Franciscan at Home

On the first full day of school, I found myself energized about the opportunities and enthusiasm that filled our hallways. I had visions of beautiful moments for our community as we were able to be a bit more “normal” after a tough year of COVID and quarantines. That evening, however, just before falling asleep, I received a phone call that one of our junior students had been involved in a fatal car accident. My heart plummeted as the text messages began to blow up my phone. Shock and grief were sweeping through our school families as the news spread and hearts broke.

Simultaneously, though, a beautiful phenomenon began to emerge. Our nearby parishes were inundated with teenagers flocking to adoration chapels. Parents were accompanying their kids as they knelt together in front of the Blessed Sacrament, praying rosaries and chaplets while holding each other up. They were on their knees before the Lord and their hearts were being nurtured by Christ himself. I was comforted to know that in this time of tragedy, a communal muscle memory kicked in, and we lived as a people rooted in Acts 2:42, “They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers.”

I have served on senior leadership teams at a parish, a camp, and a school that have each used the Acts 2:42 template to create dynamic Catholic communities. Community flows out of the core human desire to be known and loved. Blake Mulvaney, our former superintendent, would say each year, “Every student has one question on the first day of school: will my teacher care to know me and love me?” Whether at a parish, camp, or in a school, each staff member is needed to create an Acts 2:42 culture.

“Prayer is first of all a gift from God; in fact, in every one of the baptized, ‘the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words’ (Rom 8:26).” [1]

Our habit as Catholics is to begin our prayers with the Sign of the Cross—itself a gift we’ve received from Christ and the Church. By this ancient sign, we ground our prayer in the Holy Trinity, who was revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

Because prayer is a gift, our work as catechists isn’t so much to teach children their prayers as it is to help them discover for themselves the gift of prayer and how they can receive it more fully.

Sofia Cavalletti, catechist and co-founder of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, cautions that adults ought not “impose our own prayer guidelines on children. We risk leading them on a path that is not theirs. We risk extinguishing the spontaneous expression of their relationship with God and give rise to the idea that when we pray, we say certain fixed things, without necessarily adhering to them within ourselves. We could separate prayer from life in children.”[2]

Ms. Cavalletti identifies a problem I have observed in my interactions with Catholic school children through the years. Having memorized their prayers and attended liturgies without having encountered Jesus Christ as the incarnation of God’s intimate love for them, they often perceive prayer, indeed the entire subject of religion, as boring. In my experience, this contrasts with the openness of the children in our parish religious education programs who come with little or no instruction on prayer. They are more likely to be curious about who Jesus is and how they can know him.

Notes

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to give a catechetical instruction to the seventh- and eighth-grade boys of my parish. Now, I was the Homiletics professor at Sacred Heart Major Seminary and instructor of several other courses offered by the Seminary. My style of teaching leaned more toward following a carefully ordered outline for my presentation, after which I would elicit questions and provide time for discussion.

These eight boys, however, were active and undisciplined, and in no condition to listen to a lecture. Intuitively, I immediately changed my style of teaching to a lively and very animated one. I weaved in some stories and involved them in reading some texts. The change in style helped, but their response to the lesson was still rather tepid. Then something unexpected happened.

I posed a question to them as to how they would try to preach the Gospel to young people in today’s world. As soon as I presented to them a challenge, a specific situation to resolve based upon what they had heard and learned, their interest went way up. I served as a guide and kind of coach for keeping them on track in the discussion. Suddenly, I was hearing creative ideas, strong opinions, and some boys challenging the other boys. The class came alive, and a new mode of teaching the boys emerged.

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In September, 2018, I received a bemusing phone call from Anthony Gordon, the director of Catholic schools in a rural Australian Diocese. He asked me whether I would consider applying for the position of Diocesan Director of Religious Education and Mission. At the time, I was working in my “dream job” as a professor of religious education at the University of Notre Dame in Sydney, Australia. I had just completed the book that, I thought, summed up everything I had learned as a parent, teacher, catechist, and college professor through forty years of professional life, and I was ready to retire. The suggestion that I should change course at that stage of life was preposterous! The diocese in question, Wilcannia-Forbes, was the size of Texas and its eighteen schools, for the most part, could only be reached by long and lonely driving. I thanked the director for his confidence in me and then told him that it was not really what I wanted to do at this point in my life.

Yet, almost from that moment, I could not think of anything else. Was this a call from God? Was I being asked to put what I had learned into practice in this very challenging environment? I pondered it for a couple of weeks, and then decided to visit and pray at the grave of Australia’s (so far) only saint. St. Mary Mackillop had founded an order of religious sisters whose purpose was to bring the Gospel to the people of isolated communities. After this, with complete serenity, I knew what I had to do. With one day to go, I applied for and was appointed to the position.

One of the most stressful moments for baptized Protestants entering into full communion with the Catholic Church is making their first Confession. Unlike Catholics who typically need only to recall sins from a month or so, these baptized adults in RCIA must make a first Confession covering their entire lives—many decades for most. Occasionally, a zealous Protestant arrives in RCIA months before Easter asking the question, “Can I go to Confession now?”

This sets up the question: How early may a baptized candidate go to Confession? Surprisingly, very little is written on this subject. Of course, it may not be too surprising, since very few candidates are begging to go to Confession early. The question is made more difficult, though, because the Church does not specify when a candidate may go to Confession, only that one should.

There have been many moments where, although I’m still relatively young, I have felt generations older than the students that I teach. Moments where I use a # next to a number and they get confused because they think it’s a social media hashtag. Moments where they teach me what words like “simp” and “sus” mean because I have never heard of them. Moments where I have to do a web search for what a VSCO Girl is because they keep saying it and I don’t want to appear naive. It’s all good fun and keeps me on my toes, but there is also a very real call from the Lord in these moments. As a teacher, Christ remains the model for all of my teaching; thus, I must imitate him in his incarnation. 

The Impact of the Incarnation

To say that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14) carries great weight, particularly to an educator. The wonder of the Incarnation should impact every Catholic—the fact that God humbled himself to become like his lowly creation is an act of pure love that should astound us and draw us to love him more—but there is an even deeper calling for those of us working in the vineyard. We must imitate the example of inculturation that Jesus shows through the Incarnation. In this way, we are able to meet our students where they are, just as God met humanity by assuming our human nature and being born into the world in the same manner that every other human does. A mystery as infinitely great as God is not so easily comprehended by the human mind. By assuming our human nature, Jesus walks among us, like us in every way except sin, so that we cannot say that we have a great high priest who does not sympathize with our humanity (c.f. Heb 4:15). 

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We recently had our fifth child baptized, and I was remembering our baptism class shortly before our first child was born. It was doctrinally accurate and fully explained the signs and symbols of the Rite of Baptism. I was a young DRE at the time, and it was the same sort of class that I offered as part of my ministry. But if I’m honest, it was woefully inadequate to prepare us to raise our children to know Jesus and his Church.

A few years ago, I was listening to a webinar given by Dr. Joseph White on early childhood catechesis, and he said something that has haunted me ever since. He said the Church routinely fails families when they need us the most: after the birth of their first child. Think about that for a moment. When a family has their first child, they typically research child development, search for the best practices in raising this little person, and restructure their lives and social circles around their baby. At this critical moment in the life of a young family, what do most parishes do? We require a ninety-minute class focused almost exclusively on a fifteen-minute ceremony before we fade out of their lives for five to ten years. Then we suddenly resurface with hoops to jump through in order for the child to receive first Communion. There is something deeply flawed in this approach.

"The Church is alive in Iraz, and Christ is alive in Iraq."

Pope Francis, March 7, 2021 Erbil, Iraz

On my fiftieth birthday, I received as a gift a detailed map of the world. The map holds pins of places traveled on behalf of Franciscan University of Steubenville and the names of cohort members in the Master of Catholic Leadership graduate program, of which I am the director. Each name on the map is significant as is the story of how they have come to their leadership role.

In March of 2021, I had the privilege of adding my own pin to this map. Along with Fr. David Pivonka, TOR, and Dr. Daniel Kempton, Vice President for Academic Affairs, I traveled to Erbil, Iraq at the invitation of Archbishop Bashar Warda. Our trip coincided with Pope Francis’s historic visit to Iraq.