Franciscan at Home

My early years as a high school religion teacher overflowed with exciting moments of watching teens open up to the Lord in the midst of my efforts to bring them to him. Students’ faces lit up as they understood a truth of the faith for the first time; students expressed a sense that God was speaking to them in prayer; students turned away from serious sin because they realized God wanted more for them. But one year I had an extraordinarily difficult class. None of my previously successful efforts engaged these students, and try as I might to identify other successful means of reaching them, each of those failed as well. I recall sharing a part of my testimony with them, a story that had previously been very effective, and they burst into derisive laughter. While other teachers spoke of this group’s extreme immaturity, I thought I must be a failure as a teacher and a catechist. As the year dragged on, I experienced a growing conviction that I could not reach these students, or any students, and that I did not belong in this ministry. I lost hope that these students could meet the Lord, hope that God was at work in this situation, hope that I was even called to this ministry to begin with. The end of the year found me physically and spiritually exhausted, and hopelessly convinced that God had abandoned me. Catechetical ministry is often fraught with challenges to hope. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) observed, “The drama faced by our contemporaries is…that of living without hope in an ever more profane world.” The drama we face as catechists is to remain steadfast in our own hope and to help those to whom we minister grow in hope as well. According to Cardinal Ratzinger’s synthesis of Augustine, Aquinas, and others, beauty brings us to an encounter with Christ Jesus our Hope, giving us hope to carry on. By imbuing our catechesis with beauty, we nourish our own hope and create the conditions for realizing the definitive aim of catechesis: “to put people…in intimacy with Jesus,” stirring our “hope [that] he invites us to.”

O Happy Fault!

“The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it” (Gen 3:6). How easily this tragic story becomes just that to us—a tragic story—in the Bible or in a sermon, but not recognized in our own personal history. Yet it is our story, often re-enacted in our personal lives.

Each Easter Vigil we hear the striking words of the Exsultet, “O happy fault! O necessary sin of Adam, which won for us so great a Redeemer,” as we celebrate our Redeemer’s decisive victory over sin and death. This victory is real for us, because original sin is real for us, too; and we have all felt the effects of both.

We live simultaneously in the already and not yet. Jesus already has redeemed us once and for all, yet St. Paul instructs us to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 3:13). Even though Christ has won the victory over sin and death, we are still in the fight as the fruits of Christ’s redemptive act must be realized in us. The threefold enticement that the serpent used against Eve in the garden continues to be a favorite trick of his. The temptation today does not come in the form of fruit from a tree but in the seemingly countless ways that St. John himself warns us: “Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life, is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 Jn 2:15-16).

Eve sees that the tree is “good for food”—indicative of a sensual lust and a search for goodness, but outside of God. She sees it is “pleasing to the eyes”—an enticement for the eyes, to a beauty also outside of God. Eve sees that the tree is “desirable for gaining wisdom”—a pretentious clutching for truth outside of God. Eve doubts and then fully denies that God, who is the Goodness, Truth and Beauty she desires, is already giving himself to her. She seeks these three apart from God, and in doing so with her husband, they grasp to “become like gods”, instead of receiving the eternal gift of Self that God was giving them in the garden.

Although the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life,”[i] many Catholics are unfamiliar with its rich Old Testament and Jewish background. In this article, we will look at four aspects of this background: the king-priest Melchizedek, the Passover, the manna, and the bread of the Presence.

Melchizedek: Priest of God Most High

The first prefiguration of the Eucharist goes back to the mysterious figure of Melchizedek in the book of Genesis. This Melchizedek, called “king of Salem” and “priest of God Most High,” brought out bread and wine to Abraham and blessed him (Gen 14:18-20). His name means “king of righteousness” in Hebrew, and Salem—a shortened form of “Jerusalem” (cf. Ps 76:2)—derives from the word shalom (peace), so Melchizedek’s name also means “king of peace” (cf. Heb 7:2). Melchizedek is mentioned only in two other places in the Bible. In Psalm 110, the psalmist says to the Davidic king, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 110:4); and the Epistle to the Hebrews identifies this Davidic king-priest with Christ (Heb 5:6-10; 6:20-7:17). The Church sees in Melchizedek’s offering to Abraham a prefiguring of her own eucharistic offering, in which Christ is presented to the Father under the species of bread and wine.[ii]

The Passover: Redemption from Slavery

But why bread and wine? In the Old Covenant these were offered in sacrifice “among the first fruits of the earth as a sign of grateful acknowledgment to the Creator.”[iii] Bread and wine acquired a particular significance in the context of the Passover and Exodus. When God delivered Israel out of Egypt, He commanded each Israelite family to slaughter a lamb, sprinkle its blood on the doorposts of the house, then eat the roasted lamb together with bitter herbs and unleavened bread (symbolizing the bitterness of slavery and haste of their imminent departure) (Ex 12:1-11). The sprinkled blood of the lamb protected the Israelite firstborn sons from the plague against the firstborn Egyptians and marked the beginning of their redemption from slavery.

The celebration of the Passover would henceforth for the Jewish people remain a perpetual memorial of God’s deliverance.[iv] Eventually, four cups of wine were added to its commemoration, representing God’s four redemptive actions during the Exodus.[v]

Nunca antes hemos sido tan necesitados de la amistad, más, sin embargo, quizás nunca antes ha sido la amistad tan desatendida. Mucho antes de la llegada de Jesucristo al mundo como el Amor de Dios hecho visible (cf. 1 Jn 4,9), los antiguos ya estaban convencidos de que la amistad tenía un puesto único e insustituible entre los cuatro amores. Aristóteles, de hecho, declaró que sin amistad nadie desearía vivir.[1] En los libros sapienciales del Antiguo Testamento, el autor del libro de Eclesiástico reflexionó sobre la gran riqueza que es el don de la amistad, afirmando que "El amigo fiel es seguro refugio, el que le encuentra, ha encontrado un tesoro." (Eclesiástico, 6,14). Para cuando llegó Cristo, la comunidad humana, desgarrada por las divisiones causadas por el primer “no” que le dieron Adán y Eva a Dios, y subsecuentemente cada vez que le hemos dado la espalda al Padre, dudó de la universalidad de la amistad humana y negó hasta la posibilidad de la amistad divina. Cuando Jesús aseguró a sus apóstoles de que ya no eran siervos sino amigos, introdujo una novedad radical con la posibilidad del amor que requiere ser proclamado y experimentada por cada generación con todo su poder transformante para la amistad humana y divina.

Never has friendship been so needed, and yet perhaps never has it been so neglected. Long before Jesus Christ came into the world as the love of God made visible (cf. 1 Jn 4:9), the ancients were already convinced that friendship held a unique and irreplaceable position among the four loves. Aristotle, in fact, claimed that without friendship no one would even desire to live. In the wisdom writings of the Old Testament, the author of Sirach reflected on how rich a gift friendship is, asserting that “Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter; whoever finds one finds a treasure” (Sir 6:14). By the time of the coming of Christ, the human community, torn by the divisions from Adam and Eve’s first “no” to God and every subsequent turn from the Father, doubted the universality of human friendship and denied even the possibility of divine friendship. When Jesus assured his apostles that they were no longer servants but friends, hPicture of smiling women linking arms in friendshipe introduced a radical newness of possibility in love that needs to be re-proclaimed to and experienced by every generation with all its transformative power for human and divine friendship.

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In her book Forming Intentional Disciples, Sherry Weddell remarks that “Pew researchers found that attending CCD, youth groups and even Catholic high schools made little or no difference in whether or not an American Catholic teen ended up staying Catholic, becoming Protestant or leaving to become unaffiliated. The best predictor of adult attendance at religious service is strong adult faith.”[i] Without detracting from our efforts with children, the Catholic Church has always intended that adult faith formation receive priority in parish life. Pope St. John Paul II remarks in Catechesi Tradendae (43) that adult catechesis is “the principal form of catechesis, because it is addressed to persons who have the greatest responsibilities and the capacity to live the Christian message in its fully developed form.” Adult catechesis is centered on a lifelong deepening of faith in Christ, thus serving as the point of reference for catechesis in other age groups. Whether you are involved in religious education, youth ministry, or pastoral care at your parish, all parish staff are ministers of and to the adults of the parish. Strong catechesis of youth and young adults has its foundation in adult catechesis and we need to orient parish life to the centrality of adult faith formation.

“Were our hearts not burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” (Lk 24:32) These are the words the two disciples of Emmaus use to report their encounter with the risen Christ. In a similar way, it is not at all uncommon—rather, it is to be expected—that those who have recently encountered Christ have a noticeable interest in Holy Scripture. Accordingly, catechists have the indispensable task of helping these new disciples to approach the Scripture with the mind of the Church, imparting to them the tools they need for an authentic interpretation of the holy texts. In light of this important duty, here I would like to propose seven simple principles for the sound interpretation of Scripture.

Over the next few issues of The Catechetical Review, I will be presenting three articles on the role of the catechist: from the perspectives of a parent, a teacher in a Catholic school, and a parish volunteer. I have fulfilled all of these roles myself, but may I say at the outset that none of them has been as personally important to me as the one conferred by the vocation of marriage—that of husband and father, with responsibility for my family. This is where I will begin.

In 1981, Pope John Paul II issued Familiaris Consortio. I remember this event as clearly as if it were yesterday because it spoke directly into our circumstances. My wife, Anne, and I were anticipating the birth of our first child. One sentence stood out and its impact has never left me: “Their [the parents’] role as educators is so decisive that scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it” (36). A few years earlier, the same pope had also pointed out that “… parents themselves profit from the effort that this demands of them, for in a catechetical dialogue of this sort each individual both receives and gives.”[i] He was telling us that if we put our efforts into this task, we would gain as much as our children.
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John Paul II’s emphasis on “the church of the home” picked up on a theme from VaticanII. The success of the Church’s educational efforts in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had obscured the role of parents as catechists. Yet the family’s role in passing on the knowledge of God was as ancient as humanity itself. This pattern is so consistent through the Old Testament that I will not multiply examples—a few will suffice. The covenant God offered to Abraham implied an ongoing relationship with his family through the generations; his household had to be a place of instruction, prayer, and worship for the continuation of the covenant. This was reiterated in the Law of Moses: “and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise (Deut 6:7). When the new covenant was offered through Christ, the importance of the family was in no way diminished. From the earliest days of Christianity, the family was seen as the gathering place for worship and prayer, and the favored place for catechetical instruction. In Christ, spouses participate in the plan of God, imaging in their marriage Christ’s union with his bride, the Church.