Franciscan at Home

“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.

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). 

On March 9, 2015, protests erupted among students of the University of Cape Town, South Africa under the slogan #RhodesMustFall. They demanded that the statue of British colonial-era politician and diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes be removed from a prominent place on their campus. The protest was given further impetus internationally by movements such as Black Lives Matter as well as reactions to widespread accusations of institutional racism. In addition to inspiring demands for other statues to be torn down or relocated—from Edward Colson in Bristol, England, to Hannah Duston in New Hampshire—the broader demands of the protest gave birth to an academic movement known as “Decolonizing the Curriculum.”

This term itself is contested and therefore difficult to define. For its supporters, Decolonizing the Curriculum (DtC) entails the balancing and broadening of the academic curriculum in schools and universities from an exclusively Western-centered canon of ideas and texts to include the philosophy, worldviews, and history of other cultures. For its skeptics, it is another front in a seemingly endless culture war, which may threaten to undermine the foundations of Western Christian civilization itself. As one of the most discussed issues in education today, it is timely for us who work in Catholic schools and universities to consider the issue in the light of our faith, despite the risk of controversy. In seeking a balanced way forward, reflection on the wonder of the Incarnation may provide a way out the impasse.

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"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.

In the 1997 General Directory for Catechesis, “Missionary Initiation” is listed as a sixth and unique task of catechesis. The 2020 Directory for Catechesis folds this task into the fifth task of catechesis, “Introduction to Community Life,” with the logic that an integral part of being formed in Christian community is learning to contribute to the growth of the community through our baptismal vocation as missionary disciples.[1] The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls mission work “a requirement of the Church’s catholicity,” meaning that because the Church is for all humanity, we must be a welcoming people, taking Christ’s message to others.[2] In fact, the Second Vatican Council called the Church “the universal sacrament of salvation.”[3] We are the visible sign to the world that Christ welcomes all to life in him. Taking Christ to the world is not only a collective responsibility, but also an individual one. In his encyclical letter Redemptoris Missio, Pope St. John Paul II calls missionary activity “a matter for all Christians.”[4] This includes, of course, the youngest Christians in our community, the children and teens we form in parish and school catechetical programs.

Notes