Franciscan at Home

If you find yourself in a fight, your extremities get cold. Your adrenaline kicks in and blood rushes to your core to pump your heart, support your lungs, and power your muscles so they can keep you alive. Moments of crisis are signals to get back to the heart of things. This isn’t only true of your body but of any institution. If a business is about to fail, it desperately needs to rush back to its “why”: Why do we exist? What are our core values? Are we being true to those values?

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Born into a Catholic family and baptized when I was sixteen days old, I grew up accepting the Church, receiving from her, but not understanding much about her identity.

Most people within the Catholic Church, as well as those who would consider themselves religiously unaffiliated, have some name and image recognition of St. Francis of Assisi. For many, the dominant image is the ubiquitous St. Francis birdbath nestled in the greenery or the flower garden. Others may think of Francis of Assisi’s particular love for the poor and the lepers of his day. For others, when they think of St. Francis, their consideration is drawn to the stigmata he received that resembled the wounds of the poor, crucified Christ.

These images all have a true connection to the man of Assisi, but there is one that often goes largely ignored: St. Francis of Assisi, the catechetical saint. The small yet substantive corpus of writings of Francis of Assisi reflect a powerful catechesis of the theology and spirituality of Catholic Christianity. Francis’ writings, mostly composed of prayers, letters, and Rules of Life for his followers, form a simple yet profound catechesis rooted in Scripture and expressive of the culture of Christendom in which Francis lived. In his writings, we are invited to meet a man who is described in an antiphon of the Liturgy of the Hours as a “thoroughly Catholic and apostolic man.” Francis was deeply rooted in the orthodox teaching of Catholic Christianity and committed to sharing this truth, which burned like a fire in his heart.

We continue this series from the last issue of the Catechetical Review here in the "From the Shepherds" department because of its reflections on the writings of the bishops of the universal Church.

The five decades between the Second Vatican Council and the publication of the third general catechetical directory in 2020 have been an extraordinarily important period in the history of modern catechetics.  During this time the Church’s catechetical ministry has been afforded unprecedented support in documents of the universal Church as well as those of the bishops of the United States. This series of articles is an exploration of those documents.  Prior to the Council, however, six pivotal international catechetical study weeks were convened that previewed some of the major concerns raised in the deliberations of the Council fathers.  In the first article of this series, the basic themes of the first three international catechetical study weeks held between 1959 and 1964 were explored. In this article, we will examine the issues engaged by the last three international catechetical study weeks held between 1964 and 1968.

A frequently asked question from the young women I teach is, “Don’t you feel like it’s unfair that women can’t be priests?” As a woman working in the Church and teaching the faith, I think they expect me to feel cheated, as if my rights are being disrespected. While I have taken the time to consider the question and its implications, I would never change my answer: “Not at all!” The role I have is an absolute privilege and different roles do not mean unequal or unfair—they just mean different.

My job as a Catholic middle school religion teacher is a great privilege. Every day, I get to share the Gospel with my students. My classroom is a place where people are invited to know and love the Lord, where the Scriptures are spoken, where our story of salvation is told year after year. I have a fundamental task in the lives of my students. COVID or not, I am an “essential worker” in the vineyard of the Lord because what I teach must be shared. It affects the salvation of souls.

The human heart loves mysteries. By mystery, I mean hidden knowledge that requires a sleuth to uncover the truth. We love the idea of discovering lost secrets that upend our entire understanding of our world. Think of space aliens and the secret Area 51 in New Mexico. Think of movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark where the “true purpose” of the Ark of the Covenant is revealed or National Treasure, which divulges the “real” mission behind the Knights Templar and features the discovery of an ancient, buried treasure. There are even “mysteries” about the Catholic Church found in books like The Da Vinci Code, which “promised” to tell readers the machinations of the Vatican’s puppet masters, Opus Dei, and their effort to keep hidden forbidden knowledge that would expose the “true,” scandalous origins of Christianity!

Conspiracy theories make for interesting novels and entertaining movies, but, to the dismay of many, they are nothing more than conjecture designed to lead people away from the much more mundane truth of reality. Most of the time, what is obvious and clear is the truth: we haven’t found aliens, the Ark is not the ultimate weapon, and who the Church is and what she believes has been public since its founding by Christ and does not require a detective to find it. This aspect of the Church is what we call “catholic.”

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.