Franciscan at Home

The work of the catechist is so apparently mundane, carried out on dark evenings in small parish rooms, on wintry afternoons in classrooms, to half-expectant, half-nervous groups of adults and restless rows of children. And yet we can occasionally glimpse something of its immense nature - and then how helpless we can feel before the task! After all, how can one begin to express the overwhelming love of the Lord for the whole of his creation, and for each person individually? What words can we find to express even a little of that Love that is without limit and without end, which reaches to the ends of the earth and pierces the depths of every heart?

Those to whom we have this word to proclaim are hungry to hear it – though they may not appear to be. They are hungry to receive the ultimate meaning that can structure and form their choices, responses and attitudes when this most foundational of all truths is spoken into their lives. There are moments in our catechesis, which we treasure, when an awe descends upon everyone, catechist and those being catechised alike, as all together are caught up in sheer wonder at the works of the Lord. And yet alongside this hunger for meaning, for truth and goodness, what barriers are thrown up, what distractions are welcomed, to provide a protection against this Love that gives all, and would ask for all in return!

This issue of The Sower focuses upon the spiritual life of the catechist. The spiritual life for which each of us is destined is a life which is consumed by the one Reality which will never pass away – Eternal Love, in whom already we live and move and have our being, and Who would be entirely our life and our being.

En la última edición de The Sower, el Padre Cash escribió acerca del encuentro personal esencial con Jesucristo como esencial para que los catequistas sean testigos auténticos de la gracia transformante que Jesús quiere compartir con todos los bautizados. En este artículo, explica los obstáculos que pueden bloquear el crecimiento en esa gracia transformante.

La fe no es solamente una manera para conocer, sino que es un don del Espíritu Santo que nos transforma como seres humanos. Penetramos en una profunda experiencia personal del conocimiento de Jesucristo. Y esa fe transforma nuestras vidas. Lo conozco a Él, y ya que me ha perdonado mis pecados, mi vida es transformada, así como la vida de todo cristiano es transformada por el conocimiento insuperable de Cristo. Entonces, ¿por qué será que no todos los cristianos tengan esta experiencia?

From the beginning of time, God has revealed himself to humanity through his judgments, his laws, which are true and righteous and emanate from the heart of love and goodness in the Trinity. As Pope Benedict XVI writes: ‘The law is the visibility of the truth, the visibility of God’s countenance….’

The relationship to God and to his judgments that once came through the law and the prophets now comes in greater fullness through personal relationship in Jesus Christ who fulfilled that law. It is important for us as Christian catechists to understand about God’s judgments in our own lives. As we learn to identify these judgments of love and discipline and then come to trust and love them, we draw nearer to our Father and share more completely in the mission of the Son.

In Part I of this article we saw how important it is for Christians to learn how to line up with God’s judgments by ‘agreeing’ with them quickly and so allow them to purify and make us more like Christ. In this second part, we’ll further consider the form God’s judgments may take in our daily lives.
God uses every circumstance, every person, and every aspect of life to communicate with his children. No evil or difficulty is greater than his ability to transform it and work it—sometimes in the form of discipline necessary for growth in humility and love— for the good of those who love him. The Scriptures give us many examples of God’s judgments coming to whole peoples as well as to individuals. These inspired accounts, particularly those about individuals such as David and St. Paul, greatly aid us in our struggles to identify and come to grips with God’s way of speaking directly into our own lives. The stories of the saints also supply these helps, for here also are real human beings who have also obviously found the secret of loving God’s life-changing judgments.

This series highlights difficult questions and comments experienced by catechists, teachers and parents who are put ‘on the spot’ by those they are teaching. It outlines possible ways of answering, faithful to Church teaching. This time we look at what it means to pray ‘in the name’ of Jesus.

‘And I tell you, ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.’ (Luke 11:9-10)

‘Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.’ (John 14:13-14)

These are such specific and unequivocal promises, that it is not difficult to see the problem for those, immature in years or in the Faith, who take these promises at the most literal level and then feel let down when their requests, often altruistic in form and content, are not met. We are not, I think, so often put ‘on the spot’ with this dilemma by young children who have not been in this world as long, take things more trustingly, and, most importantly, perhaps have not yet put those words of Jesus to the test. It is more often their parents or elder siblings who challenge catechists with this. Perhaps the difficulty could be illustrated by reference to two young people – we’ll call them Molly and Steve.

Molly is the mother of a young family. Happily married, she attends Mass grimly, with no personal satisfaction, to please her husband and to keep to their agreement to bring up their children as Catholics. Several years ago, just as their first child was baptised, her twin sister became ill. Molly prayed very hard that she would be healed, but she died within a few weeks. Since then, Molly cannot believe the words of Jesus, as she asked in Jesus’ name for her sister’s healing, and she consequently feels that there is no reason for her to believe any of the words of Jesus, or the teachings of the Church.

Steve is a young man who finds it difficult to believe in the existence of God, despite his Catholic upbringing. As a teenager, he noticed the promise of Jesus, ‘Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it.’ Good, he thought; what I want is some kind of reassurance that I’m not wasting my life on a belief that is only a human invention. I will ask God to show himself so I can believe. So Steve prayed very hard for a sign from God. But there was no sign. He concluded that he would be spending a lot of his valuable time on Mass-going and prayer, with no guarantee that there was any substance to his belief – and decided to live for himself and for the day, according to the human and moral values he would work out when as he needed.

Both these young people would say with sincerity that they prayed in the name of Jesus. They took him at his word, and he let them down.

The Catechism recognises the problem: ‘Some even stop praying because they think their prayer is not heard.’ (CCC 2734)

When Jesus gave himself freely to his Father’s plan of salvation through birth in a stable and death on a cross, he gained for us an incredible freedom. In this article, we’d like to look at concrete ways in which this freedom allows us to follow in Christ’s footsteps by ‘agreeing with judgments’, something which is intrinsic to the ongoing process of ‘losing one’s life to gain it.’

Fundamental to our Christian Faith is that God is righteous and judges all things righteously. ‘Righteous art thou, O LORD, and right are thy judgments’ (Ps. 119:137). Equally foundational for us as catechists, are the truths expressed in these two Old Testament prayers: ‘Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in thy commandments’ (Psalm 119:66); and ‘My soul yearns for thee in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks thee. For when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.’ (Isaiah 26:9)

In our relativistic culture, words such as ‘judgment’ and ‘commandment’ sit less and less comfortably. They smack of closed-mindedness, insensitivity and intolerance. Yet these words represent precepts that are vital, not only to Christianity, but to every civilization ordered to truth and justice. Since we, as Catholic catechists, are called to live faithfully, as well as teach truly, the objective truths of the Christian Faith, the more we have a personal understanding about God’s judgments, the better.

This liturgical meditation is reprinted from Romano Guardini's book, Sacred Signs.
Man has many powers. By knowing them, he can seize upon all things around, stars and mountains, seas and rivers, trees and animals, and all manhood which surround him, and he can draw them all into himself. He can love them; but he can also hate them and repel them from him. He can set himself against them, or he can long for them and draw them to him. He can grasp and transform the world round about him according to his will. Waves of all kinds pass through his heart, of joy and longing, of sorrow and love, of peace and excitement.

But his noblest power is that of recognising that there is a higher Power above him, of reverencing this Power and of dedicating himself to It. Man can acknowledge God above him, he can adore him and give himself to Him, ‘so that God be glorified.’

We are to let our souls be lit up with God’s greatness: we are to adore that greatness, we are not to remain selfishly enclosed within, but we are to stride beyond ourselves and set ourselves to the task of glorifying God in the highest. This giving of ourselves is sacrifice.

A common question asked by many Evangelicals or Protestants is, ‘Are you saved?’ The answer, for them, is that if you have proclaimed Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, then you are saved. You are saved by making this formal statement. Some Catholics may respond to this question with ‘Yes, I am saved,’ meaning that at their Baptism they received sanctifying grace, and it follows that if they die in this state of grace, they should enter into eternal life. Whilst this is an acceptable way of interpreting the meaning of the question to be consistent with the Catholic faith, the problem with the question, ‘Are you saved?’ and the way of thinking behind it is that it diminishes the meaning of hope.

We must recognize that this phrase originates with the Protestant view of salvation. This view is that simply by believing in salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and he being our personal Lord and Savior, we are saved. The truth, however, is that we are not saved. Our salvation is still in anticipation. To falsely place this anticipation into the realm of actuality is to destroy hope entirely.

‘The supernatural virtues are faith, hope, and charity. They are called “supernatural” because they have their foundation in God, are directly related to God, and are for us men the way by which we can reach God directly.’ (YOUCAT 305) Our treatment of ‘the supernatural virtues’ highlights God’s initiative. At Baptism, God, himself a Trinity, pours into his children a trinity of virtues on which to construct our lives. He gives us faith to believe that he exists and is good. He gives us hope that, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we can share his happiness in Heaven. And he gives us love; which is to say he gives us himself in the most consistent, intimate way possible.

We are each made to receive the Holy Spirit and to find our joy in welcoming his life into ours. God gives his Spirit as a gift to transform human hearts and minds from within. By this transformation the Lord wants each of us to grow and flourish; the only thing we lose is our sin; everything else is good. So we need never be afraid to watch for the Holy Spirit around us nor allow him to work. As we let Him we will be discovering ourselves, our real beauty and dignity and the real dignity and beauty in others. This is our hope, so, how do we hold it, grow in it and live by it? We live it simply by treating the Holy Spirit as the real person that he is. Since he is real and at work in the world we can look out for him as a presence around us.

Faith, Hope and Love: the three ‘theological virtues’. And what is a ‘virtue’? Virtues are described by the Church as ‘habits’, ‘firm dispositions’, ‘powers’. They are capacities that we have been given. Why are they called ‘theological’? Because they are the holy habits, sacred habits, that lead to life eternal.

Faith, Hope and Love are, first of all, gifts, to be appreciated and lovingly received. We cannot earn them. We cannot gain them by our own efforts. Only God can place them in our lives. They are supernatural gifts. They take us beyond our natural capacities. They are more than the natural giftedness that comes to us at birth. They are the fruits of rebirth, the free gift of grace given to us in Baptism. No-one can make another believe, hope or love; and neither can we generate these virtues out of ourselves, by sheer will-power.