Franciscan at Home

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.

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).

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We recently had our fifth child baptized, and I was remembering our baptism class shortly before our first child was born. It was doctrinally accurate and fully explained the signs and symbols of the Rite of Baptism. I was a young DRE at the time, and it was the same sort of class that I offered as part of my ministry. But if I’m honest, it was woefully inadequate to prepare us to raise our children to know Jesus and his Church.

A few years ago, I was listening to a webinar given by Dr. Joseph White on early childhood catechesis, and he said something that has haunted me ever since. He said the Church routinely fails families when they need us the most: after the birth of their first child. Think about that for a moment. When a family has their first child, they typically research child development, search for the best practices in raising this little person, and restructure their lives and social circles around their baby. At this critical moment in the life of a young family, what do most parishes do? We require a ninety-minute class focused almost exclusively on a fifteen-minute ceremony before we fade out of their lives for five to ten years. Then we suddenly resurface with hoops to jump through in order for the child to receive first Communion. There is something deeply flawed in this approach.

Hay un tema fundamental que corre a lo largo de la Sagrada Escritura: ser llamado por su nombre. Dicho de otra manera, en los ojos de Dios, tú y yo no somos simplemente uno del montón, ni tampoco somos un número seriado.

La iglesia doméstica ocupa un domicilio: un departamento, una mansión, una cabaña, una granja, un pent-house, cualquier tipo de vivienda a la que llamamos hogar. Todo el mundo, desde el psicólogo junguiano casi agnóstico, Jordan Peterson, al “influencer” que se ha vuelto viral, el almirante de la marina William McRaven, y hasta tu propia mamá aboga a favor de ordenar el espacio donde uno habita como el primer paso hacia una vida exitosamente ordenada, tanto al nivel práctico como a nivel simbólico. Para aquellas personas que tengan una visión sacramental de la realidad, también diríamos que es a nivel físico y espiritual.

Comprendemos correctamente a la Iglesia a cada nivel - desde Triunfante hasta doméstica - como una comunión sagrada de almas, encarnadas corporalmente en la Tierra y destinadas para la gloria de la resurrección. Hasta el tiempo en cuando cesarán aquellos sacramentos sobre los que depende nuestra identidad católica y la creación está hecha perfecta, ¿cómo deberían los componentes sacramentales de la iglesia doméstica moldear a nuestra vida cotidiana? Nuestro Señor ha instituido los sacramentos y la Iglesia ha introducido varios sacramentales; por lo tanto, la iglesia doméstica debería justamente ver a sus rutinas regulares a la luz de la gracia. Sacramentales formales, oficiales y sacramentales comunes comprendidos más ampliamente[1] nos pueden orientar más profundamente hacia la vida sacramental litúrgica y la aplicación mejorada de sus frutos dentro de nuestra familia.

Bautismo

Cuando bendigo el agua nueva y oro por las personas que la utilizarán, pienso a veces que debería refrescar la fuente más seguido. Los efectos de iniciación primaria del Bautismo seguirán con nosotros para siempre a partir de nuestro encuentro con esa dichosa agua, simbólica de nuestra inmersión en los mares abiertos de este mundo para un viaje hacia el siguiente, incluso a través de las aguas de la muerte.[2]  Los católicos contemplamos nuestra naturaleza material y espiritual y nuestra misión al irnos de la casa por las mañanas o irnos a la cama por la noche, haciendo uso del sacramental de agua bendita en nuestra iglesia doméstica, así como lo hacemos en nuestra iglesia parroquial. (¡Una hermosa fuente para colgar en la pared es un finísimo regalo para ofrecer a personas que se mudan a una casa nueva!) Otros sacramentales relacionados con el Rito del Bautismo incluyen objetos como veladoras benditas y hasta nuestra ropa. El expresar nuestra dignidad humana divinamente designada por medio del buen vestir recatado desde temprana edad, gracias al ejemplo de nuestros padres de familia y hermanos mayores, puede no solamente ahorrarnos más adelante unas batallas entre papás y adolescentes, sino que también formar una verdadera espiritualidad de nuestro carácter y llamado bautismales prepaándonos para el culto, el trabajo, el descanso y la recreación del día, todo en la medida correcta según el plan de Dios. “Los que han sido bautizados en Cristo, de Cristo se han revestido. Aleluya, aleluya.” [3]

Fortitude is a virtue that is admired by even the non-religious. Even people who think temperance is for the overly pious, consider meekness a weakness, and scoff at humility believe that fortitude is a laudable attribute. For thousands of years, cultures have honored the courageous, recognizing the hero that finds the balanced mean between fear and impetuousness. As C. S. Lewis notes in The Screwtape Letters, people are “proud of most vices, but not of cowardice.”

The Catechism tells us, “Fortitude is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. It strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in the moral life” (CCC 1808). Living a virtuous life requires courage. This is something we need to teach more frequently. The call to fortitude is not just in tales about knights or the stories of the martyrs, but in the life of every believer. The daily life of a Christian is not for the faint of heart.

For many years, catechesis shied away from presenting the Sacrament of Confirmation in “militaristic” terms. Avoiding language about battle and warfare, students were no longer taught about being “soldiers for Christ.” Some explain this language was omitted to avoid the sacrament being interpreted as a coming of age ritual or sign of maturity. If that was the case, the attempt has failed. Survey the average confirmation class and you will find most students, if not the catechist as well, has a misunderstanding of the sacrament along these lines.

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In Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, we are taught that “all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity” (40). If wit and brevity are more your speed, perhaps Mother Angelica said it better: “if you’re breathing and you’ve got two legs, you’re called to holiness.”[1] This is an important thing for every catechist to remember, especially on days when students seem extra bitter, extra ornery, and extra closed-minded. God still loves each of them profoundly and intimately, and he wants to be in relationship with them.

One of the best ways to steer students in the right direction is to bring them to the Sacrament of Confession. After all, the whole power of this sacrament “consists in restoring us to God’s grace and joining us with him in an intimate friendship” (CCC 1468). However, those of us who are parents and teachers—especially of teenagers—know that this sacrament is not as frequently sought out as it ought to be. How can we change that? Here are three brief but hopefully effective strategies to integrating sacramental confession into the life of your high school.

The matrimony of two of the baptized…is in real, essential and intrinsic relationship with the mystery of the union of Christ with the church…it participates in its nature…marriage is deeply seated and rooted therefore in the Eucharistic mystery.[1]

This spiritual vision of marriage, as articulated by Cardinal Caffara, may appear as novel or even bizarre or “cultist” to many younger members of western culture. The defining characteristic for marriage today is that it has no defining characteristic. It is open and runny and borderless. We decide what marriage is, and hence it has devolved from a sacrament to a “private love.” This “love’s” very meaning is malleable, and its connection to procreation and permanence and the divine is severed. Yet for the Catholic Church, marriage is still the primordial mystery, one which reveals God’s love for humanity. This revelation has been consistent from the beginning of the Bible all the way through to the Bridegroom, Christ, giving himself completely upon the cross for the Bride, the Church (Is 62:5; Hos 2:18-20; Jer 3:20; Ez 15:8-15; Mt 22:1-14; 9:14; 22:1-2; 25:1; Eph 5:32). Marriage reveals that God’s own love is free, faithful, forever covenanted, and always life giving. Deep within the suffering of giving and receiving one another in married love God himself is becoming known to the couple. One cannot live such free self-giving in a permanent life-giving way without glimpsing God even in traces, by those, too, who believe marriage is permanent but not a sacrament. For God’s very nature is love, and all true love seeks to freely self-donate in a permanent life-giving way.

Marriage: An Ongoing Encounter with Christ
For the committed Catholic couple, marriage’s true nature has been revealed specifically in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. And it is into this mystery of Jesus’ own spousal love that all Catholic couples are taken when they consent in Christ to love one another until the end. There is no private meaning to spousal love for Catholic couples as their love transcends themselves from its very beginning. As a sacrament, marriage is an ongoing encounter with the power of Christ’s own life and love. Each couple abides with Christ and is empowered to love through the Holy Spirit. With such a Spirit the couple loves each other with Christ’s own love (CCC 1661).

The cultural and political understanding of marriage as private love is far from this dynamic and sacred understanding of marriage as loving with Christ’s own love. Ending a more superficial and self-defining notion of marriage will only occur through one powerful reality: the witness of Catholic couples who drink deeply of the mystical vision of marriage. By “mystical” I don’t mean a marriage filled with disembodied voices, levitations, or meditative trances. Mystical marriages are grounded in the mysteries of Christ, and these mysteries are communicated most normally and powerfully at the Eucharistic Liturgy. In other words, to live a mystical marriage, which invites the culture to consider a more profound and transcendent understanding of marital love, a couple needs to receive their own marital life from the Eucharist. To have the Eucharist fuel a couple’s love for one another is to be “mystical.”