Yesterday, I had the wonderful opportunity to enjoy a family reunion with nearly 50 relatives, many of whom I hadn’t seen in years. We picnicked and shared memories, telling stories from back in the day. I came away with a very deep sense of knowing that my life is taking place within the context of a very loving family and for this I am deeply grateful. I know that so many of those we teach do not have this happy experience to draw from. Let’s pray that we, as catechists, can make them feel at home and help them to experience a loving “family” within their own parish faith community.

I’m the tall dorky guy standing, 3rd from the right in the back row!

I recently received a report from a catechist (Kim) who has been doing reflective prayer (meditation) with 4th graders. What follows is a summary of their responses to 3 simple evaluation prompts: the thing I like most about our prayer times together is… / What I have learned about myself and my relationship with Jesus during our prayer times is… / Additional comments…

Here’s what 4th graders are saying about prayer:

The thing I like most about our prayer times together is…

1.     When we meditate

2.     Meditating because it gets me relaxed and thinking about Jesus

3.     When we get to close are eyes and think about different times with Jesus

4.     When we close our eyes and imagine something

5.     Hearing about God’s word and meditating

6.      When Kim reads us stories and the time were she has us go to a place to spend time with Jesus

7.     Talking about Jesus and closing our eyes to be with Jesus

8.     The stories that Kim reads to us

9.     That we get time to reflect with God and Kim is a great teacher

10.   I feel very connected with Jesus when we are there I feel that he is in the room and praying wit us to God

11.   I get to be comfterable and think about God

12.   When we mediate and read stories

13.   We close our eyes and relaxe

14.   When we red from the bibble

15.   That we relax and are able to think about God and Jesus

16.   That I get to pray to Jesus

17.   My favorite thing would be meditating

18.   That we get to relax and be with Jesus

19.   That we can talk to God land Jesus

20.   When we medatate

21.   Reading stories and closing eyes to say hi to Jesus

22.   Closeing are eyes and talking to Jesus for awile

 

What I have learned about myself and my relationship with Jesus during our prayer times is…

1.     That I should love others and pray and a lot more things

2.     That you should be respectful and be caring for others

3.     He is a very dear friend of mine

4.     How to become closer to God

5.     He saved me from sin

6.     That Jesus is nice and did a lot of things for us

7.     Talking about things I don’t want other people to hear

8.     He loves me more than I thought

9.     That we are all sons and daughters of Jesus and Jesus is always open to talk to

10.   That to keep our relishonship with God strong we should pray, be nice to others, but most of all treat others how we would like to be treated or act like Jesus

11.   I can count on Jesus to be there when I need him

12.   Jesus sacrificed him self for forgiveness and for us.  We love Jesus and all he has done for us

13.   I’ve learned Jesus is really close to me and I will always love him

14.   That he makes feel special

15.   Jesus has loved me no matter what I did and he always will

16.   That he is my friend

17.   That I feel I’m a lot more closer to Jesus and I feel I actually belong here

18.   That Jesus chooses each of us to do our part to help our community grow and love Jesus

19.   No matter where you are Jesus is with you

20.   We sometimes make mistakes but they just help us to try again so we can do what we need to do right

21.   Jesus is here with me

22.   Jesus helps me learn and show me the way I should be going

 

Additional Comments…

1.     Praying with Kim is fun

2.     I like praying

3.     I wish I could do it all day every day

4.     I think it’s very fun

5.     You are great teacher

6.     I love spending time with Kim

7.     I have a lot of fun doing it

8.     I liked when we went into the church and talked about Jesus death

9.     Kim makes the learning experience fun and special

10.   I love to go to prayer time with Kim she is a great person to do this with and I know God really loves her

11.   I can’t wait until the next time we prayer agin

12.   The prayer time we had was really fun

13.   Kim did a very nice job doing this!

14.   God is a source of happines

15.   Blank

16.   Blank

17.   I love prayer time with Kim!  She’s the greatest!

18.   When ever our teacher says we are going to pray with Kim, we all get really exited to go and pray and be with Jesus

19.   Blank

20.   Rilygn is very fun with Kim thank you Kim J

21.   I love love LOVE that time with you Kim closing eyes reading stores awesome

22.   I love praying whith Kim

 

I’m pondering a different kind of homework for my religious education students for next year.

Typically, we think of homework as completing some type of worksheet, writing an essay or a paragraph, or reading a chapter and answering questions.

I’m talking about a different kind of homework: assignments that amount to practicing what we preach. In other words, we hope that what we teach our young people will have an impact on how they live on a daily basis. We are trying to apprentice them into a way of life. Perhaps we can devise assignments that require them to attempt a new “skill” for Christian living with the idea that, on the following week, we could talk about their experience.

What might I be thinking about? Here are some examples based on Catholic social teaching:

1. Life and dignity of the human person: Think of someone at school who is often “left out.” Go out of your way to sit with this person at lunch or during recess.
2. Call to family, community, and participation: Go out of your way to do a chore at home that will make life easier for your parents and family.
3. Rights and responsibilities: Focus on a responsibility that has recently become yours (at home, in school, as part of an extra-curricular activity) and do your best to fulfill it.
4. Option for the poor and vulnerable: Select an opportunity this week, either at school or at your parish, to contribute to or participate in efforts to help those who are poor (e.g. a food or clothing drive, Catholic Relief Services, working at the soup kitchen, etc.)
5. The dignity of work and the rights of workers: Visit www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet/kidsweb/food and find out what FAIR TRADE is all about and come back with one example 
6. Solidarity - Visit www.hcakids.org to find out about the HOLY CHILDHOOD ASSOCIATION and come back with a story about children in another country who need our help.
7. Care for God’s Creation - Keep a tally of how many items you can recycle in one week (e.g. plastic bottles, glass bottles, newspaper, aluminum cans, and so on)

As much as possible, I’m looking for these ideas to be practical and simple enough for an individual to accomplish on their own without requiring them to “make something” (no posters, etc.) and without repeatedly asking them to give money to causes that address these various needs. Likewise, various categories can be used to inspire the assignments. There can be assignments based on the Beatitudes, the Virtues, the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, and much more.

My inspiration for this is Luke 10 in which Jesus sends out the 70 disciples in pairs with a mission to accomplish and then they report back to him. Likewise, in Luke 24, the Emmaus story, the 2 disciples go on to Jerusalem after their encounter with the Risen Christ and they report what they have experienced. I believe that this is an important part of the process of mentoring: assignments are given and then a “report” is given at which time advice can be offered. It is often in the telling of these experiences that the hand of God is recognized in the experience. I think we need to give our young people more experiences!

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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 was our last class for the year and it was a very nice send-off. The closing Mass was very good and the young people seemed genuinely touched by the little token that I offered them. A number of the 8th grade students also went out for pizza afterwards accompanied by 3 of us catechists.

As it turns out, last week, when I missed class because of my daughter’s illness, my aide, Kris, had the young people make thank you cards for me! What a nice gesture! Here are some of the comments that they wrote in their cards:

• Thank you very much for taking the time to teach me about Jesus.
• Thank you for dealing with us all year. Thank you for volunteering your time to teach us about God. Iliked the way we meditated. I don’t like reading in the book so it was cool that you made PowerPoints.
• Thank you very much for your class this year. I really learned a lot and enjoyed it very much. I liked how we meditated in class. You always came to class knowledgeable and prepared and we really appreciated that. Since you came wanting to be there, most of the class ended up wanted to come. This year we made our confirmation, and I think I was really ready for it. Your class was a lot of fun and it was the best year of CCD I’ve ever had!
• Thank you for the time you spent with us talking about Jesus Christ.
• Thanks for the meditation time.
• Thank you for all the things you have taught me. You taught me things outside the book that no other teacher has done. The meditation helped me pray and spend time with Jesus and God. Thanks for everything.
• Thanks for teaching our class. U really made it fun this year! It went by so fast! So thanx.
• Thank you so much for making my last year of CCD awesome! When I first came in and heard you were one of the authors of the book, I was thinking to myself, “Oh, great, we are going to do nothing but read from the book.” But I was wrong. Even though we used the book at times, this class was really fun. Learning about the history of the church and watching Jesus of Nazareth was very interesting. The meditations were also really cool. Thank you!!

I think I’ll keep doing the meditations, eh? 

This Monday is the last session for religious education for the year and we will mark it with a celebration of the Eucharist. It’s hard to believe that the year is already coming to an end. In retrospect, it seems like we had so little time together and in many respects that is true. However, I hope and pray that I have been able to make an impact on the young people that I was privileged to teach this year. I think I will devote some time this weekend to finding a small gift that I can give to each of them that will express my hopes for them as they move on. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

Here’s an exchange I recently had with a catechist working in RCIA for children:

Dear Joe, 

I am a catechist teaching RCIA for children.  This is my first time teaching RCIA.  If you could recommend some approaches to answering questions to children grades 3rd through 5th RCIA, I would really appreciate your help.  Here are some of their questions: 

Why do we decorate the church with a barren looking tree during Lent?  Who made God and why aren’t we from a different planet?  What is the difference between a Catholic and a Christian?  

Thank you, Joe!

 

 

What wonderful questions! I just wrote a post this morning about a question one of my 8th graders asked (”Would it have been better if Jesus didn’t die?”) 

This is such a great opportunity for you to be able to work with these young people during such a meaningful time in their lives. You are also very thoughtful to be so concerned with approaching their questions in the most effective manner. How we respond to questions can have a lasting impact on a young person. 

My first thought is to affirm the questions and the questioners. Let them know that they have asked a good question. 

Next, show that you are interested in what they may be thinking. Invite the others in the group to grapple with the question. You can say something like, “That’s a good question that -N- just asked. What do you think? How would you respond to that question?” Let them know that it is good to grapple with issues of our faith and that asking questions is what disciples do…it’s how we learn. 

Now, on to how to address the specific questions you listed: 

• why do we decorate the church with a barren looking tree during Lent? 
   

The Church has long compared the 40 days of Lent to the 40 year journey of Israel in the desert where their faith was tempted. In the same way, Jesus grappled with temptations in the desert for 40 days before beginning his ministry. For us, Lent is our journey through the desert - a barren area - where we face up to our temptations, away from the clutter of everyday life (this is why we give things up during Lent…to clear away the clutter).  

 

• Who made God and why aren’t we from a different planet? 
   

This is one of the wonderful and mysterious things about God - God has no beginning and no end. Nobody made God. God just is. That’s why when Moses asked God what his name was, God said, “I Am Who Am.” This means that God just is. This is a very hard concept for even adults to understand. God is the creator and we are creatures (created by God). The story in Genesis chapter one of how God created the world tells us that before the world came to be, God already existed and that he created all of creation out of love for us. We come from God, not from another planet, because we have an intimate relationship with our creator God. 

• What is the difference between a Catholic and a Christian? 

   

One of my 8th graders asked this on the first night of class this year! Of course, Catholics ARE Christians! The term Christian is a broad term that describes anyone who is a follower of Jesus and has been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For the first one thousand years of the Christian Church, there was only one kind of Christian…anyone who followed Jesus. In the 11th century, the Christian Church became divided between those who followed the leadership of the bishop of Rome (Roman Catholics) and those who followed the leadership of the Patriarch of Constantinople (The Orthodox Church). Then, in the 16th century, the Christian Church became even more divided because of the Protestant Reformation. This means that some Christians chose not to follow the leadership of the bishop of Rome (the pope). These Christians established many different denominations: Lutherans, Calvinists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and so on. They are Christians baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but they do not follow the leadership of the pope. As Roman Catholics, we are Christians who follow the leadership of the pope and bishops, the successors of the apostles. (Much of this answer will be beyond the younger children but I wanted to provide you with as much as possible and you can adapt it for your various age groups).

Great stuff! Kids ask such wonderful questions!

This exchange was posted with permission and, as always, I posted the catechist’s e-mail anonymously.