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Exploring the word

19 Sep 2010 - Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

PEDAGOGY IS AN ugly word to use at the start of a homily. Better to talk about the way we learn and how it shapes what we learn. It's Catechetical Sunday, not exactly a church feast but a significant feature on the landscape of religious understanding. It's a time to remind ourselves that when it comes to religious education, none of us ever graduate. Religious education gets pegged as something that happens to parochial school children or in Confirmation classes. It's something new parents are forced into to get their kids baptized. Certainly religion teachers and DREs offer a tremendous service to our community in their careful presentation of the faith. But have you considered how the presider is also a catechist, as is the preacher? Liturgy is the most important catechism of the church because it's the one everyone learns just by showing up. We learn by saying our part and attending to the responses. But we also learn from songs, gestures, the movement of the action from the Sign of the Cross to the Act of Contrition, from word to sacrament, from responsorial psalm of praise to silent prayer of thanksgiving after communion. While the homilist's primary motive is not catechetical, a little "stealth catechesis" once a while doesn't hurt. Liturgy and sacrament are great teachers. So is the moral life as a whole. Practice makes perfect, and even those of us who aim much lower than perfection still learn a lot from every attempt we make to love better, forgive more, fear and judge less, be more generous. Environment shapes our learning, too. Remember all the posters in your early classrooms? The alphabet and numbers running colorfully around the room? Catholic environment is composed of words of grace and images of holiness. If you doubt it, try putting a crucifix in every room of your home. Erect a small prayer shrine in a corner. Post your favorite scripture verse on the fridge. Of course it's good to make conscious choices for adult learning, too. Read a Catholic book; for suggestions, check out the catholicsread.org website or visit the nearest Catholic bookstore. Attend a retreat or parish workshop. Join a faith-sharing group. Subscribe to a Catholic magazine, paper, or news site. Find out what the bishops really said; don't settle only for media reports. Is a commercial for religious education necessary? Yes, and biblical. We know that when it comes to how grace operates in the world, God doesn't add things up as we do. A duplicitous steward may show more spunk than a disciple of Jesus. If we want to learn the new math, we had better do our homework. Related scripture links Great cheaters of the Bible: Abraham (Gen. 12:10-20, 20:1-18); Abraham and Sarah (Gen. 16:1-15); Isaac (Gen. 26:6-11); Jacob (Gen. 27:1-45); Laban (Gen. 29:15-30); Rachel (Gen. 31:19-35); Onan (Gen. 38:8-10); Tamar (Gen. 38:11-30); Joseph (Gen. 44:1-34); Ruth (Ruth 3:1-9); Saul (1 Sam. 28:4-25); Judith (Jth. 10-13) An Israelite without guile: John 1:47 Catechism links Money: CCC 952; 2269; 2401-2414; 2419-2425; 2443-2449 Pray for the powerful: CCC 1349; 1900-1904; 2240; 2636; 2822

Authors Alice Camille

religious education Catechism liturgy sacraments Teach

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Homily stories

13 Jan 2013 - Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Cycle C

BEFORE celebrating his first Baptism, a newly ordained priest took special care to make sure everything was ready: his book of the rite, the oil, the candles, the white stoles. The Baptism seemed to go smoothly—he got all eight of the children’s names right—but as he was getting ready to read the concluding prayer, one of the grandmothers touched his sleeve and whispered gently, “You forgot to pour the water.” Sacraments have always been communal events. Luke sets the scene of Jesus’ Baptism by first describing the crowd: “The people were filled with expectation.” Everything we understand about sacraments tells us that it was the presence of the crowd—their energy and anticipation for what was to unfold, the prayers and wonderings held fervently in each heart—that allowed the flow of God’s grace to be made manifest in Jesus. This is how we can and must enter every sacramental experience: as full, conscious, and active participants, ready to be conduits for the flow of grace that God is continually pouring out. The celebrant leads, but the members of the community are essential, adding their prayers and intentions to the proceedings—and sometimes remembering what the celebrant forgot.

Authors Ann O'Connor

Community baptism sacraments

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Catholic reception of sacraments on decline

07 Jun 2015 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The body of Christ, which we celebrate this Corpus Christi Sunday, is growing worldwide—on track to reach 1.64 billion by 2050 according to a major new study. But not all bodes well as the church faces major demographic and social shifts. Worldwide, there has only been a 7 percent growth in parishes. And the overall rate per 1,000 Catholics receiving the sacraments “is in uninterrupted decline worldwide. It’s not keeping up with population growth,” said Mark Gray, senior research associate for CARA and a co-author of the report. The reasons vary from a lack of interest in the global West to a lack of access to parishes and priests in developing countries to simple demographics Homily hint: The sacraments are at the heart of the life and vitality of the church. An active program of religious education that finds new ways of communicating their central role to the next generation of Catholics is central to the health and well-being of the worldwide body of Christ. For more on the results of the study, see: More Catholics, fewer receiving sacraments: A new report maps a changing church; Global Catholicism

sacraments global catholicism

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The stickiness of sacramentality

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

Perhaps two-thirds of those raised Roman Catholic remain so throughout their lives. That this number is not 100 percent is troubling, but that various studies suggest this figure is perhaps normal for any religious organization in the United States is interesting as well. It seems that in spite of the fluidity of religion in the U.S. today, and in spite of the fragmentation that marks personal identities today, sacramentality is sticky. People remain Catholic, as Andrew Greeley used to say, because they like being Catholic. The sense of religiousness that involves the connections between family, place, and spirituality, tied with an experience of universality, seems to continue to attract and hold people’s attention. What else brings them back—whether to church each week or simply to that ongoing sense of somehow being Catholic? As the data suggest, it is far easier for those in ministry to drive people away than to keep them through what they say or do. The experience of being Catholic is much bigger than words that are preached, written, or read. In fact it is much more a question of relationships, of ways of being, that account for the stickiness of Catholic identity. The first way to enhance sacramental experiences might simply be to stay out of the way—in other words, to create a space where sacramentality can simply be. The second might be to learn from people how they experience being Catholic and what makes being Catholic special to them and central to who they are. © 2012, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

sacramentality sacraments

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Exploring the word

06 Jun 2021 - Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi), Cycle B

Ritual is a peculiar activity to engage in, truth be told. It is rarely organic; it does not spring wholly from instinct but must be chosen, interpreted, and imbued with significance. Religious ritual often includes antique words, symbols, and gestures that require conscious deliberation and participation to appreciate fully. Our lack of preparedness for an engagement with ritual is at least part of the reason why our relationship to the sacraments can be a bit of a blur. If we don’t actively consider what we’re doing, we might well wonder why we’re doing it. When Baptism happens to you as a baby, it tends to slide off your radar of significant events. First Communion comes later, when you have a chance to incorporate the moment at the so-called age of reason, along with Reconciliation, which remains an intermittent if not sidelined affair for many. Participation in the sacramental life of the church becomes more personal at Confirmation, when you finally have to make the commitment for yourself—however coerced you may feel by the process. Matrimony and Holy Orders can seem like the most “serious” of the sacraments, because the immediate consequences are immense. Regrettably, some Catholics may not soberly reflect on the meaning of their sacramental choices until they approach the Anointing of the Sick, when mortal vulnerability makes an encounter with the Sacred seem more necessary—and plausible. Unpacking ritual We might wonder: What did folks think on the day when Moses slaughtered some bulls and splashed half of the blood on a stone table and sprinkled the rest on them? Neighboring cultures used blood sacrifice to make their point to the gods or to themselves, so the ritual didn’t come from left field. Blood was serious—blood meant life or death. The altar represented God’s realm, and so the people were bound to God in their mutual reception of the blood. Moses called this action a covenant. Somewhere between the words of God and the blood of animals, a promise was solemnly contracted. Blood covenant was a messy business. It is hard to imagine the hours of janitorial duty that early priests must have put in mopping up the shrines and temples. Yet the human participants got off easy compared with the sacrificial animals that gave their lives in the stead of the nation. We can almost hear the weariness in the words of the Letter to the Hebrews—the writer surely a priest convert to the Christian perspective—as he describes the cycle of ritual killings. Finally, he says, one sacrifice has been made to end all sacrifice. Christ the high priest has inaugurated a new covenant. Somewhere between the words of the Last Supper and the passion of the cross, God has fulfilled the promise that humanity could not keep. An invitation “Take it,” Jesus says simply in Mark’s rendering of the event. “It” is the offering of his own body, his life, no small thing. Jesus doesn’t waste a lot of words explaining what he means or persuading us of the merits of his offer. For three years, the argument has been made in teaching, preaching, healing, casting out demons, and forgiving sins. All of this saving activity by any other name is now literally placed into our hands—if we want it. Take it, Jesus says, and hands over his life symbolically as food. Did the disciples understand that they were in the presence of a ritual being born, like those folks in the time of Moses? Did they perceive that tearing off a chunk of the bread was their assent to a great and fateful participation in divine life? They might have if they had our advantage: a keen awareness of the sacramental life. How did they arrive at this meal? The same way we come to it: by following the fellow with the water jar. Baptism leads to Eucharist just as membership leads to fellowship. We enter the guest room by responding to the invitation. The room is already prepared, but we can’t get there if we don’t go by way of the water. We also have the advantage of hearing, in quick succession, Moses’ words about the blood of the covenant echoed by Jesus. The disciples may not have been awake enough to make the connections that night, but we cannot afford to make the same mistake. What they received fresh is by now an ancient ritual of words and gestures and shared life. Take it, or don’t take it, but don’t close your eyes to what it is. Applying the word The Body and the Blood What is our Eucharist? It is a nourishing meal of bread and wine to which we are invited by virtue of our Baptism. It is a reminder of the ancient Passover from slavery to freedom, from sin and death to victory over both. It is a sign of the communion of the whole church, each one of us to the other in Christ. It is the memory of a sacrifice made in flesh and blood. It is the life of Christ made present and tangible right now in our midst. It is the love of God for the human race poured out. But our Eucharist is also a ritual of decision, to participate or not in the life of God handed to us in the Body and Blood of Christ. Take it, Jesus said. But do not take it lightly or thoughtlessly or as an antique ritual that requires no further obligation. Take it as solemnly as the people did who stood before Moses and allowed themselves to be marked by blood and incorporated into a covenant that held the power of life and death over their heads. Maybe one advantage the ancients have over us is that they stood close enough to the altar to be splashed by blood they wore home, reminding them of the seriousness of their commitment. Our decision to take the life of Christ into ourselves is more sobering still. Related scripture links Covenant stories: Gen. 9:9-17; 15:1-21; Exod. 19:1-8; 2 Sam. 7:8-16; Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 34:23-31; Isa. 7:10-15; 49:15; 55:3 Water and blood: Rom. 6:3-4; 1 John 5:6-8 Supper discernment: 1 Cor. 11:23-29 Christian life as sacrifice: Rom. 12:1-2; Phil. 2:17; 4:18 Catechism links Eucharist: CCC 737; 790; 1000; 1088; 1099; 1113-1121; 1210-1211; 1322-1405

Authors Alice Camille

Ritual sacraments blood covenant Eucharist

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