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A cascade of trees flowed down the hillside towards the water, a body of water that was bigger than a pond but not quite a lake, on the lands belonging to the Holy Ghost Fathers in southern Connecticut.

It’s strange to say it, but I love how we Catholics celebrate funerals. Even atheists walk away from our Masses of Christian Burial in awe. If only they (and likewise our own faithful people) could appreciate with greater fullness the rich spiritual heritage that surrounds Christian death!

There is an uncomfortable reality of spiritual multiplication with which we catechists, ministers, and missionaries must wrestle. That reality is this: spiritual multiplication produces results, but not always in the way we imagine.

Once on a hot summer day in France, I hiked a winding path with some companions all the way to the very source of a small stream. Having grown hot and tired from our hike, our local guides instructed us to rest a few moments and refresh ourselves at the spring. I hesitated as I watched the others drink confidently, even eagerly. The closest I had ever come to drinking untreated water was in sipping from the garden hose!  

Their beckoning won me over, however, and I joined them. We drank the cold flowing water made all the more delicious by our thirst and the natural stone spicket. It occurred to me then that God intended water to be like that—pure, refreshing, a free gift of his goodness.  

In the Gospel of John, Jesus promises that “living water” will well up in those who believe. The scene of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4:1–42 is one those passages. This scene is particularly valuable for those who evangelize and catechize because it offers us a model of an authentic encounter with Jesus Christ and reveals to us the effects of that living water he promises. 

In fact, we could almost name “the holy Samaritan”—as St. Teresa of Ávila calls her—our patron saint. We want to drink of the water Christ offers and teach others how to do the same, just as she did that day in Samaria.  

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At the Last Supper, Jesus celebrated his farewell meal with his disciples, the celebration of his approaching death and resurrection. It was the culmination of the entire saving mission of the Lord, as well as the assurance of the power of that very same event being ever present in time and space.

The bread, the Lord tells us, represented his body given for us, the wine his blood poured out for us. In celebrating this sacred meal with his disciples, Christ was giving to them, and to all mankind, what he had already offered to his heavenly Father, namely, his own self as a redeeming victim. All of this was accomplished through sacred signs, which continually made present this saving sacrifice so that all humankind could forever unite and share in it. Consequently, after the Ascension, when the glorified, risen Christ took his rightful place at the right hand of the Father, he did not leave us orphans but continued to act and to dispense grace through the Eucharist and the other six sacraments he had instituted during his earthly ministry. These would be sources of living grace that would flow into the hearts of all those who through faith would participate in them.

All of this is accomplished through humanly perceptible signs and symbols that not only signify grace but effect it through the power of the Holy Spirit. Initially, this saving event of Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection took place in time and in history, once and for all, while simultaneously and in reality, transcending all time through the action of the Holy Spirit, the great catalyst who is always active in the liturgical life of the Church. “Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations." (Second Vatican Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (December 4, 1963), no. 7) Having come to us from the Father, Jesus now leads us back to the Father.

On June 25, 2020, the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, headed by its president, His Excellency Archbishop Rino Fisichella, presented for the Universal Church a new Directory for Catechesis.

Have you ever wondered why Jesus’ disciples found it so difficult to grasp his true identity, even after living so closely with him and directly witnessing his great works?

He had a name inscribed that no one knows except himself. (Revelation 19:12)

There is a lingering experience of anxiety which I believe is a particularly Christian one. It concerns the problem of vocation. Joseph Ratzinger, in one of his Advent homilies, preached:

The movement of becoming a Christian, which begins at baptism and which we have to pursue through the rest of our lives, means being ready to engage in a particular service that God requires from us in history. We cannot of course always think through in detail why this service has to be done by me, now, in this way. That would contradict the mystery of history, which is woven together from the inscrutability of man’s freedom and God’s freedom.[1]

The first point about the “Christian anxiety” is that vocations are mysteries. No one knows or will know God better than he knows himself, and no one knows me better than he does, either. Vocations flow from the dynamics of what is ultimately a mysterious relationship. To further frustrate the problem, the heart of the vocation is the relationship itself. Therefore, if we want to execute the work of the call as best as possible, the focus is not to be on “the call” at all but on the One who is doing the calling.

One of the steps we can take to alleviate the anxiety surrounding vocation is to begin dialoguing on the level of the personal vocation and, in so doing, reframe our current vocational categories.

The “umbrella” vocation under which all other vocations (even state-in-life vocations) subsist is a personal vocation. Some will argue that the primary vocation is the “universal call to holiness.”[2] The Christian, however, is not called to a vague form of general holiness but to a specific form of personal holiness. There is a difference between intellectually assenting to God’s love, friendship, and call and the experience of God Himself saying “I love you” (insert your name here) and I call you my friend (see Jn 15:15) and then engaging actively in service to that friendship.[3]

The other problematic framework is understanding one’s state in life as the “primary vocation.” While it is true that callings to priesthood, consecrated life, marriage, or some form of permanent celibacy become the primary form a personal vocation takes, it is still unhelpful to refer to a person’s state in life as their primary vocational call.