Franciscan at Home

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This is a paid advertisement in the July-September 2019 issue. Advertisements should not be viewed as endorsements from the publisher. To learn more about this Family Catechesis Program click here or call 763-757-1148.

Parable of the Paper Cups

Once upon a time, there was a village called “Ville de Soif.” Ville de Soif was located along a river, which was the water source for the whole town. At various times, people came to the river to drink, using their hands. But they didn’t seem to have a way to take water with them when they left. The adults in town busied themselves with work and other activities, but stayed thirsty between their visits to the river.

The children of the village spent more time at the river. They frequently visited with an elder of the village who lived right on the riverbank, a rare adult who was not thirsty all the time. He taught the children how to make origami cups out of paper. The children were excited to have something that could hold water, but when they tried to take water home to their parents, it seemed the paper cups just weren’t strong enough to last. So the adults continued to thirst, and the children continued to get only just a little more water than their parents. It seemed the town was doomed to be chronically thirsty.

As far-fetched as this story might seem, this is exactly the situation we face in adult faith formation in the Church in the United States today. Our culture desperately thirsts for meaning, direction, value, and justice, but the distractions of daily life keep many from going to the source. For those who do come, often the children, we do our best to offer something to satisfy their thirst, but it’s never quite enough, and the “paper cups” our catechists teach them to make often don’t even reach their homes in one piece.

And so our culture continues to thirst: for meaning, for direction, for value, for justice. Our society has become increasingly polarized and unkind. We have forgotten how to dialogue with one another. Our Catholic faith offers us a roadmap for renewing our own lives and the culture around us, but we must drink freely of the living water Jesus offers us before we can share it with others.

How can we get more adults involved in forming their faith, becoming intentional disciples, and thus renewing their families, our parishes, and the world in which we live? Here are some tips for helping parents and other adults form their faith.

Because the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity “is the central mystery of the Christian faith and of Christian life”[1] it is nearly impossible to exaggerate its importance in all catechesis, including that of children. But how can we possibly convey to children this holy mystery, which even well-educated theologians admit is beyond human understanding? Trinitarian Beginnings Asking how we can best teach children about the Trinity is akin to asking how we ought to teach children about their mother and father and siblings. Ideally, children are born into a family and welcomed into the pre-existing communion of love between their mother and father. By the act of joining together and making a family, man and woman reflect (though imperfectly) the trinitarian mystery. The following quote from St. John Paul II helps us see that the experience of family life is meant to image the Trinity, which he calls the divine “We.” In the light of the New Testament it is possible to discern how the primordial model of the family is to be sought in God himself, in the Trinitarian mystery of his life. The divine “We” is the eternal pattern of the human “we”, especially of that "we" formed by the man and the woman created in the divine image and likeness. The words of the Book of Genesis contain that truth about man which is confirmed by the very experience of humanity.[2] Parents are the first and most influential teachers of the life-giving, self-donating love of the Trinity. As they welcome new life, make sacrifices for whichever family member most needs love at the moment, and teach their children to do the same, they reflect the life-giving love of the Blessed Trinity. This is true whether or not the family is aware of what they are doing. The family images God; giving flesh and blood to the truth that we are made to make of ourselves gifts for others. Children first learn how to live family life by being born into a loving family. But the love they learn even in the best Catholic home is merely a faint reflection of the love they are immersed into at Baptism. Children are first immersed in the Holy Trinity the day they are baptized into the Church, born into the family of God. It is then that they receive the indelible mark of belonging to God’s family. When children are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, they are born into the communion of love between the three Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity. “Baptism . . . signifies and actually brings about death to sin and entry into the life of the Most Holy Trinity through configuration to the Paschal mystery of Christ.”[3] Yet, just as it is possible to form a family but neglect to surround the children with experiences of virtue and self-donating love, so it is possible to baptize children and fail to lead them to an awareness of the communion of love we know as the Blessed Trinity. Aside from encouraging parents to live the virtues in their own families, how can catechists help families promote an awareness of trinitarian life at home?

Master of the St. Lucy Legend, c. 1485/1500

"The ultimate end of the whole divine economy is the entry of God’s creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity…even now we are called to be a dwelling for the Most Holy Trinity,” teaches the Catechism of the Catholic Church. (Par. 260)

The one creature who most uniquely entered into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity was the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. From the moment of her Immaculate Conception to her Assumption and Coronation as Queen of Heaven, Mary was the pure and sinless dwelling of the Most Holy Trinity. An exquisite 15th century painting from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, titled Mary, Queen of Heaven, invites us to contemplate the unique and intimate relationship of the Mother of God to the Blessed Trinity. The beautiful image also invites us to imitate Mary, so we may grow in communion with each of the Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity as she did.

Queen of Heaven, Rejoice! Alleluia!
One of the traditional Marian antiphons for the Easter season is the beautiful exclamation, Queen of Heaven, Rejoice! Alleluia! In this large panel painting we have the perfect image to accompany that Easter hymn of praise to Mary.

For we see the Blessed Virgin Mary at the center of the composition, clothed in gold trimmed robes of red and dark blue. Mary’s serene oval face is framed by delicate locks of wavy hair, and her hands are folded in a gesture of prayer and contemplation of the mystery of her divine Son. The panel is the work of an artist known simply as the Master of the Saint Lucy Legend, because his most famous work—an altarpiece from 1480—showed episodes from the life of Saint Lucy. In this masterpiece, the artist captures three aspects of Marian theology in a single painting of intense color, remarkable movement, and ornate texture: first, the Assumption of Mary; second, her Immaculate Conception signified by the crescent moon under her feet; and third, her Coronation as Queen of Heaven.

Un día hace como 6 años, mientras trabajaba como Director de Formación Religiosa en una parroquia católica rural, estaba en mi oficina echando un vistazo a Facebook. Vi la imagen de un evangelista católico en un malecón público evangelizando a un hombre que portaba un casco de Darth Vader y montado en un monociclo. Por supuesto que tuve que darle clic al link para leer la historia acerca de St. Paul Street Evangelization (Evangelización Callejera San Pablo). Me puse en contacto con el apostolado y eché a andar un equipo en mi parroquia. Admito que en realidad no me esperaba a que la evangelización directa fuera fructífera, o por lo menos que una conversación que duraba 2 minutos con alguien que nunca en mi vida había conocido antes pudiera llevar a una conversión genuina hacia Jesucristo y su Iglesia. Pensé que la mayor parte de nuestro trabajo sería discutir acerca de la doctrina y sembrar semillas. En fin de cuenta, ¿no iba todo el mundo paseando por la calle preguntándose si los católicos adoran a María?

Por lo tanto, no sabía cómo reaccionar cuando, la segunda vez que salí a evangelizar en nuestra comunidad, conocimos a un señor, Tomás, quien acababa de leer el Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica y quería saber más acerca de Jesús. No conocía a ningún católico y tenía demasiado miedo de entrar en un templo católico al azar. Quedé asombrado cuando, tras nuestra explicación del Evangelio, su corazón “ardía dentro” y quiso saber qué hacer a continuación.

¿Cómo íbamos a ayudarle en ese momento a satisfacer su necesidad de Jesús en su vida? Sabía que mi sacerdote no le iba a gustar si mi equipo lo bautizaba allí mismo en ese momento. Pero decirle que se “uniera a un programa” tampoco era una respuesta satisfactoria. Y un programa que comenzaba varias semanas más adelante no se dirigía a su necesidad de una relación con el Salvador quien lo ama ahora mismo.

En su discurso a los obispos de las Filipinas del 18 de febrero del 2011, el Papa Emérito Benedicto XVI declaró que “vuestra gran tarea en la evangelización es proponer una relación personal con Cristo como clave para la realización plena”. Ese momento en la calle quizás no haya sido el momento preciso para bautizar a Tomás, pero sí fue el momento perfecto para presentarle a Jesús. Oramos juntos para agradecerle a Dios por la vida de Tomás, arrepentirnos de nuestros pecados, y pedirle a Cristo a que entrara al corazón de Tomás y que le diera todas las gracias que Dios le tenía guardadas. Lo conducimos hacia Jesús.

One day about 6 years ago, when I worked as a Director of Religious Education for a rural Catholic parish, I was in my office browsing Facebook. I saw an image of a Catholic evangelist on a boardwalk out in public evangelizing a man wearing a Darth Vader helmet and riding a unicycle. Of course, I had to click through the link to read the story about St. Paul Street Evangelization. I contacted the ministry and started a team at my parish. I admit that I didn’t actually expect that direct evangelization would be fruitful, at least I didn’t expect that a 2-minute conversation with someone that I never met could lead to a genuine conversion to Jesus Christ and his Church. I thought most of our work would just be arguing about doctrine and planting seeds. After all, wasn’t everyone walking down the street wondering whether Catholics worship Mary?

Therefore, I didn’t know how to react when, the second time I went out to evangelize in our community, we met a man, Tom, who had just read the Catechism of the Catholic Church and wanted to know more about Jesus. He didn’t know any Catholics and was too afraid to walk into a random Catholic Church. I was floored that after we explained the Gospel, his heart was “burning within him” and he wanted to know what to do next.

How were we going to help him at that moment to satisfy his need for Jesus in his life? I knew my priest wouldn’t be pleased if my team baptized him right then and there. Telling him that he should just “go to a program” wasn’t a satisfactory answer. A program a few weeks distant would not address his need for a relationship with the Savior who loves him right now.

In Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s 2011 address to the bishops of the Philippines, he states that “your great task in evangelization is therefore to propose a personal relationship with Christ as key to complete fulfillment.” That moment on the street may not have been the right moment to baptize Tom, but it was the perfect time to introduce him to Jesus. We prayed together to thank God for Tom’s life, repent of our sins, and ask Christ to come into Tom’s heart, to give him all of the graces God had for him. We led him to Jesus.

In previous articles for this series, I have confined myself to authors who have written from a Catholic perspective. While it may be true that some contemporary educational practices are seriously at odds with the teaching of the Church, one should avoid the temptation to be dismissive of all contemporary educational theories. The General Directory for Catechesis makes it clear that the Church “assumes those methods not contrary to the Gospel and places them at its service… Catechetical methodology has the simple objective of education in the faith. It avails of the pedagogical sciences and of communication, as applied to catechesis…”[1] Indeed, there are some excellent contemporary practices that are entirely compatible with a Catholic vision of education. In this article, I will attempt to provide a brief introduction to the work of Professor John Hattie, currently the most “cited” educational theorist in the world. Hattie does not claim any Christian credentials; his claim is that he relies entirely on data and evidence. For this reason, John Hattie is widely unpopular in his own profession due to his refusal to support educational practices that are obviously failures. Among his key works are Visible Learning (2010), Visible Learning for Teachers (2011) and Visible Learning Feedback (2018). In these texts, Hattie examines many different educational practices and assigns them a score for their effectiveness. Many of the educational “fads” of the past fifty years, despite their popularity in schools, have received very low scores from him. It will not be possible in an article of this length to offer anything more than touch on Hattie’s findings, so I encourage readers to do their own research and investigate some of his many articles available online. They have interesting and valuable contributions to make to the science of pedagogy.

What I will offer in the remainder of this article is a very brief description of eight highly effective teaching practices identified by Hattie in Visible Learning, together with effect size scores. These are calculated using standard statistical measures which need not concern us here. An “effect size” of 0.4 is what should be expected from any sound teaching practice. It means that a student has improved at an average rate over a one year period. If the rating were to be 0.8, it means that the student has made double the amount of progress, equivalent to completing two years of learning in one year. Hattie works not only by conducting his own research, but also by cross checking his findings with multiple pieces of other research: a technique known as “meta-study.”

On May 29, 2012, it was announced that Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo, North Dakota was returning to his home diocese of Denver to become its fifth archbishop. Many archdiocesan leaders had an immediate hunch: Restored Order Confirmation was coming to the archdiocese. Bishop Aquila had already restored the order of the sacraments of initiation in Fargo, and even received public praise for it from Pope Benedict XVI during an ad limina visit to Rome. These expectations proved true when in the fall of 2013 the archdiocese began internal preparations to move toward Restored Order Confirmation, becoming the first archdiocese in the United States to do so. By 2020 the process of transition will be complete, though a majority of parishes in the archdiocese have already begun celebrating the Sacraments of Confirmation and First Communion together in the third grade. To assist this move toward restoring the sacraments to the traditional order of Baptism, Confirmation, and First Communion, the Office of Evangelization and Family Life Ministries (EFLM) conducted workshops and created a number of resources. This article will reflect on the process used by the Archdiocese of Denver in this reordering and the impact it has had upon catechesis within its parishes.