Int’l Preacher on Practical Tips to Share Jesus (Part 3 of 3)

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

Fr. Gino: I come from a very Catholic family. My great grand uncle is a diocesan priest. But he came as a missionary here, and he came with the people in Lipa (Batangas). He even became the chancellor of the diocese. But he was a very clever man. He died there and buried there.

So my family is a family of missionaries. And so he died then. I come from a Christian family and I have met Jesus many times in my life. I met him on my way to the priesthood, a Catholic home with loving parents—simple but loving, deep faith, both my parents, deep faith. So faith is nurtured in the home.

I had been working like this—active priest, preaching the way you heard me for the last 55 years.

I am 79 years old. I preach simply. I was a communications person by the way. I have degrees in Mass Media. I have degrees like that, yes. I have degrees in television and radio and journalism and like that, all that. As a priest, I had religious communications center.

The organization was there but I don’t work there anymore. I worked for a certain number of years but when I become a preacher, my work is preaching. I work all over because I am the international director now, fostering evangelization to other countries. I’m global. I have people in Latin America, North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. When you’re young at heart, you never get old.

HIS MESSAGE

Fr. Gino: My message is for you to become disciples of Jesus. Experience Jesus, have an encounter with him. That is the focus. Encounter Jesus and encounter him every day. You see? So meet Jesus every day, talk to him, and encounter him. And if you do that, you’ll be full of Joy, you see? The joy of the Lord, the joy of the spirit fulfills your life that’s my message.

DCH: You said we have to pray for our priest, why father?

Fr. Gino: Because it is dwindling. Pray that you will have good priests.
Pray that you will have a holy priest.
Pray that the priest live up to their noble calling.
The priest is another Christ and he’s is another Christ to give to others.
Chosen by God to be in the apostolate and a disciple of Jesus is a very special calling.
Only the priest can say “This is my body” and Jesus comes, only a priest.
It’s a very special grace.
In other words, only the priest can say.
I always pray for priest because the priest gives me Jesus.
The first duty of a priest is to give Jesus to others, with the sacraments, by his counseling, by his preaching.
That’s the first duty of the priest.
Do we need priest?
We need holy priest, we need a good priest.
So we must pray if you don’t pray you won’t get a good priest.

Sometimes, when there is someone come and complain to me: “You know father, our priest is like this and like this” and then when I ask them: “When did the last time you pray for him?”, “Oh, pray for him? Why we pray for him?” you should pray for him.

You will get the priest you deserve, I tell you.
So you see, you’re getting an angry priest because you deserve that, you don’t pray for him.

The specific effort of Evangelization 2033, as the Jubilee Year ushered us into the Third Millennium, is to offer the Church a service of: Prayer, Proclamation, and Formation. It is not another movement, another superstructure within the church or initiative identifiable with any single personality, movement or ideology within the church.