Franciscan at Home

Recently, at a conference for Catholic leaders, I was asked by a young priest what I do. I told him that I help parishes strategize around how to create a culture of discipleship in their parish. He asked me how I do that. I told him that we like to focus on principles, not silver bullets, and train a group of leaders in the parish to create culture change by casting vision, building a clear path to discipleship, mobilizing leaders, and aligning key ministries with a discipleship-oriented vision.

His face fell. I wondered what I had said to offend him!

Evangelization is a primary function of Catholic schools. Although they provide quality education in a variety of subject areas, as agents of the Church, they share the larger mission of the Church: forming disciples of Jesus Christ. Catholic schools should and must be more than public schools that also happen to have religion classes. Speaking about the role of the Catholic school, the Vatican II Declaration on Christian Education, Gravissimum Educationis states, “But its proper function is to create for the school community a special atmosphere animated by the Gospel spirit of freedom and charity, to help youth grow according to the new creatures they were made through baptism as they develop their own personalities, and finally to order the whole of human culture to the news of salvation so that the knowledge the students gradually acquire of the world, life and man is illumined by faith” (8). A key role of the Catholic school, then, is as an agent of evangelization.

Schools can live out their mission to evangelize in a number of practical ways, including evangelizing students, evangelizing the family, and preparing students and families to evangelize the community.

Catholic Schools Evangelize the Student

Providing religious education is a key priority in the Catholic school, but religious education must be different than education in mathematics, science, history, or other subjects. If our objective is to form disciples, the Catholic Faith cannot be simply approached intellectually. Religious education in the Catholic school must be an immersive and formative experience that begins with an encounter with Jesus Christ through the proclamation of the kerygma.

Knowing Jesus is different from simply “knowing about” him. As we draw closer to Jesus, our lives are changed—we find the joy of becoming who we were made to be, we are challenged, and we are called to places we might have never gone before. A Christocentric catechesis—one that focuses on the person of Jesus Christ—facilitates an environment in which learners can get to know Jesus and draw closer to him.

Help learners become acquainted with the Gospels, particularly the Paschal Mystery: Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. Periodically choose a passage from the Gospels that is developmentally appropriate for your learners, both in length and content. Invite your learners to relax, close their eyes, and imagine themselves somewhere within the Gospel story. After meditating on the Gospel passage, invite learners to reflect on their experience. What did they hear Jesus saying to them, and how does it connect with their lives today?

At the beginning of my second year of teaching religion in a Catholic high school, I began prompting my students in each lesson with a question that helped them apply that lesson to their own life circumstances. One day, in the middle of a lesson on original sin, I asked the students to write a letter to Jesus telling him what the “forbidden fruit” was in their lives and asking his help to resist it. Because students knew I would be collecting and reading their responses, I did not anticipate anything very serious. I was surprised, therefore, when “Monica” wrote that her forbidden fruit was alcohol. I took her paper to the guidance counselor, who directed me to tell Monica that the counselor would meet with her to help her with this struggle. When I next saw Monica, I passed along this message, awkwardly adding that I thought she was a great girl, and I had spoken to the guidance counselor because I wanted her to be free to receive everything God had for her. “Ok,” she said, and left the room, leaving me convinced I had lost her trust and consequently all hope of bringing her to Jesus. To my astonishment, Monica later asked me to be her Confirmation sponsor. In the course of our sponsor-confirmand meetings, I learned that Monica’s mother was an alcoholic, and Monica was struggling to cope. Because of the school’s intervention, Monica developed the resolve to resist these and other temptations. She gradually became more serious about her faith, more committed to Jesus and to Mass attendance, more consistent in living out what she learned in the classroom.

Monica’s response to this prompt was not an isolated self-disclosure. Over the years, students responded to these kinds of prompts with stories of their alcohol or drug use, sexual activity, suicidal tendencies, self-harm, guilt over believing they caused the death of a schoolmate or friend, as well as more “typical” examples of fallen human selfishness. These and other challenging experiences, chosen or inadvertent, extraordinary or mundane, often hindered their ability to believe in God, trust him, follow him. They illustrated, for me, an important reason why “many…adolescents who have been baptized and been given a systematic catechesis and the sacraments still remain hesitant for a long time about committing their whole lives to Jesus Christ.”[1] Monica taught me that I could more effectively prompt my students to commit themselves to Jesus if I could help them recognize the place they needed him most, which often meant facing their own painful life situations in the light of truth. Day in and day out, the classroom presented me with wonderful opportunities to shine that light, for the sake of helping them begin and grow in intimacy with Jesus.

The Evangelistic Mission of the Catholic School

The Catholic Church views the Catholic school as a critically important place of evangelization. Consider the document The Catholic School, promulgated by the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education in 1977:

Evangelization is, therefore, the mission of the Church[2]…To carry out her saving mission…[the Church] establishes her own schools because she considers them as a privileged means of promoting the formation of the whole man.[3] The Catholic school forms part of the saving mission of the Church, especially for education in the faith.[4]

In three consecutive paragraphs, the Congregation makes it clear that the Catholic school exists primarily for the purpose of evangelizing, that is, for proclaiming the Gospel message to students and for training them to live according to that message.[5] This is not proselytizing or coercion, which would be contrary to the students’ intellectual development and free will.[6] Rather, it is fulfilling the very purpose of a school, which is to form the whole person: mind, body, heart, soul, and spirit.[7] The student is an embodied person who has been given intellect and free will to use to spend eternity with God; therefore, education is meant to offer formation of that intellect and will not just for the sake of getting a good job (though that is important), but for the sake of living this life in such a way as to get to heaven. The very nature of a school makes the Catholic school a genuine instrument of the Church to evangelize.[8]

By definition, Catholic schools are an extension of the Church’s saving mission of evangelization, with a special responsibility to provide “a privileged environment for the complete formation of her members” within that context.[1] That “complete formation” must have as its goal a lively and enlivening relationship with Christ specifically in the Eucharist, around which all apostolic work and even the other sacraments are centered (CCC 1324). Turning that belief into practice is one of the most critical activities in which a Catholic school must engage if it is to fulfill its own identity within the larger context of the Church’s mission.

Evangelization and the Eucharist
The Church understands evangelization and the Eucharist to be mutually coefficient. Evangelization is directed in a very real way towards the Eucharist, and the Eucharist is what unleashes the spiritual energies upon which the fullness of evangelization depends.[2] They support and feed each other, and where one is absent, the other will eventually struggle and fail, or at the least be a pale shadow of what it should be.

This means that the Eucharist must have a privileged role in the life, activity, and identity of every Catholic school. Spiritual formation should be centered on the Eucharist, spiritual programs should revolve around it, and catechesis specially devoted to it must have a priority; but, above all, evangelization should be specially directed toward it, and any activities centered around the Eucharist should be in some way linked with evangelization as well.

What makes a school Catholic? Is a school Catholic because it exists with the permission of the bishop of the diocese, or it is a member of the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA), or it is an extension or an outreach of a parish community, or it has a crucifix in every classroom and religious artwork throughout the building, or because its curriculum includes religious studies, or because the pattern of its practices align with the National Standards and Benchmarks of Effective Catholic Schools, or because Mass and the Sacrament of Reconciliation are celebrated for the student body during the school year?

For sure, each of these elements is a marker of a Catholic School. But I dare to say that the most decisive element of a Catholic school is the religious character of its personnel.

When the administrator(s) and a critical mass of faculty members embrace Jesus as their center (rather than mention him as an afterthought or an add-on), his spirit infuses the campus. It becomes evident to all that it is the primary purpose, consistent attitude, and intentional goal of the school to guide students to know, love, and serve God. When a Jesus-centered mindset drives every endeavor, action, decision, and response, self-disciplined students, who seek to develop their personal best, emerge. These hallmarks of a Catholic school (a Christ-centered environment, self-disciplined students, and academic achievement) are rooted in the religious character of its teachers.

“Back in the day” Catholic schools were predominately staffed by men or women religious whose distinctive garb was, itself, an outward reminder of God. It seemed as though these walking icons were everywhere, had eyes in the back of their veil-covered heads, and appeared where you least expected them! While students labored over final examinations, they observed their teachers fingering rosary beads suspended from their waists. At precisely the opportune moment, Scripture quotes seemed to slip from their lips effortlessly. Oftentimes, students could observe their teacher clutching the large crucifix that hung from the neck. Teacher body-posture, classroom decorations, routines, consistency in procedures, and high expectations set a tone. The school day was hemmed in with prayer or sacred ritual. At morning prayer students consecrated the day to God, and at dismissal they examined their consciences and made an act of contrition.

An intentional awareness of God punctuated the entire school day. For instance, long before marketers raised awareness of “WWJD?” via bracelets, posters, and such, these teachers motivated student decision-making by remarking, “What would Jesus do …or say…or desire?” “How will this choice contribute to the greater glory of God and the salvation of your soul?” “Live Jesus!” On every heading of student papers and copybook pages students drew a cross followed by “JMJ,” “JMJAT,” “AMDG” or an acronym-inscription related to the charism of the religious congregation. In my elementary school, every hour on the hour, a designated student rang a bell and intoned: “Pardon me, Sister. Pardon me, Class. It is time to bless the hour.” All activity ceased. The student then said, “Let us remember that we are in the holy presence of God.” The class responded: “Let us adore God’s divine majesty.” Together we prayed the “Glory be” and promptly the lesson continued wherever it had been interrupted. Wherever students happened to be at 12 noon, inside or outside the building, they stood still and prayed the Angelus formula while the Angelus bells rang in the distance. When emergency sirens were heard, the class prayed an aspiration or formula that asked God’s assistance for the unknown person in need. When Church bells tolled for a funeral, class stopped for a moment of silence and/or to pray for the deceased, “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.”

Additionally, religious instruction occurred daily, usually as the first session of the day. And, in many schools, the afternoon session began with a 15 minute period of story-telling that applied faith to action. Nothing else trumped Religion class! Some textbooks even referenced Catholic culture. Then, too, there were rituals of the liturgical seasons (Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost), devotions to Mary (rosary, May Procession), Eucharistic devotion (frequent Mass, Forty Hours’ visits to the Blessed Sacrament, Benediction), Stations of the Cross, litanies and novenas, and regular participation in the Sacrament of Penance. The combination of all of these kinds of customs created a culture, an ambiance, a Godly reverence that pervaded every aspect of schooling. This culture underscored the sense that the institution was a divine enterprise and its teachers were the custodians of its spiritual nature and essential to its effectiveness.

The Catholic school was essentially an extension of convent or priory life. School practices, priorities, and order mirrored the lifestyle of the vowed religious. By 1970, the numbers of men and women religious in the schools declined tremendously. If their shoes were filled by lay counterparts, who had themselves been educated in the kind of Catholic school just described, the Catholic Identity or Catholic Culture continued in a similar fashion or adapted modern expressions that created the same end: a faith-infused environment; a divine, God-centered enterprise where activities reflected the spirituality of the teachers.

Over time, elements like a competitive market, certification requirements, and national standards impacted school design. Program demands increased; the length of the school day/year did not! Faith-related cultural customs were deleted. Simultaneously post-Vatican II faculty members—though faithful and faith-filled, well-educated, practicing Catholics—had no experience of schooling within “the Catholic bubble” and that style of spirituality was foreign to them. Consequently, maintaining or fostering Catholic identity or Catholic culture relied all the more on the religious character of school personnel.

Podemos tomar por supuesto el hecho de que la Iglesia Católica opere un gran número de escuelas alrededor del mundo. Es claro que la Iglesia debe de ofrecer educación religiosa, pero, ¿por qué la Iglesia enseña matemáticas, educación física, ciencias, literatura e historia? ¿No sería más fácil que la Iglesia enfocara más estrechamente lo sobrenatural? ¿Para qué enseña también sobre el mundo material y cómo leer y escribir? En el Gran Mandato, Jesús mandó a sus Apóstoles a que hicieran discípulos (mathetes en griego y discipli en latín –ambas palabras se refieren a los estudiantes) y que les enseñaran (Mt 28,19.20). Jesús, el Verbo de Dios, por Quien el universo fue hecho, estableció una Iglesia que desde el principio acogió a la instrucción sobre la naturaleza de la realidad en su totalidad.

Las humanidades y la cosmovisión católica

La Iglesia acogió a las humanidades para ayudarles a sus miembros, en particular a los religiosos, a comprender y a contemplar la Palabra de Dios, y también para poder hablar y escribir de modo efectivo para poder compartir este conocimiento. Desde la enseñanza de las siete disciplinas de las humanidades en las escuelas de las catedrales y monasterios, las universidades fueron formadas para enseñar filosofía y tres carreras terminales en teología, derecho y medicina. La misión de salvación de la Iglesia creció para incluir la formación completa de la persona, uniendo la fe y la razón en la misión común de buscar cómo vivir en el mundo y ordenar todas las cosas a la gloria de Dios.

La educación católica, recurriendo tanto a lo natural como lo sobrenatural, ofrece una visión completa de la vida: una cosmovisión católica. La cosmovisión, en un sentido sencillo, describe cómo vemos a la realidad y formamos a nuestros estudiantes para que ellos la comprendan y habiten en ella. La enseñanza con una robusta visión católica acoge a la persona en su totalidad: cuerpo, emociones, mente y voluntad. La persona humana, como un ser sacramental (es decir, una unidad de cuerpo y alma), requiere el desarrollo de su potencial en todas sus dimensiones: la fortaleza y la salud del cuerpo; el control sobre las emociones de acuerdo con el bien; la conformidad de la mente con la realidad y el desarrollo de hábitos mentales que permitan que uno comprenda y se exprese claramente; el desarrollo de las virtudes de la voluntad que conducirán a la felicidad; y el encuentro con el Dios vivo que da vida a nuestra alma y permite vivir una vida de santidad.

La escuela católica no puede simplemente ofrecer la misma instrucción que la de la educación pública, agregando posteriormente la educación religiosa y la Santa Misa al programa de estudios. Cada materia tiene que ser enseñada de modo distintivo, reflejando la unidad del conocimiento, con una fuente común en Dios – Su creación y Revelación – y ordenada a la sabiduría que comunica el fin último de todas las cosas. Una escuela católica aborda cada materia con las dos alas – la de la fe y la de la razón, a sabiendas que cada verdad conforma a nuestra mente a la Mente de Dios. Simone Weil afirma que cada verdad “es la imagen de algo precioso. Siendo un fragmento pequeño de una verdad particular, es una imagen pura de la Verdad única, eterna y viva que érase una vez declaró con voz humana, ‘Yo soy la verdad.’ Cada ejercicio de la escuela, pensado de esta forma, es como un sacramento.”

We can take for granted the fact that the Catholic Church runs a large number of schools throughout the world. It is clear that the Church must offer religious education, but why does the Church teach math, gym class, science, literature, and history? Wouldn’t it just be easier if the Church focused more narrowly on the supernatural; why also teach about the material world and how to read and write? In the Great Commission, Jesus commanded his apostles to make disciples, (mathetes in Greek and discipli in Latin – both words for students) and to teach them (Mt 28:19-20). Jesus, the Word of God, by whom the universe was made, established a Church that from the beginning embraced instruction on the nature of reality as a whole.

The Liberal Arts and a Catholic Worldview
The Church embraced the liberal arts in order to help its members, especially religious, to understand and contemplate the Word of God, as well as to speak and write effectively to share this knowledge. From the teaching of the seven liberal arts at the cathedral and monasteries schools, the universities formed to teach philosophy and three terminal degrees in theology, law, and medicine. The Church’s mission of salvation grew to include the complete formation of the person, uniting faith and reason in the common mission of seeking how to live in the world and order all things to the glory of God.

Catholic education, drawing upon both the natural and supernatural, offers a complete vision of life: a Catholic worldview. Worldview, in a simple sense, describes the way in which we see reality and form our students to understand it and live within it. Teaching with a robust Catholic vision embraces the entire person: body, emotions, mind, and will. The human person, as a sacramental being (body-soul unity), requires development of its potential in all of its dimensions: strength and health of body; control of the emotions in accord with the good; conformity of the mind to reality and development of the mental habits that enable one to understand and express oneself clearly; the development of the virtues of will that lead to happiness; and the encounter with the living God that enlivens our soul and enables a life of holiness.

The Catholic school cannot simply offer the same instruction as a public education, with religious education and the Mass superadded onto the curriculum. Every subject must be taught in a distinctive fashion that reflects the unity of knowledge, having a common source in God—his creation and revelation—and ordered in a wisdom that communicates the ultimate purpose of all things. A Catholic school approaches every subject through the two wings of faith and reason, knowing that every truth conforms our minds to the mind of God. Simone Weil claims that every truth “is the image of something precious. Being a little fragment of particular truth, it is a pure image of the unique, eternal and living Truth which once in a human voice declared ‘I am the Truth.’ Every school exercise thought of in this way, is like a sacrament.”[1]

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.

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 grew up in a Catholic home, where most years of my elementary education were at a Catholic school, where we practiced Catholic traditions and devotions from time to time, where we always went to Mass on Sundays, and where I knew my parent’s greatest inheritance for me was the faith. In hindsight, however, I was a mediocre Catholic. If I participated in the mission God gave me at my baptism, it was purely by accident, not by intention. As a young adult, I was in the Army and moved around quite a bit. In each new place I would search the chapel or parish bulletin for opportunities to learn more about my faith. I almost never found anything suited for me. Activities and events in the parish were for children and families, but I was a single young adult. What about me? I was basically living from my eighth grade understanding of the faith.
By these experiences, I learned that we Catholics need to be continually formed in our faith, in a lifelong process, so that we might be equipped to perform our God-given mission from baptism. But where must this formation take place? It first takes place in the home, the domestic church, and then in the parish, the house of formation for the laity.

The Parish is the Curriculum
Once young adults leave home to make their way in the world, how are they to receive ongoing formation in the faith? This is where the parish must augment what happens in the home and must continually provide various opportunities for adult faith formation. In 1999, the U.S. Catholic bishops produced Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us: A Pastoral Plan for Adult Faith Formation in the United States, which highlights the irreplaceable “dimensions” and “concrete approaches” of adult faith formation.

The Six Dimensions of Adult Faith Formation
According to the U.S. bishops, “The ongoing development of a living, explicit, and fruitful Christian faith in adulthood requires growth in all six [of these] dimensions. Each of them is a fundamental aspect of Christian life and a foundational content area for adult faith formation.” The six dimensions are as follows.