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Be Active in Sharing Your Faith!

"I always thank God as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. Your love has given me great joy and encouragement." (Philemon 1: 4, 6-7)

Ordinary time. While as a Church we find ourselves in the season of ordinary time, these are anything but "ordinary" times. As a country we have elected and inaugurated our first African-American to serve in the office of President. While this historic moment gives many of us hope, unemployment continues to grow, we remain in the midst of a global economic crisis and fighting continues in the Middle East. How appropriate that as a Church we continue to reflect on the life and times of St. Paul for the next five-months. Reading through the Pauline letters we see that life for St. Paul was never "ordinary".  His apostolic life was a journey – moving from place to place, community to community, sharing the word of God with those who had the ears to hear.  In his letter to Philemon, for example, St. Paul encourages Philemon – and us – to be active in sharing the faith with others. As catechists and evangelists, St. Paul is calling us to not only profess our faith, but to be an instrument of God's word in today's world.

As we move through this season of Ordinary time toward Lent, let us also re-commit ourselves to sharing the faith that we profess, passing it on as the gift that it is to our students. To help you in your mission, we have compiled in this edition of the Emmaus Journal a series of articles written by Catholic educators who are as committed as you are to promoting our educational and pastoral ministry.

On a personal note, I want to thank you for allowing me to be a companion on your journey these past two years. As we edit this edition of the Emmaus Journal I have brought closure to my short-lived tenure as the Assistant Executive Director of the Secondary Schools Department of NCEA and begun serving in the Sponsorship Office of the Xaverian Brothers Sponsored Schools. I have enjoyed serving you and, like Paul, will continue to "thank God as I remember you in my prayers."
Peace and God's good blessings,

Gary T. Meyerl
Assistant Executive Director
Secondary Schools Department
National Catholic Educational Association

In this edition….

Save the Dates:

Wisdom and Witness - Summer Conference for Religion Teachers, Campus Ministers and Service Directors at the University of Notre Dame  June 29 – July 1, 2009

NCEA Convention 2009: Anaheim, CA
April 14 – 16, 2009 

Articles:

Vision of a Well-Formed Adolescent: Young Disciples on the Way - A Paper Presented by Most Reverend Richard J. Malone, Th.D., S.T.L, Bishop of Portland

Words of Encouragement: Persevering in the face of Adversity by Tozer Hammond

Making the Mission Trip Journey a Transforming Experience by Mike Daley

June 29 - July 1, 2009
University of Notre Dame, Indiana

Register On-Line Today!

Presented by the Secondary Schools Department of NCEA and the Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, this summer Conference is designed with the High School Religion Teacher, Campus Minister and Service Director in mind.

Click here to view an electronic copy of the conference brochure
Click here for the conference schedule
Click here to register on-line

If you have questions about Wisdom & Witness 2009, please contact Kelley Endreola at kendreola@ncea.org

Convention 2009: Select Sessions of Interest to Religion Teachers, Campus Ministers and Service Directors 

 

 

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Vision of a Well-Formed Adolescent: Young Disciples on the Way A Paper Presented at the National Symposium on Adolescent Catechesis by Most Reverend Richard J. Malone, Th.D., S.T.L., Bishop of Portland, Maine http://adolescentcatechesis.org/resources/documents.htm

Among the most cherished blessings of my ministry are the many graced opportunities I have had to come to know and minister with teens and young adults, and with those responsible for their formation as disciples of Jesus Christ. As a young priest teaching in Catholic high schools in Massachusetts and working on a Th.D. in religious education, my choice of research topic for my dissertation came easily: “The Roman Catholic Secondary School As Faith Community: Educational, Developmental and Theological Considerations” (Boston University School of Theology, 1981). Adolescent catechesis has long been a passion for me. It continues to be today. When the Partnership for Adolescent Catechesis (PAC) invited me to prepare this presentation for our symposium and gave me as a theme the “vision of a well-formed adolescent,” I readily and enthusiastically agreed, and for several reasons.

First, I believe that the work that the National Initiative on Adolescent Catechesis is engaging in is one of the most significant and potentially far reaching developments currently underway in the field of catechetical ministry in the United States. It is a privilege to participate in it, and to be in creative solidarity with all of you.

Second, like you, I have personally known so many wonderful teens who have been, and are indeed being, well formed. They love the Lord, are active in the life of their faith communities, and are moving ahead on their journey of apprenticeship as young Catholics. I think of a high school sophomore at World Youth Day a few years ago in Cologne, and remember how moved I was during a Mass with our pilgrims from Maine when this young woman prayed so sincerely during the prayers of the faithful, “Change my heart, Lord. Just change my heart.” She had heard the call to conversion, she knew that grace came from Christ, and she prayed to have it.

I think of the teens from so many of our dioceses who use their spring vacation to do service work in Appalachia, and of the thousands from around the nation who make the trip to Washington, DC every January to take part in the March for Life. I think of the kids in Portland, Maine who descend every Thursday evening into our cathedral crypt for Theology Underground, their variation on the Dead Theologians Society. They pray together, and they study and discuss topics ranging from the lives and sayings of the great saints to the church’s teaching in opposition to physician-assisted suicide, capital punishment and embryonic stem cell research. Each of you can name other examples of strong, promising adolescent formation that builds upon components of comprehensive youth ministry.

A third reason occurred to me as I was thinking about the teens I’ve known whom I would call well-formed. At the risk of sounding self-satisfied or smug, looking back at my own experience as a teen, I will take the risk of saying that my own formation in the faith was a good one. The important hermeneutical key that it was another era notwithstanding (I graduated from high school in 1964), I am grateful for the ways God’s grace was at work through my family, my parish, my friends, and my elementary and secondary school experience. Thanks to the graced dynamics, the sacred synergies that ran through those major formative relationships and environments, I think I was pretty well formed – if in no way perfectly! – as a young disciple, within, of course, the context, understandings, expectations, possibilities and limitations (e.g., there was not too much on scripture) of those days. My family was a little domestic church, long before Vatican II introduced that ecclesiological nuance and Pope John Paul II elevated it. I was marinated – not just instructed in a schooling sense (that, too) – but marinated (translate “socialized”) in the basic flavors of Catholic life from my earliest years, formed gradually in the creed, code and cult, and the symbolic world of Catholic tradition. Father Robert Barron, in his “Beyond Beige Churches,” aptly describes this marinade in which many of us were flavored and formed: Like baseball or being American, Christianity is a complex set of practices, beliefs, convictions and behaviors, learned through an elaborate and lived process under the tutelage of a series of masters. . . The way of Jesus is not something that comes welling up spontaneously from the depths of one’s consciousness or from one’s experiences. Rather it is placed in us through symbol, ritual, ethical behavior, saints, art, architecture, poetry, theology, etc.” (Reverend Robert Barron, “Bridging the Great Divide: Musings of a Post-Liberal, Post-Conservative Evangelical Catholic,” Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004)

Example: I remember as though it were yesterday the moment when my Aunt Gertrude slid the corpus off of a fat crucifix in her home, and showed me – at around age five or six – the tiny “sacristy” within – small candles, a bottle of holy water, little linens. So it was that I came to know at that young age that my church has a ministry to sick and homebound people. Later in school, a Sister of Notre Dame, with her Baltimore Catechism in hand, would introduce us to the sacrament that we now call anointing of the sick – then, extreme unction (the latter term something the entire church had to unlearn after Vatican II). Socialization and intentional catechesis were happening. And it worked. My family was deeply involved in the life of our parish. I cannot recall a single Sunday or holyday when we did not go to Mass, unless someone was down with the flu. Confession was a regular feature of the rhythm of family life, mom and dad leading the way by example. And I learned about generous, compassionate service to others as I watched my parents sacrifice for me and my sister, and inconvenience themselves to help others out. I even had early ecumenical formation. My mom’s father, a lifelong Swedish Lutheran, back in the 1950’s would invite the rather formal, even formidable Monsignor Degan, our pastor, to join him on the porch for conversation. Of course, that bit of ecumenical witness didn’t stop me from running home like a jackrabbit when a nice lady from the Christian Science Church on our street invited me in one day to see their sanctuary! Not all ingredients in the marinade were healthy ones. I learned that later. Formation is lifelong, thank God, and involves unlearning as well as learning. Now we call it critical reflection. Domestic church, parish involvement, regular sacramental life, socialization and intentional catechesis, adult models and mentors, schools with a robust Catholic culture – all of these elements were in place, and they had their effect. Most importantly, I know that God’s grace was at work through it all. And it could work so well because of the rich and pervasive Catholic culture that permeated the entire experience at that time in our history.

A fourth reason, and certainly not the least, is that the church’s recent documents, “Renewing the Vision” and the “National Directory for Catechesis” (NDC) in particular, provide a compelling and comprehensive vision and sound principles for adolescent faith formation set within the context of lifelong catechesis and inspired by the baptismal catechumenate. Who could argue, for example, with the NDC’s insistence that a well formed adolescent will have a growing understanding and appreciation of Sacred Scripture, the Church and the Sacraments, the principles of Christian morality, and prayer. He or she will also be coming to realize and accept the baptismal commitment to mission, especially evangelization; will be participating in the liturgy, developing ecumenical understanding, and learning about the important commitment to discern Christ’s call to marriage, chaste single life, ordained ministry, consecrated life, or lay ecclesial ministry. There are no surprises here. The leading indicator of effective formation of an adolescent disciple, of course, is the quality of a teen’s developing relationship with Christ and so with his church. “Catechesis aims to bring about in the believer an ever more mature faith in Jesus Christ, a deeper knowledge and love of his person and message, and a firm commitment to follow him” (NDC, 54). Because of this aim of catechesis, all of our efforts to form adolescents must have an intentional evangelizing dynamic. It was with that objective in mind that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis took on the project of preparing our resource “Doctrinal Elements of a Curriculum Framework for the Development of Catechetical Materials for Young People of High School Age.”

While a curriculum framework may appear at first glance to be exclusively about the content of faith, the fides quae creditur, it is important to note that the document’s introduction casts its motivation and fundamental purpose in the mode of evangelizing catechesis. Citing the now standard definition of the aim of catechesis as “to put people not only in touch but in communion, in intimacy with Jesus Christ” (Catechesi Tradendae, 5), “Doctrinal Elements” goes on to say that The Christological centrality of this framework is designed to form the content of instruction as well as to be a vehicle for growth in one’s relationship with the Lord so that each may come to know him and live according to the truth he has given to us. In this way, disciples not only participate deeper in the life of the church but are also better able to reach eternal life with God in Heaven. (Doctrinal Elements, 4). The Christological thrust of the document is apparent in the titles of the six elements of the core curriculum: The Revelation of Jesus Christ in Scripture; Who Is Jesus Christ?; The Mission of Jesus Christ (The Paschal Mystery); Jesus Christ’s Mission Continues in the Church; Sacraments as Privileged Encounters with Jesus Christ; and Life in Jesus Christ. The recommended electives also keep Christ as their organizational principle: Sacred Scripture; History of the Catholic Church; Living as a Disciple of Jesus Christ in Society; Responding to the Call of Jesus Christ; and Ecumenical and Interreligious Issues. The framework is intended first to guide catechetical publishers in the production of instructional materials for Catholic high schools, as well as for parish catechetical and youth ministry programs, and for home schooled teens. It is also intended to be a guide for diocesan catechetical leaders, teachers and catechists who are responsible for adolescent faith formation in whatever setting it is offered. Obviously, the formats in which the doctrinal elements are presented will vary significantly depending on whether the catechesis is offered in a Catholic secondary school curriculum or in a parish comprehensive youth ministry or confirmation preparation program. We will need to rely on the competence and creativity of PAC, the publishers, and others committed to adolescent catechesis to bring this work to effective implementation. The bishops do not suggest that the promulgation of the curriculum framework is by itself the “magic bullet” for the strengthening of adolescent catechesis. We do argue, though, that any efforts to improve adolescent catechesis that would exclude those doctrinal elements will fall far short of the goal of well-formed teen disciples of Jesus Christ.

The heart of the matter is offering catechesis that, with God’s grace, can arouse faith in Christ as well as form, inform, and transform that faith. Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Preacher to the Papal Household, argues that our work of evangelization and catechesis must be informed by what the apostles did in evangelizing the world of the first century. He asks:

“. . . what is the content of the preaching of the apostles? The work of God in Jesus of Nazareth! That is true, but there is something even more specific that is the vital nucleus of everything and that, with respect to all else, is like the blade that goes before the plow to break up the soil so that it can turn over the ground and make a furrow in it. That more specific nucleus is the exclamation “Jesus is Lord!” proclaimed and received in the wonder of a faith statu nascenti, that is, in the act of being birthed.” (Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap, “Remember Jesus Christ: Responding to the Challenges of Faith in Our Time,” Jamesville, MD: The Word Among Us Press, (2007), 18.)

I will conclude by recommending a book that you may well have already discovered. If you have not, go get it. It is Secularity and the Gospel: Being Missionaries To Our Children (Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I., The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 2006.) Rolheiser calls us to become missionaries within our own highly secularized culture, missionaries among our own children. I leave you with these realistic and yet encouraging words:

Risking the next steps into a committed direction could be a leap of faith toward new missionary effectiveness. It could also be a dive off the edge of a cliff into an abyss of confusion and self-doubt. The dangers, challenges, and opportunities of this situation are great. Therefore, they require an equal measure of careful and considered pastoral missionary reflection. Success may require an equal measure of careful and considered pastoral missionary reflection. Success may be measured in the short term and on the moderate scale, but ultimate success must be left in God’s hands. Thus, while we struggle and thrash about, it is important to remember that there are strong arms and a steady grip to bear us up should we falter in our efforts. God never fails!

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Words of Encouragement
Persevering in the Face of Adversity
By Tozer Hammond, St. John’s College High School, Washington, DC

One of the best examples of perseverance that I can remember was from a book I had as summer reading before my freshman year in college, “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage”. The book tells the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton, an Antarctic explorer whose ship “The Endurance”, becomes trapped in the ice. His crew, stranded and without food, promptly begin to either flee, starve, or go crazy. After several months, when the situation becomes truly dire, Shackleton sets out in open boats with his remaining crew, and crosses the Drake Passage, one of the roughest patches of sea in the world. They all survive, amazingly, and persevered through almost unfathomable hardships.       

Thinking about this now story now, though, and applying a little imagination to it, I think a more simple solution presents itself. If a ship is surrounded by ice, then what is needed to free it? You can lash it with ropes and try to drag it out; you can, as Shackleton’s men attempted, try to dig out, or to pry it up with boards. But all of this work, all of this frantic effort, pales in comparison to a much simpler concept. What if there was just more light? What if there was just more warmth?
 
 When I began teaching last year, I brought a lot of my own energy to the job. It served me very well for the beginning of the year; students just did not know what to do with a lunatic declaiming Latin at them at 8:10 in the morning. And things were sailing along just fine at the beginning of the year…

Throughout the year, the tribulations that our school community faced were incomprehensible to everyone, students and faculty alike. I was frozen in place, and so were some of you I’m sure, by the looks on the faces of the students the day they came in and heard the news about Carl. And the light possessed by Katie Beirne was measured in suns, and the tragedy of her passing in rivers. But our ship didn’t get stuck, my ship didn’t get stuck, because of the warmth and light from people in this room and outside of it. We persevered, I persevered, not because of frantic energy or brute strength, but because there was just that extra bit of light.

Now, I don’t think I’m the least faithful person, but I know I’m not the most faithful.  That said, the response and support I saw within our faculty and amongst our students was moving. This will sound strange, but it restored my faith in people. It is a shame that through the glass of tragedy and hardship is when you see the best in human nature, but that’s what the community here did and does so well. I cannot name just one person who helped me, because there are too many first places for that category, so I will name the community. Our school community perseveres because its foundation, to paraphrase, is light, not sand. If it were otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. And that support lies at the foundation of perseverance.

There are no guarantees that there will be an easier days ahead, but what warmth we draw from each other, and what light we shine towards each other, and what light is reflected back, will ensure that there will be another. 

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Making the Mission Trip Journey a Transforming Experience New Guide Helps Students Reach Deeper Understanding By Mike Daley, St. Xavier High School, Cincinnati, Ohio

Mission trips are an increasingly common part of students’ experience today—whether in high school or college. But as valuable as the service experience is, it must be combined with reflection and prayer to be meaningful and, ultimately, transforming.

In response to this need, my colleague Matt Kemper and I recently coauthored a booklet titled Preparing for Your Mission Trip Journey: A Practical and Spiritual Guide—with the strong encouragement of our publisher, Glenmary Home Missioners, a religious community dedicated to home-mission work. This booklet’s purpose is to help students understand the service experience in the context of a mission spirituality, the basis for their lifelong journey with Jesus. For many, an important part of that journey necessitates leaving their comfort zones—immersing themselves in different cultures and visiting places where people find themselves in need.

In the process students make important discoveries about themselves and people they meet. As 17-year-old Brady observed after a mission trip: “I knew that I would see poverty, but I was clueless as to what extent. I never thought I would truly find God. Fortunately, however, I did. He was in the people. He was in a young boy named Julio. He was everywhere.”

As the booklet makes clear, mission trips are both event and process. They are events in that students go to places for specific time periods, then return home. But they also involve a process. In an almost paradoxical way, students’ trips really begin after they return home. The people they met, the work they did and the lives that were touched usually bring up questions that aren’t easily answered. Hopefully, the mission trip experience will ebb and flow, touching them in varying ways for the rest of their lives.

Questions that precede a trip (“Will I make a difference?”) connect with ones that arise during the trip (“Doesn’t something bigger have to change than just me?”).  In turn, these questions lead to others that linger long afterward (“Does the way I live actually contribute to their poverty?”).

The booklet is useful in that it parallels an actual mission trip:
• Before the trip, this guide prepares students on both a practical level (for example,    recommendations for what to bring) and a spiritual one (for instance, discussion of the foundation for mission, guidelines for a group mission statement, questions for students to consider such as why they are going and what role Jesus will play).
• During the trip, a journaling section invites students to connect scripture passages with   ongoing events of their service experience.
• After the trip, the guide leads students to continue conversation, reflection, prayer and sharing.

For 17-year-old Julie, as valuable as her inner-city experience was, it was all the more meaningful when combined with reflection: “The memories will last a lifetime. Not only did I learn new things about the city in which I live, but also about myself and others. It was truly eye-opening. I have a new and improved outlook on my city, people of different races, people of different economic surroundings, and life in general.”

Preparing for Your Mission Trip Journey: A Practical and Spiritual Guide is the final component of Glenmary Home Missioners’ Educate & Inspire home-mission education series. One of Glenmary’s major commitments is to call young people into mission and raise awareness of mission needs here in the United States. For complete information or to order the mission trip guide and other materials, visit www.glenmary.org/mission-ed

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