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No matter what our ministry, we are all catechists, she pointed out, because the church exists to evangelize and catechesis is part of that. “The Directory calls us to attend to the ‘symphony of faith,’” she said, “which is what the catechism calls our body of beliefs.” She added, “Catechesis helps us to know the music, to move to the music in our lives and to share the music of faith.” We must keep learning our faith, she said, lest the “symphony of faith” becomes irrelevant.
We are all stand-ins for Jesus as teacher until he comes again, she observed, noting that for the Archdiocese of San Antonio, Archbishop José H. Gomez is the “chief catechist,” and careful attention should be paid to his pastoral letter, which speaks of the need to grow in knowledge and love each day.
The first section of the NDC is about planting the seed of the Gospel, she said, which calls for examining the vitality of the place where you personally plant the seed. Challenges to this come from the present social and cultural conditions, including consumerism and the stress on instant gratification.
One of the things highlighted by the bishops in the NDC, Eipers pointed out, is that the Catholic faith is Trinitarian and centered on Jesus. The bishops also note a gap that must be bridged between people’s faith and their everyday life.
The second part of the NDC was described as being about how all catechesis falls within the context of evangelization. “The call of evangelization is to transform people’s lives and hearts so that they transform the world into the reign of God,” she said. She pointed out that “whether you are teaching the preschoolers or the catechumens, you are forming evangelizers.”
The knowledge of faith is not an end in itself, she noted. “The love of Our Lord must always be made accessible so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and you have no other object than to arrive at love.”
She related the NDC outlines six tasks of catechesis. These include: to promote knowledge of the faith, to promote a knowledge of the meaning of liturgy and of the sacraments, to promote moral formation, to teach how to pray, to prepare people to live in community and participate in the life and mission of the church, and to prepare them to be evangelizers, bringing the good news wherever they may be. This last task involves inculturation, meaning looking first for God’s presence in whatever culture we are dealing with and then growing and affirming these signs.
The NDC also includes the various criteria and methodologies for teaching the faith, she said, noting the importance of liturgy and the sacramental life to catechesis and the directive to use the catechumenate as a model for all catechesis. The use of art, architecture and music as dimensions to help people appreciate God’s presence are also included, as well sacramentals and devotions. Eipers added that we must be sure we are “dancing” to the authentic Gospel message “because others are watching us and learning how to move from what you and I do.”
Reminding those present that they are never alone in the community of the church, she asked them to do three things in light of taking the NDC to heart: to choose one focus in the “symphony of faith” to learn more deeply, to take one step in the “dance” to better serve as a model for those they instruct, and to pray for all catechists and those being catechized.
Noting “ours is not a dance of perfection,” she concluded by saying that the “symphony” is always stronger than our weaknesses. “It’s all about Jesus and he is the Lord of the dance,” she said. “And through you the dance goes on.”
Sister Judith Gomila, MSC, used a palette of the primary colors and dancing to the beat of some soul-uplifting music to present, “Taking the Art of Being A Catholic Educator to Heart.” Sister Judy is associate director and mission educator for the Propagation of the Faith Office in the Archdiocese of New Orleans and has taught students ranging in age from elementary school to the seminary.
Noting that it is “our privilege to be evangelizers in the formation ministries,” she related that prior to Vatican II, Catholics shied away from even the word evangelization. “But now,” she said, “we understand we are called to be those through proclamation and witness who bring Christ’s presence, whether it’s at a youth group bowling activity, teaching a math class, or building houses for the poor in Haiti.”
She then proposed examining the primary colors (red, blue and yellow) “as a way of looking at the art of what it means to be about evangelizing.” Red, the color of the heart, was described as standing for spirituality and our call to live our faith fully and sharing it with others. Included in this is baptism, she noted.
Having served for a time with the missions in Alaska, Sister Judy related the Tlingit tale of the old chief who described his lack of personal peace to his young grandson as being like two wolves fighting within him. One wolf was mean, jealous and resentful. The other was kind, forgiving and compassionate. When the grandson asked which wolf would win, the old chief thought and then said, “The wolf that I feed, that’s the wolf that is going to win.”
Sister Judy went on to note that in our personal struggle with good and evil, it is important to feed ourselves spiritually through the Eucharist. In addition to being a eucharistic people, she said, being a person of prayer falls under the color red. This prayer can take many forms and she suggested, as a reminder to pray, taking a simple item you always have with you, such as a watch (to remind us to ask the Lord to let our time be his time) or keys (reminding us to open the door of our heart to God).
She referred to the color blue as highlighting strategies for developing our professional competence by sharing our faith with others and emphasized the power of our personal witness. “I’d like to hold up our ability to be those who know how to love, those who know how to forgive and those who know how to encourage,” she said.
A pinball machine was described as the perfect image of Jesus’ love and how we are called to love, in that we are able to interact with the people we come in contact with, much as we interact with the ball in a pinball machine and change its direction.
Another image she called to mind for forgiveness was that of a buffet. “The God of our lives offers us a clean plate every day,” she said. “So you messed up today. God says, ‘Here, take a clean plate!’” Forgiveness is the key, she related, both forgiving ourselves and accepting forgiveness from God and offering forgiveness to one another.
Also under the color blue is offering encouragement, she noted. “We know how to give and receive encouragement in the family of God,” she said. “We know how to dip into that color blue.”
Sister Judy described yellow as coloring strategies that promote community and solidarity, noting that being catholic with a small “c” means we are called to be universal. “We can’t let our love of the faith stop off the property of the school or the parish where we work,” she said, adding that our directive extends globally as well.
She told of a mission trip to Haiti where she dined at the home of a poor family and noticed one of the children did not join them at the table. When she later asked the child about this, the little girl replied, “It’s not my day to eat.”
Despite both parents working, they did not earn enough to live on, so the parents went without food two days a week, while the children were each assigned a day on which they did not eat.
“It’s a consciousness-raiser to us of what it means to be people of charity and people of justice,” said Sister Judy, noting, the color yellow stands for the importance of community, which includes a sense of solidarity that reaches around the world.
She concluded with a song and a cheer. The song referred to Jesus as “the Master Painter,” with the Holy Spirit as the Master’s brush, to be dipped in the colors portraying God the Father’s love, “that the Master’s painting might be born of us. That the canvas of our life might know the Master’s touch.”
Dr. Timothy Matovina, an associate professor of theology and director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, spoke on “Taking Faith and Culture to Heart.”
He began by defining culture as a way of life of a people, “a deep down perspective that people share,” and faith as a commitment to the way of Jesus Christ as we learn it and live in the community of the church. Sometimes the two can complement and enrich each other, he noted. At other times, it is a challenge to distinguish what is the role of faith in culture.
He pointed out the church, from its beginning, has sought to affirm the good in the cultures being evangelized, seeking out those elements of the culture which are conducive to the Gospel and already imbued with the spirit of God. “In other words,” he said, “before we’re there announcing the good news, the Holy Spirit’s already at work in the hearts and minds of all humanity and in the cultures that they create.”
Matovina used as an early example of this the meeting of Peter with the pagan Cornelius. The first converts to Christianity had been Jewish, and there was some debate about whether gentiles would need to become Jews before becoming Christians. When the Holy Spirit descended upon Cornelius and the gentiles with him and they began speaking in tongues and glorifying God, Peter gave orders to baptize them. “What can stop these people, who are receiving the Holy Spirit, even as we have, from being baptized with water?” he said.
Other examples given included Pope Gregory the Great’s message to Mellitus on the early church in England, in which he instructed that pagan temples not be torn down, but dedicated instead as Christian churches and that Christian solemnities be substituted in place of pagan rituals.
A noteworthy example was that of the Italian Jesuit, Matteo Ricci, who evangelized China in the 15th century. Ricci first studied the Chinese language and Confucianism, becoming so knowledgeable that the Chinese named him a mandarin. Due to this, he was able to win converts by showing the Chinese how Jesus’ Gospel actually fulfilled Confucian philosophy.
Many ethnicities brought their unique cultural religious practices to America, Matovina said, noting the Irish wakes, Italian processions and festivals, and the German crèches and Easter tombs of the risen Christ. Latinos brought posadas and Guadalupan devotions, while African-Americans had drums and dancing. The church’s affirmation of these has helped bring faith and culture into greater harmony and enriched the church.
At other times, Matovina noted, the culture, “through the spirit of God’s working” has influenced the church to work for good, as it did in helping to end slavery and in promoting the labor movement in the United States, both of which originated within the culture. Whatever in culture is inconsistent with the Gospel, he said, the church has sought to purify, such as condemnation of human sacrifice.
Our contemporary culture is in need of purification, Matovina said, pointing out our culture’s acceptance of abortion and capital punishment and the need to seek justice for workers and immigrants.
Materialism and consumerism are rampant, as is relativism, which Pope Benedict XVI has condemned, with its belief that whatever one believes is alright and there is no ultimate truth, the “culture of disbelief.”
Another thing in our culture that can be very anti-Gospel, said Matovina, “is the kind of nationalist belief that God is on our side.” Sometimes called “American Exceptionalism,” this belief holds, he said, that we are “not just a good nation or even a great nation, but God’s chosen nation.”
This can deter us, as Christians, from asking what in our country is not in keeping with the Gospel. “Our faith, what our pope, what our bishops, what our church, what our faith teaches us,” he said, “always supersedes even our dedication to the nation.”
Another point given concerning faith and culture is the church’s belief in unity and diversity. “We are one faith, but many cultures,” said Matovina. “We are one church, one baptism, one Jesus Christ, but we embrace all the languages and cultures of the world.” This view was summarized by St. Augustine: “In things essential, unity. In things accidental, diversity. In all things, charity.”
In modern times, this means allowing all the diverse groups in a parish or school to have their own leaders or voice. “We all have our own ways of being Catholic,” said Matovina, “and, provided that we’re following the core way of being Catholic, diversity of spiritualities, of cultures, that diversity can be very positive. It can enrich us.”
He concluded by saying that, while we carry the message that Jesus can fill the hungers of the world, our biggest challenge is making people aware of this hunger. “And I know the answer to that hunger,” he said. “Jesus Christ.”
See Dec. 22 issue of the paper for coverage of the conference’s second day. |