Franciscan at Home

How can catechesis awaken desire for God? This question is especially relevant at a time where the practice of the Catholic Faith in the Western world tends to depend less on cultural and family values and more on personal adherence. How can catechesis foster this personal adherence through awakening desire for God?

Although there are few references to desire for God and its importance in catechesis in the documents of the Magisterium, they are all unanimous in pointing to desire for God as an essential element of human life whose finality, at once personal and universal, is found in God. The most important statement is at the very beginning of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

‘The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.’1

This desire for God is therefore inseparable from the ‘“desire for true happiness’2 and resounds when man is faced with making moral choices. This desire for happiness finds an earthly fulfilment when the Beatitudes are taken as a rule of life.3 Moreover, it is this desire for happiness, this desire for the coming of the kingdom of God, which prompts our prayer and petition to God,4 and it is out of desire to see ‘the Face of the Lord’ that we enter into prayer and into the liturgy.5

A source of great hope to the very young can be fairy tales. For this reason they should really be part of the essential reading for pre-school children and beginning readers. For any who need convincing of their value in offering solid moral formation and encouraging the necessary values and help essential for enabling children to find ‘reasons for living and hoping’ I would recommend an excellent book by Bruno Bettleheim: The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales.[i] What I write here owes much to the wisdom contained in that book.

Fairytales offer hope first because they are realistic about evil

Because of this they enable children to face the things that can destroy hope. Despite popular identification of the term ‘Fairy tale’ with make believe and the avoidance of reality, the very opposite is true - fairy tales are full of ogres, giants, witches, wicked stepmothers, indifferent fathers, spiteful brothers and jealous sisters. They are filled with death, grief, danger and struggle. The pages teem with characters who are prone to all the basic human vices and weaknesses - fear, cruelty, hard-heartedness, greed, stupidity, disobedience, anger, thoughtlessness, cruelty, cunning and deception - all of these are found in the basic repertoire of stories. Fairy tales, then, do not shield a child from all that he knows about the world and about himself - including the basic facts of ugliness, evil, sin and death.

The awe and wonder of Emmanuel, God with us, with which we identify so well at Christmas time in Primary schools with Nativity plays, carols and lumpy throats at the sight of Reception class transformed into angels, is at times quite lost when we are in the presence of Emmanuel today. Our Lord told us ‚‘I am with you always’, and the way which he chose to be present among us is in the Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament of the altar which is reserved even when the Mass is over so that he can be with us still.

The Sacrifice of the Mass and the Real Presence in the Eucharist are an extension of the Incarnation, so how is it that our receptivity for the sacred which leads us to kneel at the Christmas crib can so easily evaporate once that feast is over, hindering our passing on to our children the sense of adoration and wonder in the presence of Christ in our Churches?

How do we convey to children a sense of the Real Presence?

‘On the Spot’ aims to highlight some of the complex positions, questions and comments experienced by Catechists, teachers and parents. It tries to outline the knowledge necessary to be faithful to Church teaching and which will best help those we teach who call us to account for the hope that is in us. [cf I Peter 3:15] This time we consider the ways in which Advent and Christmas have been diminished in popular thought, both Christian and secular, and suggest that prayer is the true means through which to integrate delight and altruism.

“It’s all about the children really, isn’t it?” Overheard at many a bus stop, this remark, soothing and universal in appeal, establishes a comfortable and unchallenging approach to the seasons of Advent and Christmas. Christmas, obviously, is all about children, their pleasure in the gifts they are given, our own pleasure in giving the gifts, the holiday season with its parties and rest from school, visits to family, friends and places of entertainment, to say nothing of endless sessions in front of various electronic screens.

And if there are no children? Perhaps there never were any in the family, or they have grown and gone. Some will organise the equivalent of childish enjoyment for themselves, with extra food and drink, visiting, parties and pleasure. Others will take refuge in altruism, helping at the parish Christmas lunch for the homeless, or the local soup kitchen or hospital.

On the Spot’ aims to highlight some of the complex positions, questions and comments experienced by Catechists, teachers and parents. It tries to outline the knowledge necessary to be faithful to Church teaching and which will best help those we teach who call us to account for the hope that is in us. [cf I Peter 3:15] This time we look at how we can most effectively use questioning to draw those we teach and catechise closer to the person of Jesus.

The children in the youngest class of the local Catholic school had been learning about the time Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem when he was twelve years old, and how Mary and Joseph searched for him with great anxiety until they found him in the Temple. The main focus during this session was on the question, ‘How do you think Jesus felt when he was lost in the Temple?’ The five year olds huddled closer to each other, one or two of them still sucking their fingers and twiddling their hair for comfort. They knew how they would have felt, lost and alone in a big town with their mothers nowhere to be seen.

This, and similar questions posed by some catechetical materials, may spring from the best of intentions. There can be a tendency to assume that children and young people - and also those new to the faith - will be anxious about, or unable to grasp doctrine. For this reason, it is sometimes proposed that all catechesis must begin the person's 'experience', with ‘where the person is.’ This can lead to a very subjective, emotionally-based perception of the faith, and does not clearly reflect the pedagogy of God who came down to where we are in the person of his Son Jesus and made a gradual revelation to us through him.

Since its beginnings in 1954, the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd has used the Montessori method of education to incarnate the themes at the heart of Christianity in materials that children can use to nurture their relationship with God.

Montessori’s approach was used both in the development of the materials and their use. Dr. Sofia Cavalletti, a Hebrew scholar, and Gianna Gobbi, a student of Dr. Montessori, were partners in this development. They would create a material for the children, but before pronouncing it finished the material was introduced to the children and their response was observed.

Each material is meant to be used independently by the child after its introduction. This independence creates a space for meditation – a meeting between the child and God – that is not dependent on the adult. Cavalletti and Gobbi watched for repeated use of the material by the children, a sense of satisfaction and joy as they worked, and comments or artwork that indicated the theological content of the material was accessible to the children. When these three conditions were met, the material became a permanent part of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. Two key themes of their work are Gift and Sign.

Montessori’s name is associated with a teaching methodology for children that is particularly attuned to their needs and capacities.  We might wish to take this thought as a springboard for how God provides for us as his children, with the provision of a catechetical environment enabling us to receive all that we need for our growth as his free sons and daughters.

In this article Sr Hyacinthe examines the ways in which Notre Dame de Vie’s catechesis provides for an encounter with God to take place.

All catechesis can be thought of as a response to the fundamental human desire for God.

‘The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God’[i]. God is the origin and finality of the human person. Catechesis should never be thought of as something imposed arbitrarily and somehow artificially on children and young people just because Christianity happens to be the religion in which they are brought up. Catechesis is rather there to answer a need which corresponds to a thirst, present in all human beings created for God.

The first part of this article explored this desire for God and introduced the catechetical work of Notre Dame de Vie, a French programme and approach which I believe engages in a profound way with this desire.

In this second part of the article I would like to examine how Notre Dame de Vie’s catechesis provides for this encounter with God to take place and recount some catechists’ experience in using the programme Viens, suis-moi, tracing its impact in the sacramental, moral and prayer life of the children, in these ecclesial expressions of the life of grace.

Intercessory prayer is important in catechesis because it is a prayer of charity in communion with Christ. The Israelites prayed in petition to experience the presence of God. “My being thirsts for God, the living God. When can I go and see the face of God.”[i] This prayer of the Israelites is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who is the “one intercessor to the Father on behalf of all”[ii]. The early Christian community lived this bond of charity in the breaking of the bread, fellowship and prayer[iii] . The saints, in communion with Christ, also pray and intercede for us since this love and concern for all in the body of Christ does not cease after death. The holy men and women who are the “great cloud of witnesses”[iv] are “more closely united to Christ and do not cease to intercede with the Father for us”[v].

This prayer of petition leads us to pray as Jesus did.[vi] Jesus Christ is our mediator; therefore, we can intercede for others and ask others to pray and intercede for us. This is why it is so important to include intercessory prayer when we catechize. Intercessory prayer points to our Eucharistic celebration in the Prayers of the Faithful and in the Eucharistic Prayer “In communion with those whose memory we venerate, especially the glorious ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ, and blessed Joseph, her Spouse, your blessed Apostles and Martyrs…and all your Saints: we ask that through their merits and prayers, in all things we may be defended by your protecting help.”[vii]

In our catechetical sessions we introduce intercession by encouraging children’s vocalized prayers. Children willingly express their prayers to God. We can teach children that when we pray for others, this is an act of charity.

“Mummy, what is that?” This is a question we often hear in the street or supermarket as we go about in our religious habit. The child is pointing at us and the mother doesn’t know what to answer. This family may come from a Catholic background, or the child may attend a Catholic school (1 in 10 in the UK). Yet children in the Western world are now generally far removed from any superficial layer of Christian culture that may have been handed down in previous generations.

Hence we face a challenge in children catechesis: can children be prepared for the Sacraments in Catholic schools and parishes when neither themselves nor their family have been evangelised? Are their dignity and freedom respected? How can catechesis integrate first proclamation?

A model of integration of first proclamation and catechesis is found in Come, follow me, a catechetical programme for children aged 7 to 11, specifically designed by members of Notre Dame de Vie Institute in France for the types of ecclesial situations we are facing.