Franciscan at Home

On September 27, 2013, Pope Francis gathered catechists from around the world for the International Congress on Catechesis in Rome. For many of these catechists, this was a stirring encounter with the Holy Father. While this department will regularly feature insights of our chief shepherds, in this inaugural issue we begin with those of the chief shepherd. May the following excerpts from the Holy Father’s important address to catechists[1] challenge us to faithfully live out our vocation.

Marriage: God's plan of love to live, not an injustice to remedy

For Christians, marriage is a sacrament: a sacrament which enriches spouses and their families and contributes to the greater good of the whole community. In recent years the very idea of marriage has become a subject of contention and controversy in our society. Voices have been raised to say that marriage does not belong to any religious group. We would, of course, be the first to agree: for marriage belongs to humanity.

Bishop Monforton reflects on the theme for Catechetical Sunday in the US: Teaching about God’s Forgiveness.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

As a preacher and teacher of the faith, there is none better than the late Pope John Paul II. His spoken and written words on the entire spectrum of Catholic doctrine fill many volumes. John Paul was seen and heard by more people throughout the world than St. Paul and all twelve apostles together. He spoke in language that ranged from the sophisticated cadence of encyclical letters to the folksy language of general audiences. In his four volumes on The Creed he offers the following thoughts for the benefit of all who teach Christian doctrine.

On January 16, 2013 Archbishop Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, wrote the following reflection on Fides per Doctrinam, Faith through Teaching, issued motu proprio. This English translation was made available through the Vatican’s Year of Faith website.

Pope Francis incenses the altar at Mass in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican on Catechists’ Day. Catechists from all over the world convened in Rome for their pilgrimage on the occasion of the Year of the Faith and the International Conference on Catechesis. Here for our readers is the Vatican’s English translation of the Holy Father’s homily.

1. “Woe to the complacent in Zion, to those who feel secure … lying upon beds of ivory!” (Am 6:1,4). They eat, they drink, they sing, they play and they care nothing about other people’s troubles.

‘At the heart of catechesis, we find in essence, a Person, the Person of Jesus Christ. The definitive aim of catechesis is to introduce people to an intimate friendship with Jesus Christ. Only He can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Trinity.’ In Catechesi Tradendae, Blessed Pope John Paul II stresses the centrality of Christ and establishes the essential link between evangelization and catechesis. There is no separation or opposition between catechesis and evangelization. They integrate and complement each other. Catechesis must often concern itself not only with nourishing and teaching the faith, but also with arousing it unceasingly, with the help of grace, with opening the heart, with converting and with preparing total adherence to Jesus Christ.

As the twentieth anniversary of the Catechism approaches on October 11, 2012, our goal as catechists is to help the whole community of faith to come to at least a basic standard of knowledge of Christ and of the teachings of the Church in such a way that the people of God are guided in living in these perilous and confusing days. The only answer to the confusion of our times is a thorough knowledge of the Truth and cooperation with the grace of God to live that knowledge to the full in preparation for the kingdom of heaven. What is being called for here is for all of us to see our relationship to Jesus Christ as the most central one of our lives, and that we recognize that ‘conversion of mind and heart’ to become more like Him every day is the true meaning and purpose of our lives.

An Enchiridion of texts for the New Evangelisation has been prepared by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization. Here we present the introduction to this invaluable collection by Archbishop Rino Fisichella (Vatican City, 29th June 2012).

When, on the 9th June 1979, at the sanctuary of Mogila in Nowa Huta, Blessed John Paul II used the expression “new evangelization” for the first time, he may not have foreseen the great movement that would be set in motion. Before the Cross that signified the first blossoming of Christianity in those lands, his heart whispered these words to him. He said that from that Cross that “on the threshold of a new millennium”, in “new times” and in “new conditions of life”, a “new evangelization” must begin. In the twenty-seven years of his pontificate that intuition progressed slowly but inexorably. With this perspective, under the same prophetic impetus, Benedict XVI instituted the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization on September 21st, 2010. At the beginning of his Apostolic Letter, Ubicumque et semper, he wrote: “… the Church … ever since she received the gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:14), has never tired of making known to the whole world the beauty of the Gospel as she preaches Jesus Christ, true God and true man, the same “yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8), who, by his death and Resurrection, brought us salvation and fulfilled the promise made of old. Hence the mission of evangelization, a continuation of the work desired by the Lord Jesus, is necessary for the Church: it cannot be overlooked; it is an expression of her very nature … Making my own the concerns of my venerable Predecessors, I consider it opportune to offer appropriate responses so that the entire Church, allowing herself to be regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit, may present herself to the contemporary world with a missionary impulse in order to promote the new evangelization.” Changed cultural, social and ecclesial conditions always demand a new way of preaching the Gospel so that those touched by the Word of God are enabled to change their lives and begin the journey of faith following in the footsteps of those who have become disciples of the Lord.

Blessed John Henry Newman was a man with a vision for the battles of our times. He fought with courage, and he calls us to take up the fight today, confident in our ultimate victory.

The Saints and Blessed ones have, throughout England’s history, spoken a word of encouragement and hope to successive generations. Like those “witnesses in a great cloud on every side of us,”[i] of which the Letter to the Hebrews speaks, the witnesses of the saints from every corner of this land and beyond have urged us towards that victory which faith assures. From those first missionaries to the English people sent by Pope St. Gregory the Great to awaken the hope of holiness in our land down to our present age, throngs a great communion of saints. Amid a “new evangelization” fourteen centuries later, we look to these holy witnesses to our faith for example and prayers as we face the spiritual struggles of today.