Archive for February, 2007
A junior high catechist writes that he does the following exchange with his students:
If you meet someone at an airport or wherever and said you were Roman Catholic, and they asked what you believe, what would you say? Suppose they were Muslim, Buddhist, or another Christian denomination.
I tell them the answer can be found in something we say at EVERY MASS!!!
Our Profession of Faith.
We then review it word for word, slowly. We discover it is the fabric of our Faith and with that said Faith is the gift from God to believe!
I challenge them to not just chime the words……we believe…da…da….da. and instead say it OUTLOUD and confirm our belief as Roman Catholics!
To that, I say, “Amen!”
So how do we respond to a student who asks, “I heard that they found the tomb of Jesus and his family…could that be true?”
I believe there is only one way to answer: “No…it’s impossible because Jesus is Risen! You and I both have enountered him and he’s very much alive!”
Our faith is grounded in the Resurrection of Jesus, not just as an historical event, but as a present reality…we encounter the Risen Christ today and everyday! Let’s not get bogged down in trying to respond to the claims of this obvious grab for money. Let’s not spend time trying to become mini-archaeologists, mini-historians, and mini-Bible scholars (although becoming mini-Bible scholars is not a bad idea for catechists!), trying to debunk the claims being made by getting into trivial debates. (For an informed debunking of the claims, see Ben Witherington’s blog) The answer is simple and you and I know it: Jesus is Risen. End of argument!
On a totally unrelated subject, I just wanted to share this very nice e-mail with you from a catechist named Betty in New York:
I have been teaching Religious Ed in my parish for about 23 years now. I teach 2nd grade…communion preparation and I love it! I have been doing this grade for about 8 years now. Before that I taught 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. It is a great deal of work, and sometimes I think about “retiring” but I think I would miss it!
I will definitely be visiting your site again…I think I will be able to get some good tips and information from it…so thank you for doing this! I think I’ll also pass it on to our DRE so that other catechists in our parish can benefit. We have a large parish in Mahopac, New York with many kids in our program. I’m just a little fish in a really big pond! I only have 8 children in my class, but having such a small class allows me to do more fun things with them. At our last class, we “traveled” to Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem and Galilee. I made each of the children a “passport” and I glued in information about Jesus (His birth, early life, His ministry, and then His death and resurrection)…then the children glued in pictures I had gotten off the internet to go with each story. I brought in costumes I borrowed so that they could all dress in robes and my husband made an arch out of wood so that as we went from “city to city” we walked through the arch. It was fun and I think it brings Jesus “to life” for the kids.
Thanks again for your ministry. Continued good luck with your work.
Betty
This is a true scenario about people I know personally.
Child A: Her parents were not practicing Catholics (both were baptized Catholic but did not attend Church). Her father was an alcoholic and was abusive toward her mother. She attended public school (both grammar school and high school) and was not enrolled in any form of religious education throughout her childhood. There was no prayer at home and no effort to teach any form of faith. She received no sacraments until the age of 12.
Child B: His parents were both practicing Catholics and they faithfully attended Sunday Mass as a family. He went to Catholic grade school for 4 years and then public school and religious education classes until 8th grade, followed by Catholic high school. The family ate meals together and prayed together daily. They participated in service projects as a family on occasion. He was baptized as an infant, received Penance and Eucharist in 2nd grade, and Confirmation in 8th grade. The family relationship remains healthy and loving to this day.
Take one guess as to which child, now an adult, is practicing the Catholic faith (attends Mass regularly, prays daily, is involved in service to others in and through the parish community). If you guessed Child A, you are right! How did this happen? God alone knows. Does it prove anything? No more than the smoker who lives until the age of 95 proves that there’s nothing wrong with smoking! However, it does prove that the power of the Holy Spirit is beyond our understanding and WAY beyond our control!
I share this scenario with catechists who grow frustrated at the lack of parental involvement in religious education and feel that their own efforts as catechists are futile when nothing is being reinforced in the home. Of course we need to explore more effective models of faith formation that call parents to their rightful role and responsibility as the primary catechists of their children. At the same time, however, we catechists must never doubt the impact that our presence has and can have on the lives of those we teach as long as we are authentic and faithful models of discipleship. We may very well be the only authentic Christian model for a “Child A” in our class!
Catechists typically practice what they preach and, this time of the year, we are preaching Lent to our students. That leads me to ask, WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS LENT? What is your spiritual plan for growth? How are you practicing the Lenten disciplines? Let’s take the next couple of days to just share our thoughts, insights, and experiences around this question.
Sometimes being a catechist is not easy. OK, it’s NEVER easy being a catechist! When I get overwhelmed by the challenges we face, I like to remind myself that Jesus faced some pretty difficult “classroom situations” himself:
- Matthew 13:57 (Jesus is rejected in his home town)
- Luke 4;28 (Jesus is thrown out of the synagogue and dragged to a cliff)
- Mark 11:27 (the crowds challenge Jesus’ authority)
- Luke 9:51 (a Samaritan town refuses to receive Jesus)
- Luke 19:6 (the crowds grumble when Jesus announces he will dine with Zacchaeus)
- John 6:66 (many of Jesus’ followers find his teaching too difficult and leave him)
- John 8:59 (crowds pick up stones to throw at Jesus)
- John 9:41 (the crowds challenge Jesus’ healing of a man born blind
- John 10:31 (more stones!)
Of course, St. Paul faced some rather challenging “students” of his own:
- Acts 14:19 (they stoned him and dragged him out of the city)
- Acts 17:32 (they mocked him)
Suffice to say, we are in good company when we face challenges preaching the Good News. Let’s take heart in Paul’s words: As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry. (2Tim 4:5)
Sin begins in our thoughts. It’s no accident that, at Mass during the Penitential Rite, we ask forgiveness beginning with admission of those sins we’ve committed ”in my thoughts” and then we add, “and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.” Repentance involves thinking.
That’s the primary reason that we practice fasting during Lent - not because food is bad but because eating involves thinking and we need to pay attention to our thoughts. We think about being hungry and how to satisfy that hunger. Fasting helps us to pay attention to our thinking at a very superficial level so that we can apply that same discipline to other levels of thinking that lead to sin. It’s brilliant psychology: start at a level that we can exert some control over and then apply that control to deeper levels of thought.
All this to say that we should encourage our students to fast during Lent while helping them connect that action to their thinking and how we need to “change our mind” during Lent so that our choices bring us closer to Jesus.
Consider inviting your class to choose a time to fast in solidarity with one another in the coming week. In other words, agree upon giving up a meal on a specific day at a specific time, knowing that you will all attempt to do so together. Encourage them to do something during that time that helps them to move closer to Jesus (pray, do good works, serve others). Then, the following week, you can talk about the experience and how the discipline of fasting gives us discipline over our thoughts which leads to discipline in our actions.
“These forty days of Lent, O Lord, to you we fast and pray…” We all know that Lent has 40 days but it may cause us to wonder about the significance of the number 40. Did you know that the number 40 appears in the Bible nearly 200 times?!!! What’s up with that?
In the Bible, the number 40 is symbolic and represents a significant period of time during which an individual’s faith is tested. So, what is Lent? It is a significant period of time during which OUR faith is tested. Another word for test is examination or assessment. During Lent, we assess where we are at in terms of our commitment to the Lord.
A good way to help our students begin Lent is to help them assess themselves. In the Catholic Tradition, we call this an examination of conscience. By doing an examination of conscience, we can identify the areas of our life where we need to grow and then develop an action plan for Lent so that our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving has a clear focus.
Back to the number 40. Whenever we see the number 40 in the Bible we are being alerted to symbolic significance. The Catholic Church does not adhere to a literal translation of the Bible but recognizes that the truth of the Bible is expressed in many forms, including figurative language. If not, it would be an incredible coincidence that everything during biblical times took either 40 days and nights or 40 years!
A fun exercise with kids is to invite them to brainstorm examples of figurative language that they are familiar with (e.g. it’s raining cats and dogs). In this way they come to see that something may be true but not necessarily fact (an important concept to help them understand that Catholics believe the Bible is without error when it comes to TRUTH, but not in terms of facts).
Of course, you can send your students on a Scripture search to locate and describe uses of the number 40 in Scripture. Here are just a few: Genesis 7, 8 (Noah); Exodus 24:18 (Moses on the mountaintop); Deuteronomy 8:2 (Israel in the desert); 2Samuel 5 (David’s reign); 1Kings 19:8 (Elijah); 2Chronicles 9:30 (Solomon’s reign); Jonah 3:4 (Jonah); Matthew 4:2/Mark 1:13/Luke 4:2 (Jesus in the desert); Acts 1:3 (The Risen Christ’s appearances)
This Sunday’s Gospel about love of enemies ranks #1 in what I refer to as the “Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding” category. Now, I know that Jesus is not kidding, but I believe that the typical initial human reaction to Luke 6:27 is just that: utter dismay.
I once asked a group of students, after reading this passage, if they “buy it.” They looked at me like I had 3 heads, primarily because no one had ever asked them this question. After a few moments of silence and hesitation, one student boldly said, “No…that would never work, especially not in my neighborhood. If I turned the other cheek, I’d be dead.” Aha! Now, we had something to talk about! We then ventured into a very fruitful conversation about what Jesus is calling us to do and how it can be done realistically.
I think we need to do some reality checks like this once and awhile to see if our students really “buy” what Jesus is proposing or if they are just going along with the program. To “buy” into the Gospel is to truly make it your own and to integrate it into everyday life. Jesus was not kidding about loving enemies, turning the other cheek, and praying for those who persecute us. For a good explanation of how we can truly live these, see Pope Benedict XVI’s Feb. 18 address to the folks in St. Peter’s Square.
Enemies do not have to be out to kill us. We make enemies out of others all the time by thinking of them as rivals and adversaries. To love them is to change the way we view other people in general and, doing so, to participate in a love that “changes the world without making noise.”
Personally, I feel that if we cannot properly teach this part of the Gospel, we will ultimately fail in forming disciples of Christ. Any suggestions about how to teach the concept of love of enemies/turning the other cheek?
Today is my (deceased) Dad’s 86th birthday. I’m going to Mass with my Mom and then out to eat to celebrate Dad’s life. I think of him often and have many dreams about him (he passed away nearly 10 years ago). I find great comfort in the Catholic understanding of the Communion of Saints and I feel my Dad’s presence in my life in an ongoing way.
I think that the Communion of Saints is a wonderful teaching to pass on to our students. We should ask them about loved ones who have passed away and, when leading prayer, mention that we will include them in our prayers, knowing that they are with us, that they can help us, and that we can help them.
Years ago as a student teacher, I completed my first class and was quite proud. My cooperating teacher agreed that it went well but he said that I “talk too much.” His advice was, “You had the spotlight on yourself when it should be on the students. They are the ones who are here to perform, not you.”
I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as catechists by putting ourselves in the spotlight all of the time. We make ourselves the “sage on the stage.” We need to continually shift the spotlight on to our students, requiring that they take responsibility for their learning. Here’s one idea that helps. It’s called the Paired Interview.
If you have a rather large chunk of text to cover in your textbook, divide the class into 2 groups and have group 1 read (independently) a part of the text and group 2 read (independently) the other part of the text. Put a time limit on the reading of the text (always give less time then is really needed to create a sense of urgency).
Then, pair up students, one from each group, and have them take turns interviewing one another about what they read. Have the interviews ask questions such as:
- Explain what the main idea of your text was in a few sentences
- What is one quote (sentence) from your text that you would put on a poster to inspire a group?
- What are some specific things your text helped you to learn or realize about the Catholic faith?
- Based on your text, name some specific things we, as Catholics, need to know, do, or believe in order to live as followers of Jesus
These questions can be written on the board or you can create an interview sheet. You can also adjust the questions to fit your grade level. Again, set a time limit for each interview: 3-5 minutes for each interview (6 to 10 minutes total). Each student should record the answers to the interview questions that their partner provides. As all this is going on, walk about, keeping students on task and announcing how much time they have.
When they are finished interviewing, call on some students to report on what their partner learned from the text they read. Take notes on the board about important concepts they touch on. Then, fill in the cracks, so to speak, about anything they missed and elaborate on key concepts.
The result is that the material is covered but the spotlight is on the students who do most of the work allowing you to facilitate. In the academic world, this is referred to as cooperative learning and by the intermediate grades, kids are accustomed to such activities in their school classes. Of all classes to have students cooperating in their learning, it would seem most appropriate for RE!
