanted me to share with you that you are doing that. So the third mystery is that Jesus stands in the synagogue of Capernaum and gives out the proclamation of the kingdom. The captives are going to be set free, the eyes of the blind are going to be open, the year of the Lord’s favor is coming.

Jonathan Doyle:

And I believe that on my heart for you this morning is this deep belief that you are sharing in the proclamation of the kingdom. You are sharing in the proclamation of the kingdom. Do you know that? When you go into a Catholic classroom, when you have a chance to be with young people, now it might be direct proclamation, it might be you’re teaching religious studies, or it might just be prayer, you’re going to start from today. Prayer starts every lesson, we’re going to pray more. And in that moment, you are part of that proclamation of the kingdom. Isn’t that an incredible thing? You got to get the dignity of your vocation, the dignity. You are getting to partner with the same God, the supreme creative force of the cosmological order, who is speaking his reality and his presence across the stars of the night sky, and the laws of the physical universe.

Jonathan Doyle:
He sustains all of us moment to moment. Every breath we take is ordained and sustained by him. That same God has invited you to be

part of the proclamation of his kingdom. Do you get that? That, that’s what you do every day. What is that proclamation? That proclamation is this, we are loved, we are sons and daughters of the most high, that we have a home and it’s not here. This place is just like the transit station, we are going home. We are loved. We have an enemy. This is the proclamation of the kingdom. Young people have an enemy that wants to force them into all sorts of beliefs, and ideas, and self-hatred, and all this stuff that can affect young people. And you’re part of the proclamation of the kingdom that says none of this is God’s heart and plan for every human person.

Jonathan Doyle:
So I don’t know how you feeling before you heard this, but what an incredible vocation. That you are part of this proclamation of the kingdom. That you are part of this proclamation of the kingdom. We are not running educational businesses. We are not transacting by downloading educational data into people’s heads. We are doing something vastly more significant, vastly more. All right friends, that’s it for me. I could go forever. I’m excited today. God bless you. I just speak out a word of blessing over you today as you listen. I want you to come to the website, onecatholicteacher.com. I’m off social media. You won’t find me on social media anymore.

Jonathan Doyle:
So the only place you’re going to find me is on this podcast. So please make sure you’ve subscribed to it. And you’ll find me at onecatholicteacher.com. Still a few pages going to finish there, but you can at least see some of the resources. You can at least get the podcast. You can at least find out how to reach me. All right friends, God bless you. God bless you and your families at this challenging time of COVID. But thank you for what you do in your proclamation of the kingdom. All right, my name is Jonathan Doyle. Please make sure you subscribed. Please share this with some teachers. This has been the Catholic Teacher Daily Podcast, and I’m going to have another message for you tomorrow.