Sitting on a bookshelf in my home office is a little stuffed animal that holds great memories for me – not from my childhood, or of my children or grandchildren, but from a retreat day I offered for catechists and teachers after school was out for the year.

When you stop to think about it, it’s pretty amazing that the Christian faith, with more than 2 billion followers world-wide, is not only the largest religious tradition but got it’s start through the efforts of the 12 very ordinary men who were the original Apostles.