Franciscan at Home

On June 25th of the current year, the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization released the new Directory for Catechesis. This is the third explicit apos- tolic and official document on catechesis in recent times.

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Do you want to know the most common questions a youth minister gets asked? “How many kids came to youth group last night?” or “How many kids signed up for the retreat?” Throughout my 10+ years of working as a parish youth minister, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked these questions as a way to evaluate the success of the parish youth program. Now, typically a youth minister responds to the most popular question with the most popular answer, which is “Youth ministry isn’t about numbers; if we change one heart it’s worth it.”

Unfortunately, “nickels and noses” (money and numbers), as Gil Rendle puts it in his book Doing the Math of Mission, are two of the quickest and simplest ways to evaluate ministry. Rendle, however, makes the distinction between counting and measuring, saying that counting is “more about resources and activities than about outcomes,” whereas measuring is about “change… it is more about call, purpose, and possibility.”[1] Whether clearly articulated or not, I don’t think anyone would argue that “change” is what ministry is all about. Conversion, growth, holiness: these are about change, not numbers. Isn’t this what we want to see happening in the lives of our teens?

As our culture degenerates into a post-Christian, secular humanist society, youth ministry becomes more difficult. Some studies show that Gen Z is the “least religious” generation in our country today. Youth ministers have to work harder and be more creative than ever before to connect to students. Students are busier than ever. No longer are Wednesday nights and Sundays reserved for “families and faith”; school and club teams schedule events during these previously hallowed times. Because students are more connected through social media and the internet, why go to youth group when they can watch a well-edited YouTube video or do a simple Google search to find their answers about God?

Introduction

Over the last several decades, theologians who focus on evangelization in general, and the moment of catechesis within it in particular, have given considerable thought and attention to the topic of the kerygma, and rightly so. The kerygma can be aptly understood to be the summary of the Gospel; and, as such, it is always deserving of closer study, especially so in an age when Catholicism is waning in many places.

In this three-part series, I’m explaining what the kerygma is and why it’s important. In the first installment, I provided a basic overview of the kerygma, identifying seven essential components: the (1) salvific (2) life, (3) death, and (4) resurrection of (5) Jesus of Nazareth, who is both (6) Christ and (7) Lord. Having already addressed the salvific component in the first installment, here I will focus on the next three components: Jesus’ life, death (including his burial) and resurrection.[1]

Jesus’ Life as Part of the Kerygma

When we think about Jesus’ earthly existence and the kerygma, it’s common to focus on his death and burial. After all, this is when Jesus offered himself for our salvation—another aspect of the kerygma—out of love for the Father and for each and all of us. His complete gift of Himself, his literal self-sacrifice, obviously and rightly garners most of our attention.

However, we ought not skip over the proclamation of Jesus’ life and jump straight to Good Friday and Easter Sunday. In other words, the truth that Jesus really lived a human life is just as much a part of the kerygma as is his death and resurrection. Here we’ll look at just a few reasons why this is so.

First, to acknowledge that Jesus really lived, and that he did so in a specific time and place, as part of a real family and a real people, is to assert definitively that the Christian faith is not a myth. Remember, the kerygma is the proclamation of something that has happened: the Gospel is not a fable or myth that begins “Once upon a time” or “Long, long ago, in a galaxy far away.” No, our faith, at its very core, asserts that he really lived as a man.

Second, acknowledging Jesus’ “real life” also asserts the truth of his humanity: Jesus lived a real, human life. And not only was it real, it was in many ways, really ordinary. While his conception and birth were miraculous, the vast majority of his life was completely ordinary; he was like us in all ways, but sin. Speaking of the part of his life that is unknown to us -- between his parents finding Him in the temple at age twelve and his baptism by John the Baptist around age 30 -- the Catechism tells us that during that time “Jesus shared the condition of the vast majority of human beings: a daily life spent without evident greatness, a life of manual labor” (CCC 531).

One might fairly ask, if much of Jesus’ life was so ordinary, why is it part of the kerygma? The Catechism provides the answer: speaking of his obedience to Mary and Joseph, it tells us that “the obedience of Christ in the daily routine of his hidden life was already inaugurating his work of restoring what the disobedience of Adam had destroyed” (CCC 532). In other words, Jesus’ ordinary life was already the beginning of our salvation: in his obedience to Mary and Joseph, he was already undoing the fall of humanity caused by Adam’s disobedience.

So, to announce Jesus’ life is to proclaim that he really lived, that he was really human, and that much of his life was both ordinary and salvific.

Fortitude is a virtue that is admired by even the non-religious. Even people who think temperance is for the overly pious, consider meekness a weakness, and scoff at humility believe that fortitude is a laudable attribute. For thousands of years, cultures have honored the courageous, recognizing the hero that finds the balanced mean between fear and impetuousness. As C. S. Lewis notes in The Screwtape Letters, people are “proud of most vices, but not of cowardice.”

The Catechism tells us, “Fortitude is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. It strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in the moral life” (CCC 1808). Living a virtuous life requires courage. This is something we need to teach more frequently. The call to fortitude is not just in tales about knights or the stories of the martyrs, but in the life of every believer. The daily life of a Christian is not for the faint of heart.

For many years, catechesis shied away from presenting the Sacrament of Confirmation in “militaristic” terms. Avoiding language about battle and warfare, students were no longer taught about being “soldiers for Christ.” Some explain this language was omitted to avoid the sacrament being interpreted as a coming of age ritual or sign of maturity. If that was the case, the attempt has failed. Survey the average confirmation class and you will find most students, if not the catechist as well, has a misunderstanding of the sacrament along these lines.

While magisterial documents on catechesis refer to parents as a child’s primary religious educators,[1] many parents and parish religious educators misunderstand the import of this statement. Parents are not expected to do a formal classroom-type catechesis. Instead, the parents’ role is one they are uniquely positioned to fulfill: their vocational responsibility to inculcate the faith on a day-to-day level through prayer, liturgical celebration, and moral formation. Unlike catechists, who might have one hour per week with children, parents are with their children daily throughout their formative years, with the potential to establish habits of prayer, foster participation in the liturgy, and direct real progress in moral formation. While parish and school catechists can provide guidance and support, as well as teach doctrine, parents and family members are essential to the actual living of the faith. Good formation within the family, therefore, provides a solid foundation for formal catechesis so that both can be mutually enriching.[2]

Parents are indispensable in the development of moral conscience and virtue. This is because, as the National Directory for Catechesis explains, “Moral catechesis involves more than the proclamation and presentation of the principles and practice of Christian morality. It presents the integration of Christian moral principles in the lived experience of the individual and the community.”[3] The family is the child’s first and most important community for this essential aspect of moral formation. The National Directory for Catechesis confirms that parents are responsible for the moral formation of children, according to the natural law. “Parents are catechists precisely because they are parents. Their role in the formation of Christian values in their children is irreplaceable.”[4]

What is Virtue?  What is Goodness?[5]

Virtue is a habit or habitus. The Latinized form is more suitable here because our familiar understanding of the word ‘habit’ doesn’t quite fit when considering virtue. As habitus, virtue occupies a position between the powers of the soul and the acts of the person. It is not simply a repeated action; it is a dynamic ability for growth toward the good in human action. A habitus is required for human powers that have more than one way of being activated. While each physical sense, for instance, has one particular function: the eyes see, the ears hear, and the tongue tastes, the will can desire many things, needing a habitus to give it form; a good will, a weak will, malice all describe the habitus of a particular will. Habitus itself is a neutral term, simply referring to a pattern of growth in a particular human power towards certain kinds of action. For example, the good willed person has a growth-pattern of virtue, but the malicious person has a growth-pattern of vice. Virtues develop through properly human action and the working together of choice and intellect, which affects not simply the resulting actions but also results in the moral development of the human person. The virtue of courage helps to perfect the movements of the irascible power of the soul to actions that embody seeking the good in difficult circumstances. The truly human capacities of knowing and loving require virtue to function well. Further, the moral character of the person is changed through virtue, so that the person with virtue is a good person.

Goodness is an analogous concept. Each thing possesses or displays goodness in a manner that is specific to the kind of thing that it is. A good pen writes well, a good chair is constructed so as to support the person sitting in it. For a person to be good, the powers of the soul, emotions, and passions must be guided by reason to the purpose or goal of life. Christian parents are leading their children to the loftiest of goals: union with God, by imitation of Christ. This is the goodness that comes about through virtue.[6]  Growth in virtue, therefore, means growth in goodness, consistently good action that brings joy to the agent.

“I guess we’ll all get to see how well our pandemic plans actually work.” The moment my dad said that to me is the moment I realized that none of us were prepared for COVID-19. Even businesses that developed a pandemic plan never really tested it. And I do not know of a single parish that planned ahead for the complete interruption of normal operations. Now that we experienced “Corona Time,” as my pastor likes to call it, we have learned much about virtual ministry, found best practices, and discovered its unique benefits. Corona Time has forever changed our parish’s formation strategy and disaster preparedness for the better.

Our Virtual Ministry

The key for our Faith Formation Team was to establish a schedule, both for working from home and for our digital presence. When we first started, we all struggled with throwing together some content and slapping it on the parish Facebook feed whenever it was finished. Within a week, we settled into a programming schedule that kind of felt like running a TV station. We continued emailing specialized content to specific groups—we emailed First Communion Preparation content to second graders’ families and Sunday reading worksheets to every family every Sunday—but most of our content was posted to social media at designated times.

Un proverbio chino dice, “el hombre sin virtud es el inhumano”. Esta es una declaración muy radical, una que es políticamente incorrecta. Es una afirmación que escandaliza a nuestra obsesión igualitaria. Sin embargo, aunque la declaración sea bastante inofensiva para nuestros oídos, parece resonar en lo profundo de nuestra alma. ¿Por qué? Joseph Pieper, en su libro titulado Faith, Hope, Love (Fe, esperanza y amor) sugiere la respuesta al declarar que la virtud es “el mejoramiento de la persona humana”, “lo máximo de lo que puede ser el hombre”. “Es el reconocimiento de la potencialidad del ser de la persona. Es una perfección de su actividad”, y “la constancia de la orientación del hombre hacia la realización de su naturaleza, es decir, hacia el bien”.[1] En otras palabras, tanto un sabio chino como un filósofo contemporáneo están de acuerdo en afirmar que la virtud hace de la persona que la posee un ser humano realizado, un ser humano que está plenamente vivo. Por otro lado, una persona que no está creciendo en la virtud es una persona cuyo ser moral y espiritual está atrofiado.

Todos deseamos ser plenamente vivos. Si tal es el caso, necesitamos aprender más acerca de las virtudes y practicarlas con celo. Entre todas ellas, la magnanimidad y la humildad son de la mayor importancia. Se habla sólo raramente de estas virtudes. No obstante, Aristóteles decía que la magnanimidad (literalmente, “la grandeza del alma”) es “la corona de todas las virtudes”, mientras que, para los cristianos, la humildad es la raíz de todas las virtudes. Sin la magnanimidad, las virtudes no alcanzan la plenitud de su potencial y sin la humildad, las virtudes se degeneran, convirtiéndose en vicios de autosuficiencia. La magnanimidad y la humildad son dos lados de la misma moneda, la cual se llama liderazgo cristiano. Siguiendo la iniciativa del erudito francés Alexandre Havard, quisiera presentar a la magnanimidad y a la humildad como dos virtudes que constituyen la esencia del liderazgo. Las virtudes naturales de la prudencia, la justicia, la valentía y la templanza son los cimientos del liderazgo; y las virtudes teologales de la fe, esperanza y caridad dan estructura a nuestra capacidad para dirigir. La magnanimidad y la humildad, en palabras de Havard, son “las virtudes de la grandeza visionaria y de la devoción al servicio.” [2]

Hace poco conocí a un líder de esta índole. Soy profesor de seminario y miembro del equipo formador. Hace un mes, fui con catorce seminaristas en un viaje misionero a Perú. Pasamos una semana en una parroquia llamada Santísimo Sacramento. Nuestro anfitrión es el rector de esa parroquia. Su nombre es P. Joseph y es originario de Wisconsin, pero fue ordenado en Perú y ha servido a su comunidad por más de veinticinco años. Llegar a conocer a P. Joseph fue un verdadero placer. He aquí un hombre lleno de celo apostólico, visión y humildad. La filosofía de vida de P. Joseph se podría resumir de esta manera: “No hagas pequeños planes porque no tienen el poder para inflamar a los corazones humanos”. A menudo repetía esa frase y vivía de acuerdo a ella. Es un volcán de ideas y programas nuevos. Sin embargo, lo que más desea es que “su” gente cumpla con la vocación que Dios les ha dado para alcanzar “el estado de hombre perfecto y la madurez que corresponde a la plenitud de Cristo”.[3] P. Fr. Joseph es un gran hombre y hace de todos los que se asocian con él mejores personas. Exhibe las cualidades del liderazgo cristiano: la magnanimidad y la humildad.

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