Franciscan at Home

Teachers, administrators, and others working in Catholic schools are devoted to their students. They want what is best for them. This is why they will want to increase the variety and level of support offered to parents.

At the origin of human history lies a pivotal moment—the fateful bite from the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. However, this profound narrative doesn’t conclude with the original sin; it finds its ultimate fulfillment in the taste of the Eucharist. Through the sense of taste, which once led to humanity’s fall, we now receive spiritual nourishment and the grace of eternal life, all made possible through the loving sacrifice of Christ.

In the Garden of Eden, God placed two trees—the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. While Adam and Eve were commanded not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, they were free to partake of the Tree of Life, which held the gift of immortality and eternal communion with God.

Tragically, temptation lured Eve into believing the serpent’s deceitful words—that eating the fruit from the forbidden tree would make her wise like God. She tasted the fruit and shared it with Adam, thus disobeying God’s command.

As a consequence of their disobedience, sin entered human nature, and God, in his mercy, expelled them from the Garden of Eden. This act of divine love spared them from eternal separation from God in their fallen state. Eating from the Tree of Life while in a state of sinfulness would have meant an eternity estranged from him. God had angels guard the Tree of Life in his infinite wisdom, ensuring that Adam and Eve would not eat from it on their way out. “He expelled the man, stationing the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword east of the garden of Eden, to guard the way to the tree of life” (Gn 3:24).

This denial of access to the Tree of Life foreshadowed the need for a Savior to redeem the human race from sin and open up access to eternal life through faith and grace. That Savior is Jesus Christ, whom the New Testament calls the “last Adam” (1 Cor 15:45). Just as Adam’s sin brought death into the world, Christ’s sacrificial death on the Cross brings redemption and the promise of eternal life. Thus, the image of the Tree of Life profoundly connects to the Cross on which Jesus was crucified—a Cross made of a tree, symbolizing the tree of the Fall being redeemed by the tree of the Cross.

There’s something particularly mysterious about the motherhood of Mary. Her fiat that shook the whole world as the uncontainable God chose to be contained within her womb.

“He’s just too small,” sobbed a woman we had just met. It was a sunny summer day, and the pastor, transitional deacon, and I were out knocking on doors within our parish boundaries. This woman’s door was within eyesight of the rectory, and it happened to be the first one we had visited. The conversation had started off just as awkwardly as one would imagine. She answered the door hesitantly, but smiled as we introduced ourselves. She was a parishioner and relaxed when she saw the pastor standing at the back of our group. We explained that we were out introducing ourselves and the parish to the neighborhood. When we asked if there were any intentions we could pray for, she took a deep breath and said yes. She then began to tell us about her unborn grandson and how her daughter’s pregnancy was not going well. She asked us to pray for the baby boy, who was just too small.

We could have just as easily not been there. That same morning, I had offered a training for any parishioners who wanted to learn about door-to-door evangelization. The idea was to walk them through a basic script at the parish and let them shadow those of us with more experience as we knocked on doors in the surrounding neighborhood. Nobody came.

Door-to-door ministry is a frightening prospect for many Catholics, and it is a frightening ministry to organize. Yet, there are overflowing graces to be had, both for the evangelist and the evangelized. Consider my opening story: What would have been lost if our team had gone home after the failed training seminar? Within eyesight of our parish was someone who needed Jesus’ comfort and the only way we could bring it to her was by following Christ’s own counsel: “Ask, . . . seek, . . . knock” (Mt 7:7).

I have been engaged in door-to-door evangelization since 2017. In that time, I have knocked on countless doors and said countless prayers. I have been invited into living rooms and have been cursed from behind locked doors. I have interrupted drug deals and witnessed spontaneous neighborhood prayer meetings. Through it all, I have become convinced that this style of ministry does have a place in the Catholic Church.

Historically, door-to-door ministry has been the near-exclusive province of Protestants, Latter Day Saints, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Frankly, there have been times that, after seeing two men in white dress shirts and ties walking through my neighborhood, I suddenly decided there were errands I needed to run. Undoubtedly, the first pitfall to be overcome in this ministry is its perception. The very words “door-to-door” conjure up images of tract-wielding zealots and vacuum cleaner salesmen. The only way to change this perception is to do the ministry a different way. What if door-to-door evangelists were like those servants of the master who went out into the streets and through the city inviting all they met to the great wedding feast (see Lk 14:15–24)?

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Back in 1989, when I first began working as a parish catechetical leader, I remember becoming alert to a pattern that unfolded regularly in our church parking lot. Two nights a week, our empty parking lot would become quite busy for two short periods of time. A line of cars would begin to form at 6:45 p.m. that would slowly inch along as parents dropped their children and teens off for parish catechesis. Then the lot emptied except for the dozen or so cars of the catechists. And then, an hour and a half later, the methodical line would predictably form again and creep along as parents retrieved their kids.

I had never been particularly attentive to this until that night. My alertness came about because of a contrasting pattern I had noticed for the first time in a church down the street. The previous week, I had noticed just how different the experience was in the evangelical Christian church parking lot. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, that church also had many cars entering the lot. But these cars were parked and remained for several hours until their drivers exited together at around 9 p.m. In that community, the adult drivers got out of their cars and entered, and then, surprisingly, remained in the building. As their kids went to Bible studies, so did their parents and other adults; whereas in our Catholic parish, the adult-chauffeurs immediately departed as their kids were catechized. In one church, the idea of studying and growing in an understanding of God’s Word was normative adult Christian life. Yet in the other—in ours—catechesis was an activity meant for the kids.

When it comes to the Catholic parishes with which each of us might be most familiar, what age level receives the most focused catechetical attention?

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The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a beautiful dogma of the Church that conveys to the faithful the importance of the Blessed Mother. In 1950, the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus (The Most Bountiful God) was promulgated by Pope Pius XII. It declared that Mary was assumed into heaven—body and soul—at the end of her earthly life. Many traditions gathered from ancient sources tell us of Mary’s life after the scriptural conclusion of the apostolic age. The whole Church, in both in history and in contemporary times, has perceived the bookends of Mary’s life to be remarkable—a woman born without sin would also be free of the earthly demands of conventional human death. Supported by the patriarchs, the prophets, her Magnificat, the Marian visionaries, bishops, clergy, the lay faithful, and especially her relationship to her Son, Pius XII was moved to establish this dogma to help us know the fullness of Mary ever better.

But how can an artist depict something as mysterious and glorious as an event like this? As in images depicting many other glorious parts of the narrative of salvation, an artist is called to stretch the imagination, to conceive of a design that amplifies our meditation instead of bringing it “down to earth.” Certainly, composing a simple, factual scene of a woman flying into the sky would be insufficient. The Assumption by Masolino is an image that does more than show a literal historical event. It is painted in the International Gothic style—a post-Medieval, pre-Renaissance mix of realism and imaginative idealism. In art, realism depicts what the neutral eye naturally sees, whereas idealism is a vision of what the mind would like to see based on invisible ideas, usually something better than what we find when looking at the world. Realism and idealism are found throughout the history of art in both secular and religious images. Artists who create sacred art often use forms that are “more than real” in order to convey the mysteries of our faith. Masolino is one of those artists.

In many depictions of the annunciation, Mary is pictured as having been interrupted by the angel Gabriel in the midst of study. Whether she has a book open in her lap or tossed aside, a scroll in her hand or on a nearby stand, it is clear that, before this event, she was reading. Art historians have proposed interesting cultural interpretations of this motif, and these interpretations have their place. However, it seems that this motif, and the idea of Mary as an intellectual in general, has the potential to serve a pastoral purpose when investigated scripturally and spiritually. When viewed in light of the Gospel scenes that follow the annunciation, it becomes clear that Mary’s fiat could only have come from a woman who was steeped in the Scriptures and the religious tradition in which she found herself. The knowledge she displays of her place in the cosmic plan of salvation and her identity as a handmaiden of the Creator of the universe had to have been the fruit of deep study and contemplation.

Beautifully, the opportunity for deep study and contemplation is exactly what is on offer to university students. When considering the formation of these students and the call of Ex Corde Ecclesiae for Catholic universities to serve students “in their pilgrimage to the transcendent goal which gives meaning to life,” pastoral strategies that assist students in integrating their intellectual lives with their spiritual lives are essential.[1] Thus, Mary, when viewed as an intellectual, can be a tangible image, mentor, and friend to students who are fighting to integrate their relationship with God with their call to study. Here I will flesh out the pastoral potency of this view of Mary by first exploring an instance of scriptural evidence of Mary’s intellectual life. Then I will reflect on A. G. Sertillanges’ writings on the spirit of prayer in the intellectual life. Finally, I will examine Caryll Houselander’s view of the relationship between Mary’s vocation and our own, concluding that Mary can not only be an example of the call to the intellectual life but can lead students to Christ through their study in meaningful ways.