Franciscan at Home

“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20). These familiar words of Jesus teach us as catechists that we have multiple opportunities to encounter him, not just in communal prayer but also in missionary outreach and every time we step into our catechetical sessions. Yes, even the mundane and hectic are sanctified by God’s presence. Since he called us, he won’t abandon us. The question is: are we watching and waiting for him? And, are we attuned to him and how he wishes to move us and those in our care?

In this year dedicated by Pope Francis to the consecrated life, Saint Teresa of Avila is a vivid icon of the joy given by the “sequela Christi.” She followed the steps of Christ, his way of life, through obedience, poverty, and chastity.

Teresa was a joyful woman, full of the light of her Lord. She was gifted for relationship and many people were fond of her company, but these very gifts could become traps in her search for happiness. Thus her way to reach true joy—that is to say, joy that remains in the depths of the heart even when experiencing hardships—was not a straight one. Following her story may be illuminating for us.

No one arbitrarily volunteers to become a catechist. Rather, the Church understands this vital responsibility to have the dignity of a vocation [see General Directory for Catechesis, no. 233]. This means that being a catechist is a call that a person receives from God—an authentic path to sanctity. One reason for this is the profound level of cooperation with God that is needed in order for catechesis to be fruitful. Cooperating with God in the process of catechesis can sometimes be a grand and dramatic endeavor, but most of the time being attuned to God as a catechist happens in silent and simple experiences. Of course we know that God is always present and moving when his Word is proclaimed and encountered. We have Christ’s word on this: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” [Mt. 18:20].

It is our hope that regularly reading the testimonies of catechists, who share God’s powerful presence in the work of catechesis, will not only inspire but bring hope.

"Thank you, God, for shots!"

Sometimes God works in ways we could never imagine, let alone plan.

Just as parents were dropping off their three, four, and five year old students for an early evening catechetical session with me, a woman I had never seen before introduced herself. “I’m here to fill in for your aide. Her husband is in the hospital. I’m not sure whether she had a chance to call you, but I said I would take her place.”

The young woman had never served as an aide before, but there was precious little time to explain what was expected of her. Instead I breathed a prayer and she prayed along; “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful . . .”

The two hour session progressed peacefully and toward the end we gathered around the prayer table. As usual, the children offered spontaneous thanksgiving. A three year old, sporting a bright Band-aid on her upper arm spoke quietly, “Thank you, God, for shots.” “Shots?” A boy turned to her incredulously. “Why would you thank God for shots? They hurt!” “Because…even though they hurt, they keep you from getting very, very sick!” Satisfied, the boy offered his own prayers of gratitude and we sang a closing song.

Alone, we were cleaning up the room when the substitute aide turned to me, tears streaming down her face...

Living and Proclaiming the Joy of the Gospel This department begins with a series focused on the insights of St. Teresa of Avila into the joy and desire to evangelize which comes from communion with God. In this first article, the author shows how St. Teresa was a woman of deep joy, who was responsive to her profound desire for God, which was a divine gift in itself. 2015 is the five-hundredth anniversary of the birth of St. Teresa of Avila.[1] This is a time of thanksgiving for the whole Church because St. Teresa, as a doctor of the Church, is a light for all the baptized. She is often called “mater spiritualium,” mother of interior souls, because her teaching is about the richness of baptismal life. She was so grateful to the Lord for giving such treasures to souls, whenever he finds them open to his love. “The joy is so excessive the soul (…) wants to tell everyone about it.”[2] I chose this sentence from the Interior Castle as the theme for this series because it is typical of Teresa’s personality. She was a joyful person, always ready to praise the Lord. Where did this joy originate? That is what we will investigate in this series. And, there is another point which is particularly inspiring for the period we are living now in the Church: Teresa was eager to share this joy.

In this article, Lisa Marino highlights the centrality of the “gift of self,” not only in God’s divine initiatives throughout salvation history but also within the love between husband and wife. The self-emptying of spouses, in fact, finds its source in God and is a luminous sign for the world of how God gives himself to us in how he loves.

God is the Ultimate Gift-Giver. He is at once both Gift and Giver, in the beginning creating us through a gift of his own life: "...the LORD God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being" (Gn. 2:7). God doesn't merely give us a thing—He gives us a Person, himself, and so this Gift has his qualities: it is enduring, active, alive.

A gift needs a receiver, and God himself prepares us to receive his gift. We were made explicitly for this. We were created by receiving this gift. We are most fully human when we continue to receive God's gift and, being made "in the divine image" (Gn. 1:27), in turn make a gift of ourselves. By recapitulating this gift of self, we live fully as an image of God, giving ourselves just as God gives himself. Indeed, "Man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself" (Gaudium et Spes, no. 24).

In the Garden of Eden the serpent lies to Eve, telling her that God made the rule against eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in order to keep her from becoming "like gods." Eve understands from this that to be like God she would have to grasp the fruit for herself. Denying that God already made her "in his image" and that he was already making a gift of himself to her, Eve considers the fruit and then grasps at God instead of receiving him, losing exactly him whom she is seeking. In the process she also loses herself, ending up less like God than before. She denies herself the quality of "receptivity," believing that if God is not the kind of God to give himself freely to her, then she could not possibly be the kind of person made expressly to receive his love. This is, of course, all a lie, perpetrated by the "father of lies"(Jn. 8:44).

God does not abandon us in this lie, and immediately promises a Savior. As a living down payment on this promise, God contradicts the serpent's lie by continuing to make a gift of himself throughout salvation history. He gives himself in the Law, in the Prophets, and in many ways great and small until He gives himself in the manger and on the cross.

The fullness of God's promise is realized through Jesus in the Paschal Mystery. We receive forgiveness from original sin, poured forth from the side of Christ and into us in Baptism, but still the “temporal consequences of sin remain..." (CCC 1264). Some of the hurt that remains is the difficulty of believing that God is making a gift of himself to us, and that we are actually made from the beginning to receive him. We question whether he listens to our prayers, we look for a thousand comforts to fill our loneliness, still forgetting that "our hearts are restless until they find rest in you, O Lord" (St. Augustine).

We stand in a double and contrary relationship to objects outside ourselves. We stand to the world and all its contents as when God brought the animals to the first man for him to name. Among them all, Adam could find no companion. Between man and the rest of creation there is a barrier of difference, which neither scientific knowledge nor moral depravity can remove or efface. Man is of another make from every other earthly creature. To him they are foreign. His kinship is with God.

Walking,—how many people know how to walk? It is not hurrying along at a kind of run, or shuffling along at a snail’s pace, but a composed and firm forward movement. There is a spring in the tread of a good walker. He lifts, not drags, his heels. He is straight, not stopped-shouldered, and his steps are sure and even.

In this meditation, Guardini wakens us to the fact that as merciful as God is, we still need to acknowledge our sinfulness to receive his mercy. The outward sign of striking the breast during the Confetior loses its significance, when our interior life denies any need for God’s forgiveness.

When the priest begins Holy Mass, while he is standing at the foot of the altar, the faithful, or the servers in their stead, say “I confess to Almighty God…that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault,” each time they confess their guilt and they strike their breasts. What is the significance of this striking the breast?

In this article we want to explore how effective storytelling can assist in the work of catechesis and also examine the roots of storytelling within the Franciscan tradition.

Let us begin with St. Francis. About those who minister the Word of God, St. Francis said: “The preacher must first secretly draw in by prayer what he later pours out in sacred preaching; he must first of all grow warm on the inside or he will speak frozen words on the outside.”[1] Tis is enlightened advice, as well, for catechists, religious education teachers and others who have the opportunity to minister the Word of God. That is, before speaking, teaching or preaching, one needs to set aside adequate time for prayer to draw in deeply God’s inspiration and listen to the Word.

'The Christian family is the first place of education in prayer. Based on the Sacraments of marriage, the family is the 'domestic Church' where God's children learn to pray 'as the Church', and to persevere in prayer. For young children in particular, daily family prayer is the first witness of the Church's living memory as awakened patiently by the Holy Spirit' (CCC 2685).

A few paragraphs further on, at 2688, the Catechism adds: 'The catechesis of children, young people and adults aims at teaching them to meditate on the word of God in personal prayer and internalising it at all times in order to bear fruit in a new life.'

This is perhaps sufficient explanation for starting an article on family catechesis with the section that deals with prayer, rather than with the Creed, the sacraments or morality. The purpose of catechesis, according to the Catechism itself, is to establish Christian meditation and prayer as the foundation for a new life in Christ. A family is where that prayer is normally first learnt.

Of course, through prayer one will come to a deeper understanding of the Creed, the sacraments and Christian morality. But unless the teaching of these things is rooted in 'the life of the new heart' (2697), we are all building on sand, or casting seeds among the rocks and thorns.

Let us start, then, with prayer. The fourth Part of the Catechism, on prayer, contains two Sections, of which the second is a detailed exposition of the Lord's Prayer itself. We will come back to that in a moment. The first Section is called 'Prayer in the Christian Life', and it starts by explaining the nature of prayer as a 'covenant relationship between God and man in Christ' (2564). It then describes the history of this relationship, culminating in the prayer of Jesus (2607-15) and of Mary (2617-19), leading to the formulation of the normative types of prayer in the early Church (2623-43). This tradition is then explored more deeply in Chapter Two of that Section.