Franciscan at Home

Ample research has shown that a great majority of young people are leaving the Church before age 22 and choosing to never return. Many studies have been done on the Millennial Generation to discover their affinity (or lack thereof) to the Christian Faith. The Church’s response to this lack of faith is the New Evangelization.

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La necesidad en la Iglesia

El discipulado es una palabra que muchos comprenden solo parcialmente. Si la gente está familiarizada con la palabra, generalmente la definen como ser seguidor de Jesús. El problema es que muy poca percibirá que el discipulado también abarca el ser formador de discípulos. Al responder a la Gran Comisión en Mateo 28, 19-20, somos llamados no solamente a seguir a Jesús y todo lo que Él enseña, sino también a ir y hacer discípulos.

Click here for Spanish translation of article.

Con demasiada frecuencia, los responsables de la formación de la fe para adultos en sus parroquias dejan a un lado al Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica por ser demasiado difícil y, por lo tanto, demasiado abrumador para su auditorio. Quizás también lo consideren irrelevante para la experiencia de la gente, poco práctico o personal, o poco inspirador. Sin embargo, hacer caso omiso al Catecismo como recurso fundamental en la formación de la fe de los adultos sería perjudicar al Pueblo de Dios. El Catecismo es un don de la Iglesia – o más propiamente, del Espíritu Santo, obrando por medio de los sucesores de los apóstoles, para todos los miembros del Cuerpo de Cristo. En su Constitución Apostólica sobre el Catecismo, el Papa Juan Pablo II dice claramente que el Catecismo se ofrece “a todos aquellos fieles que deseen conocer mejor las riquezas inagotables de la salvación” (cf. Ef 3,8).” No es un documento seco, sino uno repleto de vida. “Está orientado a la maduración de esta fe, su enraizamiento en la vida y su irradiación en el testimonio” (CEC 23). El Catecismo es un documento formativo – tiene el poder para transformar al corazón y a la mente de quien lo lea.

El Catecismo es un poderoso instrumento de formación porque expresa tan clara y hermosamente las verdades de los misterios cristianos, y la interconexión entre ellas. Cada doctrina es presentada desde sus fundamentos en la Sagrada Escritura – con su poder para penetrar a las mentes y los corazones, y a través de sus fuentes en la Tradición, tal y como lo expresaron los padres y doctores de la Iglesia, los concilios, y los santos. Las verdades se presentan en su riqueza y profundidad. La persona humana encuentra esta belleza, orden y coherencia irresistible. Hay un principio fundamental en acción aquí: la verdad (de la Revelación), cuando es expresada adecuadamente en sí misma (es decir, hermosamente) habla a nuestro corazón y mente, atrayéndonos hacia dentro. En todas las doctrinas, contemplamos la forma de Cristo, y somos extasiados (tomo prestada esta expresión de Hans Urs von Balthasar): somos cautivados de tal modo que nos impulsa para responder a Cristo mismo con nuestro abandono a la fe. En corto, la belleza convierte.

I never thought that I was going to work with middle school students. All throughout college, I fully expected that I would spend my years in ministry with ninth through twelfth graders. But the Lord had other plans, and post-college I found myself tasked with building a new middle school youth ministry program. I was young, I was inexperienced, and I had no idea what I was doing. So, I did what any typical type-A, nerdy, recent college graduate would do in the midst of feeling overwhelmed; I reread my notes, where I found this:

“Step One: build a team of adult volunteers.”
Thus, I began. Now, after four years of practice in forming adult leaders, I can honestly say that it has become the most life-giving aspect of my job. There is truly nothing I enjoy more than working alongside the amazing team of adult volunteers I get to serve with, but it didn’t start out that way. It took years of combating and conquering my belief in a number of myths about how to build a healthy leadership team.

And so, in the spirit of learning from the many mistakes I made along the way, I present to you, “Five Myths of Finding and Forming Leaders.”

In my role as a director of religious education, I have listened to catechists make sweeping statements about their students, “These kids today don’t care about anything.” “Most of them don’t even want to be here.” Admittedly, such words are spoken in moments of frustration. I have also heard teachers make sentimental statements about their students, “They’re so sweet and innocent. What could they possibly have to confess?” Both expressions betray a lack of appreciation for the dignity of each child, a dignity which compels us to offer them a complete catechesis about who God is and who they are in relation to him.

It is one thing to assent to the truth that “children have a dignity of their own and that they are important not only for what they will do in the future, but for who they are now,”[1] and another to treat every child with the dignity they deserve. How can catechists honor the dignity of children?

Jesus gives us some clues where he becomes “indignant” when the disciples try to keep the children away and he rebukes them. “He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, ‘Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me. Amen, I say to you whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.’ Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.”[2]

Humble Yourself
Jesus offers us a most practical way to grow in the virtue of humility when he admonishes us to turn and become like children. We cannot appreciate the dignity of another person when we are filled with our own ego, need for control, or pride. Children may not always be aware of their littleness, but when they come up against the reality that they need help, they soon become beggars, unashamed to ask for help. They unabashedly and often gratefully receive all as gift. If we are to turn and become like children, we have to give up the illusion that we can live the Christian life by ourselves. No matter our level of experience or education, each of us is radically dependent on God. “Put no trust in . . . mere mortals powerless to save. When they breathe their last, they return to the earth; that day all their planning comes to nothing.”[3] Our very life is dependent on God. If he were to cease loving us, we would cease to exist. Everything we have, including our education and experience, is gift. We have not earned and cannot deserve all we’ve been given. In addition, we are indebted to one another in ways we often take for granted. When we know how dependent we are on God and each other, we are free from the exhausting constraints of self-protection and self-promotion, free to give from the abundance of the gifts we’ve received, and free to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit in the moment.

Humility encourages a stance of awe and wonder in the presence of God’s children who are temporarily placed in our care. An active pursuit of humility safeguards all those in relationship with us too, because it ensures that we act from a place of love and gratitude toward God and others.

Surely one of the most beautiful, one of the most enduring, and one of the most sublime teachings of Vatican II is the universal call to holiness in Lumen Gentium, chapter 5. I have never reread this chapter without feeling an increase of my own zeal for answering this call, even as I become more aware, at the same time, of how much I fall short. Still, it is so beautiful, it makes me want to persist.

But what is holiness? I want to suggest that it is not, in the first instance, a concept abstracted from concrete holy persons and holy things, a category into which they are fitted because they conform to its defining features. For holiness, as Lumen Gentium puts it, is nothing else but “the perfection of love (caritas)” (LG 39; cf. 42),[1] and there is nothing more concrete than this perfection, for it has as its content Jesus Christ, “love divine all loves excelling / joy of heaven to earth come down” (Charles Wesley). He, “together with the Father and the Spirit, is hailed as ‘alone holy’” (LG 39). The meaning of the word “holy” comes from him who is “alone holy,” not the other way around, as if the meaning of “holy” is established independently and God is then found to qualify.

The same is true for love. The Trinity is “alone holy” because the Trinity is “an eternal exchange of love” (CCC 221) such that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). The sentence is not reversible, to “Love is God,” which would invite us to fill in the content of “love” with whatever is currently fashionable on greeting cards and then to think that God is that. Luckily, the content of what Love is, and therefore what God is, and therefore what holiness is, is filled out for us concretely in Jesus Christ, who “loved the Church as his Bride, giving himself up for her so as to sanctify her” (see Eph 5:25-26; LG 39). The sacrifice of Christ on the Cross “‘for the sins of the whole world’ (1 Jn 2:2) expresses his loving communion with the Father” (CCC 606), since he “embraces in his human heart the Father’s love for human beings,” and loves us “to the end” (Jn 13:1; CCC 609).

This love is the only love that has not even the slightest taint of self-interest. It is the love that “emptied itself” of the “form of God,” and received the “form of a servant” (Phil 2:5). There can be no self-interest in this because God already has everything, is everything, he needs or wants; so, the self-emptying is pure gift. Only such a love can be the medium of true human communion. And if that weren’t enough, the Word not only “became flesh” (Jn 1:14) but also “sin” (2 Cor 5:21), meaning that he did not take on a human nature in its unfallen condition, as he was clearly entitled to, but rather took flesh under the conditions of the Fall, subject to suffering and death. Though sinless, he entered into solidarity with sinners, accepting our lot as his lot, thereby making us his, giving us a new solidarity in his love, so that we now have a new way of saying “we” as human beings that is no longer in “Adam” only but in his love, that of the Second Adam.

Baptism incorporates us into this new “we,” into being “his.”

What is holiness? In our lead article, Dr. John Cavadini describes holiness as the Second Vatican Council did, as “the perfection of love.”[1]