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April 7, 2024If you haven’t listened to Father John Riccardo before, you're in for a treat. He is a very powerful evangelical priest from the Diocese of Detroit, who was pastor of a parish in Plymouth, MI for many years and about 5 years ago left his pastoral position and formed ActsXXIX, an apostolate whose mission is to Give God His World back. He has two primary means of doing this; tending to the priesthood, which is stretched thin and under constant pressure to tend to their flock, and tending to the flock through a fundamental re-teaching of the Gospel. This book is the foundation for Father Riccardo’s message. He reiterates St Paul’s teaching about the Gospel; the root word for "gospel" in Greek is where we get our word, "dynamite." In other words the gospel (which is the proclaimed good news) is explosive power, it is extraordinary good news. But in order to understand just how good the good news is, we must know how bad the old news was! So Father John takes us through a four part means of understanding the gospel. He chooses four words to make it easier for us to remember: 1) Created, or why is there something rather than nothing; 2) Captured--if God created this perfect world what in the world happened to it…why is it so messed up; 3)Rescued—has God done anything about it, and if so, what did he do, ie what did Jesus come to save us from; and 4) Response--now that we’ve been rescued how should we be responding (think we are creating Chapter 29 in Acts---the New Testament Book ends at Chapter 28 when the Apostles are sent to every corner of the world). Father Riccardo has a great way of delivering this message. Upon reading this book and wanting more information, I would encourage you to look at the webpage for ActsXXIX and check out his videos on this topic.
