Originally posted by catholicweekly.com.au
By Christina Guzman
A series of fortunate events led author, Elizabeth (Liz) Kelly, to Parousia Media, who has now brought her to Australian shores for her first tour Love like a Saint—named after one of her books.
Beginning on 26 October, Liz is giving talks throughout Sydney and Toowoomba for 10 days inspired by chapters from her books. The tour is being hosted only Parousia with the Catholic Women’s Network supporting the talk on 4 November.
The topics range from women’s ministry, to living an authentic Christian life, asking us to reflect on the hard-hitting questions that affect our faith.
“My third book on heaven, is about how the reality of heaven changes the way we walk around every day. You know, does it change the way I walk around every day? And if it doesn’t, why not?” she said.
“How can we correct that or how can we participate more in that reality?”
A storyteller at heart, Liz uses stories from her life and the people she’s met along the way to resonate with readers. It was in the process of becoming a writer Liz discovered her gift for writing about faith and helping others with it.
“God sends me these people so that I can share their story. To try to capture a person is such a sacred task,” she said.
“There’s so many layers, complexities and nuances. You can’t possibly do it justice. I know I’m just going to be able to capture a little sliver, but with this little sliver, I want to do the best that I possibly can.”
Previously, she worked as a professor at the University of St Thomas where she taught for 14 years before committing to leading retreats and talks full time.
“I never set out to be a retreat leader or a speaker, but I do remember my first retreat… I don’t remember the subject matter, but there was something so special about coming away to seek the face of God in a very intentional way,” she said.
“And that captured me. That captured my heart.”
Inspired by Benedetta Bianchi Porro, a young woman who suffered terribly and died at 27 years of age in Italy, Love like a Saint hopes to cultivate virtue and demonstrate the power suffering can have when it’s shared with Christ.
Earlier in her life, Liz was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Later she was found to have cancer.
“We all have wounds. We all need continual healing. And I think sometimes for women it can be hard for us to admit the need that we have and our vulnerability because we’re really good at seeing the needs everybody else has,” she explained.
“I think with Multiple Sclerosis in particular, it has turned out to be a gift in that it makes me completely dependent on God. For everything. Energy, ideas, everything.
“It has reordered my life, and you really understand what’s important. And then with cancer, I’m still learning from that.
“One of the biggest insights that I had was in chemo. I had a lot of bone pain… I knew I wouldn’t do very well with it if I didn’t make it about the body of Christ.
“So, I was kneeling in front of him, and I asked ‘Lord, how do I pray for all of these intentions when I’m in so much pain?’ And I heard very clearly, interiorly, ‘pray the way I did when I was in pain.’”
Meditating on this brought Liz to use her pain to pray for those who needed forgiveness and do the forgiving as well as conversions.
“There’s no gift we can give God that he won’t accept, even if it’s a terrible gift. There’s nothing he can’t transform; we can give him all the ugliness and he’ll turn it into something beautiful.”
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