Evening Six

How was God present in the Industrial Revolution? In what way did the miracle of Our Lady of Lourdes affect the Declaration of the Immaculate Conception? What did God accomplish through the First Vatican Council? How was God’s will expressed in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclicals? What error in holiness motivated the practitioners of Nazism? What part did sin play in the rise of America anti-Catholicism?

Evening Five

How was God present in the exploration of the Americas? In what way did the miracle of Our Lady of Guadalupe affect the holiness of the native peoples of America? What did God accomplish through Galileo Galilei’s use of the Scientific Method? What error in holiness motivated the practitioners of Deism and Masonry? How was God present when the Jesuits were suppressed? What part did sin play in the excesses of the French Revolution?

Evening Four

How did great writers like Dante, Boccaccio and Plutarch affect the thinking of Christians during the Renaissance? Is humanism still with us today? In what way did Michelangelo reveal his faith in his artistic creations? What did God accomplish through the rebellion of Martin Luther? What error in holiness motivated Henry VIII to declare himself head of the Church of England? How was God present in the workings of the Council of Trent?

Evening Three

How is God present in the Islamic faith? In what way did the Crusades affect the holiness of the people of God? What part did sin play in the Crusades? What did God accomplish through the mendicant orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic? What error in holiness motivated the inquisitors of the Spanish Inquisition? How was God present when the plague wiped out a third of Europe and decimated the Church? How can we say that the gates of Hell didn’t prevail against the church when the Catholic Church had two antipopes in Pisa and Avignon challenging the Pope in Rome? What answer can you give a Protestant who asks you why the Catholic Church, which claims to be guided by the Holy Spirit, burned John Hus at the stake for his sincerely held Christian beliefs?

Evening Two

What might God want us to learn in light of the rise of the Islamic faith? What can we learn in the stories of the conversion of the Barbarian tribes? What apostolic truths are demonstrated in the conversion of Ireland and England? What did God accomplish through the expansion of monasteries all over Christendom? What error in holiness motivated the Iconoclasts? In what ways were cultural differences at work in the split between the East and the West in Christendom?

Evening One

Suggested Reflection Questions for Evening One:

Jesus promised in Matthew 16:
"I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."
and in Matthew 28: 20
"And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of time."

Was there any evidence that Christ kept His promise to be with the apostles always when he ascended?
How was Christ with the apostles at the end of their lives? With the thousands and thousands of martyrs during the first three hundred years of mostly persecution?
How did the Holy Spirit guide the Church during its formation?
What evidence do you see today that the Holy Spirit continues and protects what she accomplished in the first decades of the Church’s existence?