What Jesus Said and How You Can Live It

By Mary A Faderan

What Jesus Said and How to Live It is a collection of His words from the Four Gospels and essays that examine what Jesus may have meant when He spoke them.  The essays are personal observations of life experiences that point out what Jesus said and how it may apply to everyone's life.  This book is in no way a didactic att

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marian Musings Group
• Release date: May 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9780692138953

Mary A Faderan

Mary Faderan is an author of fiction and non-fiction. She is educated as a research scientist and has worked for different academic and corporate institutions in her long career. Ms. Faderan left her full-time position in a medical device company to devote her life to being a full-time writer.

Book preview

Chapter One

The next day, after Jesus had decided to leave for Galilee, he met Philip and said, Follow Me

Jn 1:43

St. Francis of Assisi told his followers that they all must follow in the footsteps of Christ. In this way, we too must follow in the footsteps of Christ because He was the first to go to Heaven after His earthly life was finished. For those who think that follow in Christ’s footsteps is easy, let us think again. It was a lot for Christ to live through thirty-three years of life. He started his ministry at the age of thirty and got into trouble with the Jews.

For those like me, who didn’t get this until I joined the Secular Franciscans, it became abundantly clear that following Christ in His footsteps was not going to be easy. As a Secular Franciscan, I was given the task of reading the Gospel and finding ways in it to be a follower of Jesus. I tried and tried and failed a lot. I was living a life of a career woman, intent on getting to the top, or maybe management where I would be enjoying the perks of that rung in the ladder. So, following Jesus’ footsteps was probably not something anyone going up the ladder of success was thinking of doing. I was probably less eager to go up the ladder, though, as I kept up with my vocation as a Franciscan. The lessons from our monthly meetings were good and kept us all aware that Francis was a true saint, totally selfless, and even to the point of giving his clothes away. In my own life, the career trajectory went out the window after a while. I cared more for my family life than going off on business trips, training sessions, and also became more aware of the fake attitudes of those who wanted to get to the top. Now, not everyone was like that in my experience, but it was obvious that if one wanted to become successful in business, they had to give up some of their sincerity, their genuineness, and their family