Franciscan at Home

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.

At the edge of a wood stands a larkspur, its deep green leaves characteristically rounded, and with delicately bending, yet firmly formed, slender, stem.  The blossom seems as if cut out of heavy silk, of a blue as deep as a gem, so that the whole air around seems filled with it.  Someone comes and plucks the flower, and then, getting tired of it, throws it on the fire.  In a few moments the whole bright splendour has become a small streak of grey ash.

Perhaps the greatest gift the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes to us is its presentation of what we can describe as a ‘dogmatic spirituality’. 

It is easy to think of dogma and spirituality, not only as irrelevant to each other, but somehow opposed. Dogma can be seen as hard, precise, unyielding. Spirituality, on the other hand, is often viewed as warm, welcoming, indefinable, mysterious.

In the Lord’s Prayer we address God as ‘Father’. Catechesis on God the Father is central to our transmission of the faith. Catechists are often asked about the analogy between earthly fathers and our heavenly Father – is God our Father like an earthly father? Less often do catechists think of the priest, this other earthly ‘father’ that Catholics have, and ask: Can the priest, whom we also call ‘father’, help us appreciate and understand God’s fatherhood more fully? Yet I believe this is a valuable key.

Many say that the father of a family is a ‘real’ father and the fatherhood of the priest is only ‘something similar’. It is also common to think that the word ‘father’ really applies to the father of a family and only by analogy do we apply the term to God, that God is also ‘something similar’.

The view is frequently heard, too, that married Catholic priests are, at last, able to be fathers in the true sense of the word and that rather than this be an exception, it should be an open possibility for all priests of the Catholic Church. Celibacy is understood here in negative terms as renunciation of ‘real fatherhood’.

I, however, would argue that not only the fatherhood of the Catholic priest but celibate fatherhood is the fullest form of fatherhood possible for man because this is closest to the Fatherhood of God. Let me explain.

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 1 Peter 3:15).

In this issue, we look at the misconceptions, both literal and spiritual, which children sometimes hold concerning the Our Father, and consider some of the levels of meaning we can explore with them.

‘Our Father who are in Heaven, hello be my name, my king done come, my will be done...’ And that's before we even start on trespasses, temptation and deliver us from evil.

It takes a good deal of patient work with young children, as teachers and parents will testify, to simply instil the correct wording of the prayer into their heads, especially when the majority of the class or group are experiencing it for the first time.

This liturgical meditation is take from Guardini's book, Sacred Signs.

We long for union with God, and we must so long, for it is our inmost need. Our soul points out two ways of obtaining this: they are different ways, but both reach the same goal.

The first way to union goes by knowledge and love.

Knowledge is a union: by knowing things we penetrate them and draw them into ourselves; they become our own, a part of our life. So also all love is union – not a mere striving, but in itself a union. So far as a man loves something, so far doe it already belong to him.

This union is, however, of a special kind: we express this by saying that it is ‘spiritual.’

Yet this word does not fully say all, for the other union, of which we shall speak later, is also spiritual. What we mean is that this union is one not of being, but of motion; of consciousness and frame of mind.

Is there any outward form for this – a likeness? Certainly, and a very wonderful one – light and heat.

Why is it that we invoke God as ‘Our’ Father? What does the word ‘Our’ entail? When we say those two words, ‘Our Father’, there are two relationships we are denoting. Before he became Pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger summed up both relationships when he wrote, ‘The fatherhood of God gives Christian brotherhood its firm foundation.’[i] The first relationship is that we are brothers and sisters. This is expressed in the word ‘Our’. The second, expressed in ‘Father’, is that we are sons and daughters. In Baptism, we enter into this life of the Blessed Trinity. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, ‘There is only one God, and he is recognized as Father by those who, through faith in his only Son, are reborn of him by water and spirit.’[ii] By the power of the Holy Spirit and through Baptism, we are reborn as brother and sisters to Jesus and sons and daughters to the Father.

The Lord’s Prayer can be very helpfully used as a prayerful focus for catechising in morality. One of the advantages of this is that those we teach will gain the vital perspective that how we live and act flows from our prayer and is an expression of it. One on the gravest errors of our time is the dichotomy between faith professed and the practice of lives.[ii] It will help all of us to remember, as well, that the commandments begin with God and our relationship with him.

When teaching morality, it is important to present our final ‘end’, or goal, very clearly. Then we need to present how to reach that goal, cooperating with God’s grace. Finally, we explain and discuss how to behave towards others in the light of these convictions. The structure of the Our Father lends itself very well to this approach. Our true fulfilment is to draw close to God, whom we call Abba, Father. The ‘how’ is reflected in the central part of the prayer; and the prayer closes with an appeal for help in relationships with others and in remaining faithful to the life he has in mind for us.

We cry out to our Father in heaven revering his name; life in its fullest sense consists in a loving relationship with him. We are created in his image and he has placed in us a desire for him.[iii] So in teaching morality the focus is to be on the Father, his kingdom,[iv] and our eternal destiny. When we adopt this perspective, challenges in daily life can be seen to help lead us to the very place where we learn to be our true selves, the heart of the Father.

Jesus’ disciples requested, “Lord, teach us to pray…” (Lk. 11:1). Those who asked understood, even before St. Paul wrote, that “we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Rom. 8:26). The response, commonly known as the Our Father, is the “fundamental Christian prayer” (CCC 2759). It contains every element of a perfect prayer. Yet, in its beauty and simplicity, one essential aspect of the Our Father’s foundation is often overlooked: the virtue of humility.

Holy Mother Church announces that “humility is the foundation of prayer” (CCC 2559). If humility is the virtue on which all prayer is founded, it is reasonable to conclude that humility is the very root and foundation of the Our Father. If people are able to make this connection, they will be able to identify the presence of humility in every line of the prayer; and they will also gain a fuller understanding of this seminal virtue.

Humility is present in the first exclamation, “Our Father,” which is an admission that “no one knows the Father except the son…” (Mt. 11:27; cf. CCC 2779). Further, humility is present in the recognition that the Father is “in Heaven,” which means that He is “majestic” and His dwelling “transcends everything we can conceive” (CCC 2794). The seven petitions that follow are imbued with humility because that virtue is at the heart of these first two statements.