Franciscan at Home

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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.

When John Everett Millais’ Christ in the House of His Parents was first displayed at the Royal Academy, the public response was near-universal revulsion.

Beneath the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth is the place where tradition tells us the Angel appeared to the Blessed Virgin Mary. An altar stands in this grotto, inscribed with these words: “verbum caro hic factum est” (the Word became flesh here).

How do you bring someone to faith in Jesus Christ? As Christians, this is a question we should have a ready-made answer for.

In its “practical directions” for reading the Catechism the authors have placed a brief instruction:

This catechism is conceived as an organic presentation of the Catholic faith in its entirety. It should be seen therefore as a unified whole. Numerous cross-references in the margin of the text (numbers found at the end of a sentence referring to other paragraphs that deal with the same theme), as well as the analytical index at the end of the volume, allow the reader to view each theme in its relationship with the entirety of the faith.[1]

What is the meaning of such a direction? What would such a practice look like? How should it be undertaken and what is its value?

Even in these days of unprecedented access to information, some are surprised to find that there are more than a few catechisms in Church history. In fact, Catholics are heirs to such a wealth of these texts that they defy precise enumeration, having been penned and promulgated throughout the last millennium by bishops and councils all around the world. Amid the renewal of catechetical methods called for in the 2020 Directory for Catechesis, scores of these priceless guidebooks of faith from the past are being remastered and republished for a contemporary audience, offering students, catechists, and religious seekers alike a unique glimpse into the abiding continuity of Catholic doctrine throughout time and space.

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.  

There is a growing trend within the Church, rightly so, toward mentorship or coaching of our leaders. The idea is that great programs are not effective without great people leading those programs. Associated with this focus on mentorship is a theory some people call “spiritual multiplication”, which attempts to go one step further in mentoring leaders to multiply themselves into others who would be able to do the same. Spiritual multiplication is considered a theory because it depends on the precarious “if”: if one disciple multiplies into two others. 

To actualize the extraordinary potential of spiritual multiplication, we must go beyond the theory and begin living out of the principles that make multiplication possible.