Welcome home Charbel! I’m a former Muslim and former Protestant. God bless brother!

Please invite Mario Joseph from Kerala, India on your show. He was a former Muslim Imam and is now a lay Catholic preacher.

One of the best testimonies ever. May this brother win many Muslim souls.

Hearing this guys story, the "Not Yet" stood out to me. That was the same message that I was getting a couple years back when seriously considering suicide. I wasn't strong in my faith, but I was given enough "Not Yets" to wait till I started going to a wonderful traditional church and started to love God again. God doesn't tell us no, he says give me a chance.

It's so satisfying seeing another Aussie get on the podcast, we need more Aussie Catholics on here.

I'm gobsmacked that, Mr. Raish, my religion teacher from Redfield is on Pints! His journey to Christ has always been inspiring to me. May God bless him and his family

Mr. Charbel Raish is a great man and devout Catholic! Had the opportunity to meet him earlier this year at a camp and even cut his hair. God bless from a fellow Aussie!❤🙏😁

God bless U Charbel ... I'm a Maronite Catholic too ... Like U my late dad would make us pray the rosary every night when my siblings and I were very young ... I lost dad last yr ... I was hurt lost afraid .. and wanted to know where dad really go ... I asked My baby sister if she had a bible .. yes she did and it's been a yr now my life has completely changed ... I've devoted my life to My Lord Jesus and Mother Mary ... I'm sure dad is so proud of me cause when he was here with us ..he would beg me to pray and go to church unfortunately I was a lost soul ..... My Lord Jesus protect your people especially now from what's happening in this evil world ... Great video Matt and Charbel ... I'm from Sydney and I use to go to Mary Mackillops High School in the mid 1980's ...

It has to be pointed out that whilst the Muslims fast from Sunrise to Sunset, outside those parameters they eat to excess. It defies the purpose of fasting.

That conversion attempt at the mosque was so creepy.

On fasting: Catholics originally fasted a lot too and were very dedicated. Over time they reduced the fasting rules more and more and plus people are lazy, or super busy, or whatever now so it’s harder to do. But the rule is still basically there to refrain from meat on Friday’s. Also the Orthodox (as Matt mentioned) are STILL practicing very hard core fasting rules. Most of their year is fasting and not just refraining from meat. But Wednesdays and Fridays as an orthodox you can’t have meat, wine (alcohol) , oil, dairy, and usually even fish! So basically you become a hard core vegan 🌱for most of the year. Then during nativity fast and lent they do a 40 day fasting everyday of doing this! They also prostrate 🧎🏻‍♂️when praying 🤲🏽Iike Muslims do and They face East and all that. It was actually Muslims/Muhammad that stole this from early Christianity. Muhammad admired monks and Christians and Kadija (his wife) had a brother or relative who was a Christian monk who helped inspire Muhammad. He also prophesied that he was gonna be a great prophet.

He did the right thing because I experienced divine intervention/experiences! Jesus IS VERY REAL, ALIVE AND WELL!

Blessed to have stumbled across this video. Charbel was my religion teacher at school for a number of years, it's come full circle, thank God. His formation placed a great foundation for my faith and where it stands now

As a Lutheran, I love apologetics like this. I can testify myself that defending catholic (lower case C) faith leads one into a deeper understanding of that faith. Thank you, gentlemen.

The first doubt I got bout Islam was from my Coptic Christian friend long time ago. I didn't live in melting pot society, rather was homogenous in super conservative muslim community. I was abroad. They also said Alhamdulillah, Masha Allah, and everything I was taught to praise God. They said, "Of course we praise Allah. Allah is word for God! But not it's the name of 'God'!". I think that doubt I kept in secret or I would get severe punishment from family. But it wasn't like big doubt, rather questioning what I believed at that time. I think when I was in college, got my freedom to learn many religions and objections to Christianity, I started to left the practice and then decided to be an atheist. Many many years later, long story short, I was introduced to Christianity. Well, after cathecism, the teaching of Jesus makes sense and does bring much bigger peace to my life.

So wholesome- grown men enjoying Candies and Lollies over love for Jesus ! Love, Indian catholic

I wasn't going to watch this, but clicked on it when I had a long drive. So glad I did! Charbel's story is amazing, and he seems like a very wise and holy man. Also, it's so strange how Matt and Charbel's lives share so many similarities!

What a beautiful story and told so sincerely. Every day we discover a little more of the infinite depths of Christ. We may start learning just to figure out our childhood faith. Then maybe we study in order to win arguments. Then maybe a day comes when Scripture strikes us in a brand new way. Then maybe Mass unveils its mystery and the Eucharist takes on a whole new life for us. Then we fall more and more in love with prayers-short and long, public and private. Soon we are radiant with the love of the Gospel. We walk the streets looking for people to love, who to aide, who to share this joy with. Our hope is so full! And then, Christ says, "Would you like to see the Cross?" And we realize we have only just begun to reach his feet. God bless you all 🙏

This is one of my favorite podcasts to re-listen to. Charbels testimony is that of so many who don't know their faith. Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Jewish there are many who proclaim a faith but don't KNOW their faith. Keep up the good work Matt!

I literally thought Matt said “Good day” twice before realizing the Charbel is Australian! Haha

St. Theresa, Little Flower 🌷 Pick me a rose from the Heavenly Garden and send it to me with a message of love

Watching this on 3rd August 2022 : happy birthday Charbel This was a great, interesting, informative conversation.

At 13 I was about to go with the adventists, but a Jehova Witness kept me inCatholicism. It is true that the challenges to our faith keeps us strong in it.

People taking their faith seriously is a force to be reckoned with. It can draw people to Christ or pull them away if there's not hardcore Christian examples around. I too was intrigued by Islam's apparent seriousness compared to the lukewarmness of Christians in my circle of influence. Interestingly, after years of searching and disillusionment with the Latin Rite Novus Ordo Mass, I've now joined a Maronite Catholic Church.

I've just enjoyed watching Fr Chris Alar's talk on St Charbel. What a coincidence! God bless your great ministries Matt and Charbel. ✝️

My mother Yvette is the reason why im back because when i was at my worst she never gave up praying i love her so much for that thank you ma.

I would love to see his mother on this show. Her perspective on having a kid walk through a spiritual journey seems like it would set up an interesting convo.

I have never heard an explanation of the trinity put so well. Not sure I even understood it before hearing this. Thank you.

I love the physicality of their prayer, it must derive from early Christian prayer and prostration, there is talk of this all through the Bible it really gets you out of your head & connects you wholly into prayer lowering yourself, kneeling down, bowing your head to the ground, covering your face, deep bows and holds I am Catholic but this kind of physical prayer helps me give my heart to Him

Oh that’s so weird!!! I’m listening today on the 3rd of August and it’s Charbel and his son Alexander’s birthdays too. How awesome! 🥳🎉🎂 GOD bless you all!! GOD is Good all the time!!! 🙏🏻🥰

Wonderful discussion Charbel and Matt. Fr Chris Alar has just released St Charbel story in "Explaining the faith". Awesome 🙏🙏🙏

37:44 women deserve all their husband’s love. It not possible to be a father, in all that that requires, to four families. Being a father is more than being able to financially provide. Polygamy is associated with highly unstable societies. There’s lot of research on this.

What a lovely guy! He's such a good communicator too. This is a very moving interview. Thank you.

“So the fun thing with the serpent is…” Everybody else get that ad?

Thanks so much Charbel for sharing your awesome story. God is so good!

Great to see the beautiful Charbel on your show, an awesome man doing phenomenal work in Australia!

Just watched a clip of this and had to see the whole piece - intriguing. Thank you!

There's a big difference between "not being afraid to say your prayers in public" and being terrified of what your God will do to you if you do NOT say your prayers slavishly at the prescribed times. I have Muslim converts to Catholicism whom I teach and whether they were lax, lapsed or fervent, from Russia, Uzbekistan, Tunisia or Iran, they all say the same thing: God is like an angry policeman who is waiting for you to make one false move, one mistake, to crush you like an insect. He can do anything to you and he will. And even the most devout cannot be perfect no matter how hard they try, so they will be punished too. It's all cowering terror of a God who is raw power. That doesn't sound like a very "manly" faith to me. Real men are free to choose, not terrified into submission by fear of punishment.

Speaking of “Aussie sayings”, ‘rubbish bins’ is something said commonly in Pittsburgh PA, sometimes called Pittsurghese. Supposedly a lot of words in Pittsburgh sayings were of Scottish origin, maybe the same saying came to Australia from British/Scottish origins

Me being a coffee lover, great start!!! My two favorite things, coffee and Christian faith talk and apologetics

Hey Charbel! So nice seeing you on Pints with Aquinas! 🙂🙂

Matt, went all gruff ozzy in this interview, we do the biscuit thing here in the UK but with a TWIX, its a much better straw...I my gosh, i just realised i only read about St Charbel a few days ago, Then this pod turns up ! I need get St Charbel in my life.

Thanks for your amazing talk and discussion today 🌹

wow this podcast was moving, God bless Chabel

Loved this conversation. Matt and Charbel, please write a book on all the hilarious Aussie sayings 😁

Thank-you this was another wonderful interview.

My goodness, this was an absolute treat!! I honestly didn't think that I'd get through the whole video, but I did! Love the format of these discussions! And love the thoughts and persons of Charbel and Matt!! Looking forward to following more of these. :D

Excellent interview, this has really helped and informed me 💯

So sad that my relatives in Australia rejected Our Lady's Rosary..my heart is really broken..

Talking about Australian rules football, one of the coaches for the Sydney Swans is a devout Catholic his name is Jared Crouch and his brother is a Catholic priest who was also a very good football player (he played second level Football (equivalent to College Football)) anyway I read a story about how Jared Crouch was trying to incorporate the gospel with the training group with the Sydney Swans. Garry Ablett was doing the same with Gold Coast although he is Protestant.

Nice conversation

I immediately noticed they both had accents, then he started talking about it. When I was down under, having an American accent was so fun. I miss it bad!

As a well traveled American, I remember my first chocolate experience overseas... And it caused me to write to every American Choclatier and Candy Cabal asking why they don't have better product... It's just DIFFERENT and BETTER darn near everywhere else. So far, Belgian is still some of my favorite...

This was great, thank you!

I enjoy very much listening to Charbel's talk. He is very good in explaining his faith.

Thanks Charbel. Really enjoyed this podcast

This is so good. Actually one of the best guests ever

Awesome work guys

Stay blessed, please keep sharing your story.

1:08:24 my high school was run by an Independent Fundamental Baptist church. I was taught that God had created us for the sole purpose of praising him, and that gave me the impression that God had an ego so huge that even the angels' praise wasn't enough to satisfy him. There was never any talk of freely coming to love God or anything like that. Odd how both Muslims and non-Catholic "Christians" ended up with the same wrong conclusion.

Great Podcast!

My boyfriend who is Muslim, Shareef, has brought me closest to Christ. Hallelujah-please, pray for him.

I love Fr George Pell and always will.

The "true man" is the one who is willing to give his life for another, more so if that person is an 'enemy.' There are countless examples of such 'true man' among us, in our communities. Jesus is our divine example. This separates Christianity from Islam, Christians from Muslims & Christian societies from Muslim societies.

Loving this. I heard MGL mentioned. Our spiritual director, Fr Steve Tynan MGL, just got reassigned back to Australia after being in the Philippines for more than 20 years. It would be great if you had someone from MGL as a guest. Blessings, Matt!

Charbel gives great explanation of the Trinity with Q&A with his friend. Wonderful interview!

Well done , thankyou! So much to learn. God is great🤍

Loved the convo - but this turned into an ASMR video with the Aussie candy! Hahaha!

Thank you for sharing your very inspiring story Charbel (beautiful name). Thank you Matt for your excellent interviewing skills. Kudos Matt, for keeping your white shirt spotless during the Tim Tam Slam😄

So glad to hear you love cricket Matt! It's the most explicitly Christian sport that has been made. The batter vs the bowler is a representation of virtue and sin. The bowler tries to deceive the batter, to trick and to lure him in to a false shot. The batter patiently builds a mountain (innings) that the bowler tries to destroy, and it only takes one ball to level that mountain. Even the pitch represents the world. When the pitch is a road it is far harder to decieve the batsmen, but when the pitch deteriorates it becomes so much harder to play well. The archetypal bowler is someone like Shane Warne - a trickster who is loved by all of us in the cricket world despite his various public scandals, which is no surprise as that is consistent with his role in the game. The alternative archetype is someone like Steve Waugh or Rahul Dravid - stoic and inspirational. They didn't have the flashiest technique but had steel wills that resisted the temptation of a wayward shot. Justin Langer once noted during a particularly difficult innings in the subcontinent that he kept marking his crease with the sign of the cross, that inspired him to persevere through the conditions and carry his own cross (or bat) through the innings. Even the chorus of fielders who mock and sledge the batsmen, and who laugh and cackle like little demons after a wicket - that too is part of this participation in the Christian reality. So many batsmen, religious or not will look up to heaven when they score 100, lifting the wood they carry and raising their eyes to thank heaven for the graces they were given to endure. It's a beautiful game and so meaningful for Christians. Baseball in its basic structure is an inversion of Cricket. Rather than the bowler breaking open the game it is the batter who has the most impactful act (home run) - and it's the batter who steals bases. The pitcher needs to accumulate an innings in order to be great. In doing so I think they have lost the participation in the carrying of the cross that is at the heart of cricket - . But I'd be interested to hear if there is something uniquely Christian in baseball that I can't see as an outsider with only a superficial knowledege of the game.

Hello comment section I was raised Shia Muslim and I’ve converted to Catholicism just recently. My family is still pretty strong with the faith. I’m looking for any Muslim to catholic conversion books that are from a female perspective? Or any books about Mary being the bridge. She is the bridge for me to join the church and I was hoping to find more resources about that

Laughed out loud at the koala story! Love Matt, and he always has fantastic guests on.

I hope muslims see this with open mind

That final conversation though... 🤣😜😂

Welcome home 🙏

Matt’s right! It’s about orientation, there is no right side up in space.

42:00 nearly brought me to tears, this podcast brings me closer to Christ each time I listen to it

I am a Filipino Catholic convert from a Protestant background. Was attracted to the Catholic Church because I first admired the artworks, culture and the music but later on had a moment that made me think of converting. While I was in the deliberation of whether to become Catholic or not, I transferred to the Middle East for a great job opportunity. I asked God why He would put me in what is a predominantly Islamic area when I'm in the midst of deliberating my conversion. Later on, I realized He did so to answer a question I asked myself. Am I converting because of the physical beauty the churches in the Philippines have, the fiestas and the traditions the Filipino observe, or am I converting for what Catholics really stand for? The Church in the Middle East is stripped with all the grandiosity of what I see in my home country. It was there that I see the Mass in its simplest, most bare form. And I fell in love with that. I converted in Abu Dhabi in 2015. The way the Muslims take their religion seriously impacted me greatly just like with Mr. Charbel. It has influenced me to be more active in my faith too. God indeed works in mysterious ways.

Lent in Ethiopian orthodox is 2 months of no animal product at all and fasting on weekdays up to 12 or 3 PM in the afternoon (individual discretion)...

Thanks Matt and Charbel! Great show! And great to see Charbel on there, (and Jimmy Akin was in there as well) you are all doing wonderful work. God bless you all. Just wanted to add a comment about the North/South discussion - did you know that every few hundred thousand years, the North and South Poles will switch!! So in the history of Earth as a planet, it has flipped several times. Just goes to show that there is still a lot that we don't know about God's creation. God is good †

What a really nice man I could listen to him ,

The hardest type of fasting is Orthodox Christians from Ethiopia and Etitrea, IMO. They go vegan for sooo long. Muslims fast during the day but eat at night and think and talk a lot about food, cook a lot during Ramadan in my experience....

I would say that the Muslim fast is not that hard considering that once the sun goes down you can go to town on anything you want.

Loved hearing two Aussies chatting…what accent! And yes I agree, I have always wondered why people think Australia is downunder and not on top, turn the map upside down.

Nice thank you for sharing 🔔👍

Please invite Sam Shamoun from Shamounian. He is an Assyrian that live in the USA. Usedto follow Nation of Islam. After that he became Calvinist. And now he is on his journey to The Apostolic Church.

Ask God to grant me my request and tell him I will love him daily more and more 🙏 ✝️

YOOOOO as an avid nerd, gamer and active Catholic.....I love that Street Fighter style transition screen. I will share with my fellow "Cats" in the know...I have always loved those 70s style vans with the mural on the side and still have a dream to have a van with a mural of Jesus blasting demons in the vain of the Doomguy's art in Knee Deep in the Dead. Probably will be unpopular to share such a thought but being rebellious to the establishment of man is what being a Catholic is about.

Matt, love your show and love seeing a Map of Australia on this site, but asking where is Tasmania? 🙏

Charbel on PWA! Wow, it's weird seeing two Aussies. 🇦🇺

I love the whole debate about Australia at the end lol

Your guest got his coffees wrong. A Flat White is in fact made with a Ristretto base.

Violet Crumble bars are SO GOOD! They have a similar thing in the UK called Crunchie Bars and they are also DELICIOUS! Any chocolate that's not American is good.

Thanks!

God can do anything beyond human reason for the sake of Love. God is Love. I am a Catholic convert from a non-religous background. I did go to a Catholic primary school but did not get involved much with the Catholic school after public secondary schooling. After I was received into the Catholic via baptism in the Evangelical church and discovered that people from other faiths have all these logical arguments against the Catholic faith, that would be my simple answer.

I so badly wanted one of them to grab any round object and a picture frame and move it around the "globe" to prove Matt right. Thank goodness for Jimmy.

There's a small confusion in the North/South discussion. If you think East and West have intrinsic meaning because of the rotation of the Earth (the Earth rotating in the direction of the East), then you also have an intrinsic meaning to North and South. North is the axis direction from which the Earth appears to be rotating counterclockwise. In other words, if you extended the rotational axis of the Earth and moved out in the North direction on it and looked "down" at the Earth (roughly from the location of the star Polaris), the Earth would appear to be rotating counterclockwise. Likewise, from the South the Earth appears to be rotating clockwise. You can't arbitrarily switch these. This is related to the mathematical concepts of cross product and curl. Of course, the fact that we usually draw the Earth, and maps, with North at the top, is arbitrary.

Beautiful ❤

This is more than a year ago and yet it is very timely. I love this man, Charbell, he is so humble and very inspiring. He os right, do charity to our moslem brothers, don’t embarrass them in public.

Hey Matt, concerning upside down Australia: you were right, from your local (to Texas) Aerospace and Nuclear Engineer.