Franciscan at Home

The seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel captures an intimate conversation between Jesus and God the Father. Jesus and his disciples will soon cross the Kidron Valley and enter into the Garden of Gethsemane. He will be arrested and enter into his Passion. “The hour has come” (Jn 17:1).

Earlier in John’s Gospel, when Mary approaches Jesus at the wedding at Cana, Jesus responds by saying, “My hour has not yet come” (Jn 2:4). Later, when Jesus heals on the Sabbath, the people seek to arrest him, but “no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come” (Jn 7:30). But now, the hour has come, and Jesus turns to the Father in prayer.

What does Jesus say to the Father at this crucial moment? He prays that we all may be one. “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.... The glory which you have given to me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17:11; 22–23).

Christ’s prayer is a prayer for the Church—it is a prayer for you and me—so that we may all be regathered into one Mystical Body of Christ, founded on the apostles, sharing by Word and sacrament in that one love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

“About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they’re just one thing, and we shouldn’t complicate the matter.”[i] These are the striking words of St. Joan of Arc, boldly spoken as she stood trial. “They’re just one thing” because Jesus himself described his relationship to the nascent Church as the relationship of vines united to a single branch (cf. Jn 15:1–5). In other words, while distinctions are not difficult to find between Christ and the Christians who make up the Church, at root (forgive my pun), they are one living thing.

We live in a time of heightened divisiveness and loneliness. Online social connections are, as we all know, meager substitutes for real connection and friendship. Perhaps you share with me the conviction that the Church is the needed antidote. The Church is—and at the same time is meant to become—a remarkable communion. The sacraments bring us into communion with the Blessed Trinity, and being in this communion means that we are also intimately united with everyone who is in this remarkable relationship with God: the angels, the saints, all those in Purgatory, and every baptized person on the planet. If Baptism makes us adopted sons and daughters of the Father, then it also makes us truly brother and sister to one another. This extraordinary truth arises out of what the sacraments accomplish.

Note

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Editor’s Introduction: The last one hundred years have seen significant developments in how the Church has understood the nature of her catechetical mission. There has been both a movement toward the past and a movement toward the future: a desire to recover the dynamism seen in the teaching of Christ and the catechesis of the early Church as well as an eagerness to help catechists meet new challenges by thoughtfully engaging contemporary insights. Three catechetical directories have been written, as well as summaries from numerous Study Weeks and official documents, through which we can trace a compelling description of how the catechetical mission might be best carried out. Monsignor John Pollard, a man who has served as a prominent catechetical thinker and leader as many of these developments have taken place, presents this helpful series detailing the trajectory of how the Church has articulated her catechetical mission to make disciples. We hope you enjoy this series.

Even before Pope John XXIII convoked the Second Vatican Council, the Church was wrestling with the challenge of remaining relevant in a rapidly secularizing world. This sense was felt among Church leaders, theologians, catechists, and the lay faithful in general. Within the fields of catechetics and liturgy, a renewal and reform movement began to surface that saw value in bringing catechetical and liturgical leaders from different parts of the world together to share their experiences of proclaiming the Gospel and celebrating the rites of the Church within the cultures of their respective countries.

In the history of the modern catechetical movement, the series of six International Catechetical Study Weeks that were held in Nijmegen, Holland (1959); Eichstätt, Germany (1960); Bangkok, Thailand (1962); Katigondo Seminary, Uganda (1964); Manila, Philippines (1967); and Medellin, Columbia (1968) appear now, over fifty years later, to have been significant directional moments in the renewal and reform of catechetics. When taken together, the resolutions, conclusions, and summaries of these six International Catechetical Study Weeks constitute an important element of the framework within which catechetics has evolved before, during, and after the Second Vatican Council. Especially in the days before Vatican II, there seemed to be heightened worldwide interest in global concerns, diversity within the Church, and the Church’s coexistence in the world with both other Christian and non-Christian religious traditions. The International Catechetical Study Weeks directly involved the participants with these concerns precisely because they were international in scope and missionary in focus.

A powerful narrative exists within the popular culture that the advancements of modern science pose an existential threat to religious belief. This narrative, popularized by many influential authors, argues that scientific discovery is gradually upending the stranglehold Christian “superstitions” have held over the popular imagination. Nowhere is this apparent conflict more evident than in the field of evolutionary biology. For example, Christians maintain that we are made in the image and likeness of the Creator, yet many advocates of evolutionary theory claim humans are a meaningless twig on the evolutionary tree of life.

This view holds such force that Pope Benedict XVI felt compelled to state in his inaugural Pontifical homily that “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”[i]

[i] Benedict XVI, “Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI” (April 24, 2005).

There have been some very good books written in the past few years centered on helping parishes to become mission-focused.

Some people approve of “baby-worship;” others don’t. I’m one of the worshippers. Baptizing babies—the younger the better—is one of the greatest joys of my priesthood. I love to see and hear babies at Mass. They preach a far better sermon than I could ever do. By raising their voices in praise of God, they tell us that a mother has had a baby, and that her faith is so fundamental to her life that she wants to bring the child to Mass with her. Thank God for mothers and fathers and babies! On Christmas Day Our Lady and St. Joseph, the angels, and the shepherds all worship a baby, the baby. Of course, they worship him! This baby, this child born for us, this Son given to us, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, is God the Son, eternally begotten of the Father in the Godhead, and on Christmas day is born in time and human nature of the Ever-Virgin Mary. Of course, we must worship him!

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).