Archive for the 'Praying with Others' Category
At the Catechetical Ministries Awards Banquet last evening (sponsored by the Archdiocese of Chicago, Office for Catechesis and Youth Ministry), Cardinal George gave the crowd some inside scoop on the Pope’s visit to the U.S. He told us that before the Pope departed, the bishops asked him some questions, one of which was, what his advice was about teaching young people in a culture of secularization. The Pope responded, “Teach them to pray!”
I thought this was a wonderful answer and I appreciated the Cardinal sharing this thought with us catechists. He urged us, in all that we do, to be sure that we teach the young people to pray so that they can enter into a deeper communion with the Lord Jesus.
Amen to that.
Last night, the 8th graders did the Living Stations of the Cross and they did a beautiful job. They showed a reverence that was very refreshing. 4 of my students had prominent roles: narrator, Simon of Cyrene, Veronica, and one of the women of Jerusalem. I was very proud of them and of all the 8th graders, including the rest of my group that behaved well as part of the assembly. Kudos to our DRE, Arlene, for a job well-done!
Oprah Winfrey is hosting a 10-week course (online, free of charge) titled A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, based on the book of the same name by Eckhart Tolle. Over 700,000 people enrolled for the class with over 500,000 attempting to participate live on Monday, March 3 for the first session. Some had trouble viewing because of the overload.
Tolle describes himself as a contemporary spiritual teacher who is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition. A New Earth is Tolle’s follow-up to the 2,000,000 copy bestselling inspirational book, The Power of Now which encouraged readers to discover the freedom and joy of a life lived “in the now.” In A New Earth, Tolle attempts to show how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world. Oprah says this online course/Webcast is the most exciting thing she has ever done.
I viewed the first session (it is available on Oprah’s website) and have the following thoughts to share:
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I give Oprah credit for attempting to do such a positive thing, especially when TV and other media offer us so much negativity, violence, and drivel.
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Clearly there is a hunger for spirituality as evidenced by the incredible numbers of people participating in this course. The key for us as Catholics and especially as catechists is to help others recognize that Catholicism is a spiritual path. Too often, the Catholic faith is perceived as simply a set of dogmas and doctrines. And yet, Catholicism has such a rich and deep treasury of spirituality. Apparently people are not finding spirituality in the Catholic Church and so they are searching elsewhere.
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Tolle appears to be a meek and humble individual who sincerely desires to help people.
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At the heart of Tolle’s message is the invitation to find a stillness within. He invokes
Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God.”
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Most of what Tolle teaches can be found within the Catholic Tradition and with much greater depth than he offers.
The Cloud of Unknowing does a much better job of teaching the type contemplation that Tolle is proposing.
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In general, Tolle does not talk about God but about “consciousness.” Oprah calls this consciousness, God. The invitation to be still is to get in touch with the greater consciousness (feel free to call it divinity) that dwells within us.
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It would seem that the underlying message in what Tolle and Oprah are teaching is that we should come to identify ourselves with the divine. This is not too different from the “you are God” message of
The Secret that Oprah was proclaiming last year.
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I find Tolle’s message to be very vapid (flavorless) – the goal is to be more in touch with “life” and with “a greater consciousness” – these concepts are very amorphous and impersonal. Spirituality is concerned with reaching beyond ourselves – transcending. The question is, what or who are you reaching out to? Catholic Tradition teaches us that we are reaching out to a personal God and entering into a relationship, not just tapping into some amorphous consciousness or force.
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Within the Catholic Tradition, the concept of
contemplation is how we learn to “be still” and know that God is God. In recent times, the practice of
Centering Prayer invites us to interior silence.
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Tolle insists that the goal to discovering our life’s purpose is to get in touch with life’s purpose and to ask life what our purpose is within that greater context. I’m not sure how you “ask life” anything because I’m not sure how he defines life. What exactly is this “life” that we are talking to? A person? A force? A thing?
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The first “caller” or “
skyper” (referring to the technology used to make video calls) identified herself as a Catholic and wanted to know how to reconcile Tolle’s spirituality with her Catholicism. Tolle attempts to assure people that nothing he teaches is in conflict with their religious tradition. This is well-intentioned but it is naïve and falls into the “basically we all believe the same thing” mentality.
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Oprah and Tolle have an aversion to the word dogma. They stress that Tolle has no dogma to teach…just “pure spirituality.” The word
dogma technically means an opinion or belief (or set of opinions or beliefs) that one thinks is true and authoritative. They, and many folks today, see dogma as restrictive of individual freedom and therefore as stifling and bad. Tolle does not realize that the moment he asserts that there is a “Consciousness” that we can all tap into, he is presenting dogma: his belief that he thinks is true and, for those who want to follow his way, authoritative. Catholics believe that dogma is part of the gift of God’s revelation, entrusted to the Church, and handed down from generation to generation to guide us to live in close relationship with God and with one another.
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Oprah says that she walked away from her traditional Baptist upbringing when her preacher proclaimed that our God is a “jealous God.” (see
Exodus 20:5) She felt that this trait could not be applied to God. It’s true that we sometimes run into passages in the Bible that are difficult to interpret but that is why we, as Catholics, are so grateful for our Tradition…there is wisdom to be found to help us! This passage speaks of God’s passionate desire to be in relationship with us. Jealousy here is not indicative of envy but of deep desire and zeal.
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Oprah says that Jesus came to show us “the higher consciousness.” Jesus of course, never used that term. Rather, he tells us that he came to show us the Father…someone with whom he is in relationship . Oprah also says that Jesus came to show us the principles that we need to attain this higher consciousness. Jesus did not come to give principles but to give himself
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Tolle is right in saying that religion is a doorway to spirituality and that sometimes that door is closed, preventing us from a deeper spirituality. This can and does happen unfortunately.
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Oprah quotes from a book by Elizabeth Lesser called
The Seeker’s Guide in which Lesser describes the difference between what she calls the old spirituality and the new spirituality. Lesser says that in the old spirituality, everything was hierarchical, God was defined, and there was only one path. According to her, in the new spirituality, you are your own best authority, we listen for our own definitions of who God is, and there are many paths. In others words, “no one can tell me what to believe or what to do. I just find it out within myself as I go along because God is in me and if I pay attention, I’ll figure it all out.”
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Tolle does not speak of sin but of dysfunction and how, through our own negativity and dysfunction, we all contribute to a collective consciousness that is dysfunctional. He rightly asserts that we need to examine ourselves to see how we are contributing to this dysfunction. It would seem, however, that in the end, we “fix” ourselves and thus can “fix” the collective consciousness. I don’t perceive any notion of being saved or redeemed by a higher power.
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Tolle speaks of the “voice in my head” but does not refer to it as conscience (at least not in this program). He says this voice is simply conditioned thinking and that, when we experience an awakening, we can move beyond it. He doesn’t stress conscience formation but rather “awakening” to that place within ourselves that is untouched and where the eternal abides.
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Tolle compares this awakening to the consciousness expanding that people attain through drugs but says the difference is that, with drugs, we always fall back to where we were whereas, through his method, there is no falling back.
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I couldn’t help but think of
St. Thérèse of Lisiuex and her “
little way” when Tolle talked about accessing the power of the present moment, especially in simple things. St.
Thérèse
, the Little Flower, does a much better job of addressing this concept.
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Tolle said flat out that God is another word for consciousness. I’m not sure how he comes to this conclusion since, as far as I know, God has not revealed himself to us as consciousness.
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Tolle insists that “how spiritual you are has nothing to do with what you believe.” I find that very puzzling. Again, to be spiritual is to seek transcendence…to reach beyond oneself for that which is greater than our self. We need to know (to believe, to trust in) what or whom we are reaching out toward.
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Finally, Oprah invited people to return for the next session to participate in this process of getting closer to who you really are and honoring your life’s calling and purpose. Those are nice sounding words but the only problem is that it is all so me-centered. It’s all about me. And this discovery all takes place in a vacuum…God is (or may be) involved but only in the sense that it is the God that I discover within myself. I heard nothing about recognizing one’s responsibility to fellow human beings. You may be called to that, but only if the God within you reveals it to you. No one or nothing outside of yourself can tell you what to do because then, we’re in to dogma and that, apparently is bad.
How often do we hear kids say, either about Mass or about religious education class, “It’s boring”? Too often, I’m sure.
Kids (and most of us in general) are engaged when there is drama involved. That’s why sports is so big…we don’t know how the game is going to turn out and so we are engaged. Movies and video games are big because we don’t know how they will end.
One of the challenges we face as catechists is to present the drama of the Christian story. This can be particularly challenging because, on the surface, we know how the story ends. During Holy Week, we enter into the dramatic events of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. And yet, we know “how the story ends.” Where’s the drama?
The drama is, in fact, discovered in how the death and resurrection of Christ intersects with our own lives.WE DO NOT KNOW HOW OUR OWN PERSONAL STORY “ENDS.” We do not know how the Paschal Mystery will “play out” in our own lives.
The only way that the Christian story, and Mass, and religious education can be perceived as boring is if we in general find life to be boring. Granted, we do experience redundancy in our lives, but there is nothing boring about the human experience. Our challenge is to tap into the drama of the human experience and show our young people how the death and resurrection of Jesus is found in that experience and how the paschal mystery of Jesus can transform our experience.
One way we can bring our young people to this realization is to be sure that we are always addressing the profound issues of life going on around us. We need to invite our young people to pray for and keep in mind those people who are sick, suffering, oppressed, enduring hardships, experiencing the loss of a loved one, or a relationship, or of a job, and so on. We need to invite the young people to share prayers for people in their own lives who are experiencing these things, as well as the great joys of life…births, accomplishments, victories, vacations, engagements and marriages, and so on.
Life is not boring. It is full of turns and twists that can make our heads spin. We need to invite our young people to plunge headlong into the mystery of life and help them to see how God is found in the midst of it. We do our young people no favors by suggesting that following Jesus is fun or that it will take away all of our problems. The biggest favor we can offer our young people is to recognize the profound complexities of life within the context of the death and Resurrection of Jesus.
My thanks to Fr. J. Glenn Murray, S.J. for touching on this topic in his workshop at the L.A. Congress this past weekend. It obviously made me think!
I’m always suspicious of people who tell me that when they were in Vegas, they won X amount of money playing a certain game or machine. They never tell you how much they lost along the way!
In the same way, I’m about to tell you about a moment I had last night at religious education that was like hitting the jackpot. I’ll follow that, however, with a little disclaimer that shows it wasn’t all roses.
Anyway, last night I led a guided meditation on the Corporal Works of Mercy. In this meditation, Jesus enters the room and sits down next to the young person and they engage in conversation about what it means to follow Jesus. Jesus then slowly lays out the works of mercy that his disciples are called to do. In all, the meditation lasted about 15 minutes and I did it for 4 separate groups of 8th graders.
The “jackpot” moment was after one of the meditations, when I was explaining to the group that they had just meditated and that they key is to use their imaginations to engage in conversation with Jesus. A young man then said, “Yeah, it’s like he was sitting right next to me.”
WOW! Isn’t that what we catechists live for? I was thrilled to hear him say this, especially in front of his peers. I told the group that this is something they can practice at home: go to their room, get in a comfortable position, pay attention to their breathing until they slow it down, and then imagine Jesus entering the room to sit and talk with them.
Now, before you think that I had them eating out of my hand all night, here’s what else I dealt with:
- a cell phone going off in the middle of one meditation
- 3 young people who just couldn’t stop chatting with one another
- one young person who felt compelled to just blurt out a comment every few minutes during the meditation despite my directions for quiet
- a mysterious laser pointer whose source I was never able to determine
- 2 young people with the giggles during a meditation
- 1 young person who fell asleep during the meditation
Out of the 4 meditations, I would say 2 went extremely well, 1 was OK, and 1 was a struggle. The bottom line is that we have to let the weeds and the wheat grow together (Matthew 13:24-30). We need patience and endurance to put up with the frustrating part of our ministry, knowing that God’s grace can, does, and will penetrate and make an impact on some who are ready.
Here’s the text of the meditation. Feel free to use it.
Meditation on the Corporal Works of Mercy
Today, we’re learning about what it is that Catholics believe and do. During the next 20 minutes, we’re going to focus on some very specific things that Catholics do. They’re called works of mercy because, when we perform these works, we share God’s merciful love with others.
Let’s take a moment to get comfortable now.
Make sure you’re in a position where you can be comfortable and still for the next 20 minutes.
Let’s quiet ourselves. Slowly and quietly breathe in to the count of 5. (1,2,3,4,5)
Hold your breath for 1 second.
Now slowly and quietly breathe out to the count of 5 (1,2,3,4,5)
Let’s do that again. (repeat)
Now, imagine that everyone else in this room just vanished and that you are all alone, enjoying the quiet.
Before long, Jesus walks in and sits next to you.
He asks how you are doing. Talk to him.
He explains that he is here today to ask you to be one of his followers.
You ask him, “Jesus, what do I have to do to be one of your followers?”
Jesus says, “the most important thing to do is to care for the needs of others. I want you to show mercy to others by tending to their needs whenever you can.”
You ask Jesus, “what do you mean? What kind of needs?”
Jesus says, “let me tell you about the needs that people have and how you can help them:
I want you to recognize when people are hungry and thirsty. Start in your own home. People don’t have to be starving to be hungry. Think about how you can help at meal time in your family. Help set the table. Help to prepare the food in the kitchen. Help to clean up afterwards. But also, keep in mind all the people in the world who don’t have food and water like you do. Pay attention to how you can help with food drives, support food pantries, work at a soup kitchen, or give money to people who feed the hungry.
I want you to shelter the homeless. You are very lucky to have a good roof over your head. Take care of your home. Help your neighbors to care for their homes. Pay attention to some of the ways that you can support people who work with the homeless. Homeless shelters need donations of soap, shampoo, and other personal items…maybe you can help by donating some of these.
I want you to clothe those who have no clothing. Again, you are very lucky to have warm clothes and shoes on your feet. Thank your parents for providing you with clothing and try not to get hung up on spending a lot of money on clothes. Go through your drawers and your closet and pack up some clothing that you can give to someone less fortunate.
I want you to visit the sick and imprisoned. I know that you’re not old enough to visit people in jail and hospitals even have age limits. But there are other ways you can be present to people. You can call or send a card to someone who is sick. If you have relatives that can’t get out of the house often because of their age or sickness, spend some time with them. People don’t have to be in jail to be imprisoned. Some people are imprisoned in their own homes because of sickness. Of course, if any of your friends are sick, be sure to visit them or call them…it will mean a lot to them.
I want you to be of help to others who are suffering the death of a loved one. I know it’s not fun to go to a wake or a funeral, but it means so much to the people who are grieving to just know that you care and that they are not alone. If you have grandparents or other relatives who are widows or widowers, spend some time with them. They can be very lonely missing their loved ones who have died. You probably even have friends who have lost a loved one. Be sure to show that you care and that you are there for them.
Finally, I want you to do what you can to help the poor. I know you probably don’t have a lot of money of your own but you’d be surprised to know just how many people in the world have far less than you have. Do what you can to share with those in need. Save your change in a jar at home and every once in a while, donate it to those who work with the poor. Instead of buying something for yourself, every once in a while, buy something for the poor or give the money to help those who are poor.
Jesus pauses and then says, I’m not asking you to change the world. But if you and all of my followers do what you can, the world will change. I want you to do works of mercy: feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, bury the dead, and give to the poor. Will you consider being my follower?
Tell Jesus that you are preparing for Confirmation…preparing to follow him in a new way as a young adult. Tell him that you want to follow him but that you need his help. Talk to Jesus about what’s keeping you from truly being one of his followers.
Jesus knows that it’s time for you to move on now. He asks if there’s anything else you want to say to him or ask him. Take time to do that now.
Thank Jesus for this time together.
Watch as he walks out of the chapel and down the stairs.
Spend a quiet moment now with the Holy Spirit.
Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous 16 will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’ And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’
For this evening’s Confirmation Intensive, my segment is to do a meditation on the Corporal Works of Mercy.
Remember, our Confirmation Intensives are 2-hours long and aside from an opening and closing segment in their “homeroom,” the young people move about to 4 different 20-minute mini sessions. My segment takes place in the chapel.
This evening we are focusing on what Catholics BELIEVE and DO. 2 of the mini sessions will be on the Creed (the Trinity and the Marks of the Church), one will be on conscience and moral life, and mine will be on performing works of mercy.
The meditation will invite the young people to, as always, center and quiet themselves (that alone can be a challenge!). Then I will lead them to imagine that Jesus has entered the room and sits himself down to talk individually with them. In the course of their conversation, Jesus asks the young person to consider following him. The young peoples’ reply is that they want to know what they have to DO as his follower. Jesus will then go on to describe how they can share his merciful love with others by peforming works of mercy. I have taken the Corporal Works of Mercy and described some practical things that young people can do to perform these works in their everyday lives.
At the end, Jesus once again restates his invitation to follow him. The meditation ends with the young people conversing in their own words about how ready they are to do this and asking Jesus to help them overcome any obstacles that stand in the way of following him more closely.
I will end the meditation by reading a brief segment of the Parable of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25) which form the basis for the Corporal Works of Mercy (”For I was hungry and you gave me food…)
If all goes well (and maybe even if it doesn’t go well!), I’ll share the text of the meditation in my next post.
Best wishes for engaging sessions this week!
Last night, I prepared the young people to celebrate the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation by leading them in a meditative examination of conscience.
First, we talked about the practical steps involved in going to confession. I was pleased to find that in general, they were very familiar with how to go to confession and very relaxed about it. This can be credited to the program offering the sacrament twice a year: Advent and Lent. For some reason, last year’s class was kind of “freaked out” about the idea of going to confession.
Then, I led them in a meditative examination of conscience. After going through the typical steps of getting them to be relaxed and quiet (never an easy task!), I asked them to imagine that they were entering a room that had nothing in it but a big screen TV, a VCR, and a videotape of their life over the past few months.
They insert the tape and put it on fast-forward play, so that they can see their lives over the past few months unfold in rapid fashion. With that image, I then slowly read a list of questions that ask them to reflect on how well they have loved God and their neighbors. The questions were based on the Ten Commandments and were in the back of the Finding God text book. (Most texts have a version of an examination of conscience in them or on the publisher’s web site).
After going through the questions, I paused and told them to simply finish fast-forwarding through their imaginary videotape, looking at the events of their lives in recent weeks and months to identify where and how they have personally ”come up short” in terms of loving God and neighbor. I let them sit quietly for just a couple of minutes, identifying what they will tell the priest next week.
I finished by inviting them to ask Mary to help them make a good confession next week and we prayed a Hail, Mary.
In all, I thought it went pretty well and I think they are well-prepared for a good experience of reconciliation next week. I reminded them that it is a healthy thing to be able to admit sinfulness to another human being (the priest, who represents Jesus and the Church) and to actually hear the words of forgiveness and absolution spoken out loud.
Just one thing: I wonder if I need to update my meditation to a DVD instead of a VCR!!!
Last night, as part of our meditation, I showed the young people a number of different images of Jesus from around the world and over many centuries. Included in the images were depictions of Jesus as an Oriental, as Native American, as Black, and other dark-skinned peoples.
When we were finished, one young man came up to me and asked, “Not to be racist or anything, but how come some of those pictures showed Jesus as Black? I don’t get it. What color was Jesus?”
I explained to him that people have always imaged Jesus according to their own culture. In fact, most images of Jesus that we Americans are accustomed to depict Jesus as Anglo, which of course, he was not. Jesus was a Jew. Some Jews are light-skinned and others are darker-skinned. The important thing for us to remember is that, while the historical Jesus was a Jew, the Risen Christ transcends race and nationality. This is why people of all cultures can depict Jesus as “one of their own.”
This further reinforces the notion that all people are created in the image and likeness of God and it is evidence of the inculturation of the Gospel…the Gospel taking root within specific cultures and speaking to that culture from within.
Here’s my plan for this evening’s session:
- We will complete the church history Powerpoint that we began last week (we have 2 more time periods to go through).
- Throughout the Powerpoint, the young people have been filling in a note-taking sheet with pertinent names and dates.
- When we are finished, we’ll review the info on the note-taking sheets and then I’ll arrange them into 5 small groups (2 or 3 in each group) and assign each group one of the 5 periods in church history that we’ve covered in the Powerpoint.
- They’ll have 5 minutes to prepare a brief presentation on their time period, telling us what years they are covering and what events took place and their significance.
- To prepare, they may use their note-taking sheets.
- For their presentations, however, they will not be able to use their sheets, so that they will need to speak in their own words.
This activity will be my form of assessment to see how well they have comprehended the material covered in the timeline presentation over the past 2 weeks. It is also another way of ensuring that the young people are actively engaged in their learning and not just passive.
Our reflective prayer this evening is a meditation on images of Jesus (another Powerpoint!) that I’ve collected over time and set to music. The focus will be on how Jesus has been experienced over the 2000+ years of church history and how we experience the same living Christ today!
P.S. For a good site of Jesus Images, visit http://www.passionist.org/prc/gallery/
Last night was a night of ups and downs. We began by reviewing how to pray the Rosary and then we moved into our reflective prayer and prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, connecting this to our last class when we learned about the Cross of Jesus. A couple of the young people were pretty hyper and couldn’t sit still. I even had to pause at one point to ask one of them to apologize to the group for interrupting the prayer with various noises and comments.
It was frustrating for a while but eventually toward the last third of the prayer, they had achieved a calm. This allowed me to use a few minutes after the Rosary to invite them to talk to Jesus in the silence of their own hearts which they did very nicely for about 5 mintues.
We then moved into a review of the material that we have covered over the past 6 weeks. This did not go as well as planned since they were not able to keep their focus. I think my mistake was not giving the review to them as a quiz first and then going over the answers.
Finally, in the midst of that review, one of the young people who had been acting up throughout the evening (and for several weeks) finally pushed me too far and I had to firmly confront his behavior and challenge him to act more maturely. I never enjoy doing this but at the same time, I reminded the entire group that it’s my job to make sure that they begin to grasp an adult faith and that I will never hesitate to challenge behavior that is not conducive to doing so.
I also realize that the well-behaved kids appreciate it when poor behavior is clamped down on. They are annoyed by the bad behavior and feel that their time is wasted if such behavior is allowed. We do the entire group a favor by keeping discipline. It’s just not our favorite thing to have to do, right?
All in all, last night was not one of my best experiences but I think the tone is set for next week and I feel compelled to step up my efforts to facilitate an engaging session!
