CATECHESIS MUST BE CHRIST-CENTERED...ALWAYS
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“And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). God has
made Himself known. This isn't just the central mystery of our Faith, it's the source and summit of all truth. Everything we know and learn about our Faith—all that God has revealed to us through this Word—is only understood in relation to that same Word--made flesh. It only makes sense. |
So if we want our catechetical efforts to make sense, we really need to show the relevance of our teachings in relation to the mystery of Jesus Christ. The goal is not an intellectual concept or correct answers on a test, it is the knowledge of a person; and not just knowledge about that person but a personal relationship with Him.
All teachers have been given a great responsibility. As catechists, the charge is eternally significant; we have been given a mission to teach the Catholic Faith in its fullness. Comprehensive catechesis means more than just the teaching of doctrine, morality and social justice; it means being comprehensive about our doctrines. The easiest way to understand what this entails is to follow the formula given to us in Scripture:
“They devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers” (Acts 2:42)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which ought to be the normative authority for all of our homilies and lesson plans, bases its four sections upon this verse from Acts of the Apostles. We commonly refer to them as the “4 pillars” of the Catechism. Everything found in the Sacred Deposit of Faith can be divided into one of four overarching categories of “devotion”:
1) Creed, 2) Sacrament, 3) Morality, and 4) Prayer.
When we teach from any of these four categories, the Church calls us to make our efforts Christocentric—to proclaim all in relation to the Person of Jesus Christ. CCC...
Creed: Understanding Who Christ
Is
The first “pillar” of the Faith is the Creed (the teachings of
the Apostles). Our goal when we teach and preach in regard to the Creed is to
present the material as a means to understanding who
Jesus is.
There is no need to sacrifice anything by having a
Christocentric focus. Instead, the tenants of the Faith we profess every week at
Mass are learned in proper context—that is, in relation to the Word-made-flesh.
He is the central “figure” that unites the Creed and gives it organic unity.
Teaching all tenants in light of the Person of Christ only serves to make them
more understandable.
Jesus is not some “topic” we cover along the way—even as a
foundation from which we build. We are not meant to ‘move on’. Jesus is always
and foremost the
topic.
Sacrament: Uniting With
Christ
Likewise, our catechesis on liturgy (the Breaking of the Bread)
should never be reduced to a merely external explanation of the historical and
structural facets of the Church’s ritual celebration. A deep intimacy with the
inner life of the Trinity must be clearly proposed, both implicitly and
explicitly, whenever we touch on the mystery of living a Sacramental
life.
The entire Faith centers on the liturgy, for the sacramental signs we
encounter therein point to the eternal reality of Love who is God. We enter into
this reality at every Mass. We are taken up into the mystery, given access to
the fullness of its life-giving power, and then sent into the world as
evangelizing soldiers.
At its core, liturgy is a dynamic movement of
love.
The mystery of participation
is unveiled in the Sacramental life. Stemming from our baptism—a sacramental
entry into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—we live now as new
creations. The mystical Body of Christ
is the New Creation. Now, as
members of His Body, we participate in His divine sonship.
Our access is
liturgical.
Baptism is a liturgical rite. Confession is a liturgical rite. And
everything liturgical draws its power from the cross, which makes the Mass—the
sacramental re-presentation of Calvary—the most fundamental act of liturgical
worship.
The Eucharist Christ celebrated at the Last Supper is united with His
self-offering on the cross as a single act. This “event” (which we call the
Paschal Mystery) fulfills perfectly the liturgical rites of
Israel.
Most obvious, the liturgy of the Eucharist is the New Passover; but in
fact all the Old Testament
sacrifices are taken up and fulfilled in the one sacrifice of Christ on the
cross—the perfect self-offering of the Son to the Father, in the power and unity
of the Holy Spirit.
Liturgy is divine love, sacramentally
veiled.
If we do not teach on the Sacramental life in this way, it becomes empty
ritual. Why do so many leave the Catholic Faith? Why are so many “faithful”
Catholics going through the motions every week without any real transformation
in their daily life? They do not really know what is present when they enter
into the Holy Sacrifice, the fulfillment of liturgical offerings, the perfect
act of worship, the celebration of the Mass.
Without insight into the Love
accessible in the liturgy, all aspects of the Sacramental life are reduced
to empty ritual. We obey out of fear, rather than out of love and adoration. Our
worship becomes a way of placating God, which is strangely similar to the
understanding of worship in pagan cultures. We miss the great gift He truly
intends for us. We miss out on the inner life of
God!
The liturgical (Sacramental) life is not reducible to following a
command—“Do this is in remembrance of me”—it is an invitation to participate
in the divine nature! God is calling us to rise up and enter into the
fullness of life and love. He has given us
access.
Why do we teach about liturgy in relation to
Christ?
The liturgy is a sacramental entry into the “one flesh union” of God and
man—“that they may be one, as we are one [Father], I in them and you in me, that
they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent
me, and that you [Father] loved them even as you loved me.”[i]
It is via our participation
in the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the God-man that we are
taken up into the eternal dialogue of Trinitarian
love.
Our share in the divine sonship of Jesus Christ is what we mean
by “heaven”!
The cross gives us access to this wonder of salvation. The Sacraments
give us access to the cross. Let us teach them in light of this truth. Let us
teach liturgy the way it is meant to be
taught.
It is all about Jesus.
Morality: Imitating
Christ
Similarly, our understanding of morality is fundamentally flawed
if the “imitation of Christ” does not act as supreme motivator for our actions.
Christ fulfills the Law.
What this most certainly does not
mean is that Christ loosened the moral demands of the Old Testament! His
words are clear, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until
heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a
letter will pass from the Law, until all things have taken place.”[ii]
What does it mean
that Christ fulfills the Law? First of all it means He perfectly lives out its
demands in His own life. He shows us what living a moral life ought to look
like. Second, He gives us the power
to fulfill it, too!
He has given us a new law, the law of Love. This one is
written not on tablets of stone but on hearts of flesh, and is of course the
Holy Spirit dwelling within us and living through us. Effectively, this “new
law” frees us from temptations to break the
Law.
The law of Love frees us from desiring
sin!
And so we teach morality in relation to Christ, not just because
He is the example par excellence of what it means to be moral, but also because
it is only by His power—the power of
the Holy Spirit in us—that we can live out that call in our own
lives.
If we want to “fulfill the law” we must learn to see
with the very mind of God. We need the Holy
Spirit.
Prayer: Communicating With
Christ
The fourth pillar of the Catechism is Prayer. It is in prayer
that we communicate with God and, more importantly, that He communicates with
us. Most important of all, God the Son—by the power of His Holy Spirit—prays in
us, through us, and for us.
“For there is one God. There is also One Mediator between God and man,
Christ Jesus, Himself human, who gave Himself as ransom for all.”[iii]
In our baptism we enter into the inner life of God. Our offerings are
united to Christ’s and our prayers become His prayers. Our life is a spiritual
journey of purification whereby we come to know Him more intimately each day
(hopefully), and unite our lives to His more perfectly.
As we grow in both our knowledge and our practice of prayer, we
experience a spiritual illumination of the intellect, and we experience more and
more the events of daily life with the mind and heart of
God.
Our catechesis is not meant to help students in the mere recitation and
memorization of wrote prayers, but to facilitate a dialogue between them and
Christ.
The interior life is a universe all its own, even more vast than the
external, physical world; and the better we are at listening for the voice of
our Shepherd (sheep hear their shepherd’s voice), the more prepared we are to
live as Christians in the midst of a
fallen world.
The interior life must guide the exterior.
The Catechism’s section on prayer focuses primarily on the Lord’s Prayer:
the “Our Father.” This is the prayer Christ Himself left us when He was asked
how we ought to pray. And in those words we have the secret to
prayer.
It begins by acknowledging God as Father, a relationship we have through
our baptism into Christ. We pray
that the Father’s kingdom would come, the kingdom in which Christ
reigns as King. We pray for our daily bread, the manna from heaven, the Body and
Blood of Christ. We pray for
forgiveness, the power to forgive, the strength to resist temptation and
deliverance from evil, all of which we have been given through the self-gift Christ made to us on the cross.
*
All that we teach as catechists in the Catholic Church is given concrete
explanation in the Catechism of the
Catholic Church. The “4 pillars” of doctrine therein constitute the entire
content of Faith, and we teach those pillars in relation to the cornerstone of
all doctrine, Jesus Christ.
The Creed is a treatise on understanding who Christ is. The Sacramental
grace encountered through the Church’s liturgical life is the means by which we
unite ourselves to Christ. The Moral life is the way in which we imitate Him.
Prayer is the gateway to intimacy; it is our way of communicating with Christ.
Everything should, in the end, lead us closer to
Jesus.
[i] John
17:22-23
[ii] Matthew
5:17-18
[iii] 1 Timothy
2:5
All teachers have been given a great responsibility. As catechists, the charge is eternally significant; we have been given a mission to teach the Catholic Faith in its fullness. Comprehensive catechesis means more than just the teaching of doctrine, morality and social justice; it means being comprehensive about our doctrines. The easiest way to understand what this entails is to follow the formula given to us in Scripture:
“They devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers” (Acts 2:42)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which ought to be the normative authority for all of our homilies and lesson plans, bases its four sections upon this verse from Acts of the Apostles. We commonly refer to them as the “4 pillars” of the Catechism. Everything found in the Sacred Deposit of Faith can be divided into one of four overarching categories of “devotion”:
1) Creed, 2) Sacrament, 3) Morality, and 4) Prayer.
When we teach from any of these four categories, the Church calls us to make our efforts Christocentric—to proclaim all in relation to the Person of Jesus Christ. CCC...
Creed: Understanding Who Christ
Is
The first “pillar” of the Faith is the Creed (the teachings of
the Apostles). Our goal when we teach and preach in regard to the Creed is to
present the material as a means to understanding who
Jesus is.
There is no need to sacrifice anything by having a
Christocentric focus. Instead, the tenants of the Faith we profess every week at
Mass are learned in proper context—that is, in relation to the Word-made-flesh.
He is the central “figure” that unites the Creed and gives it organic unity.
Teaching all tenants in light of the Person of Christ only serves to make them
more understandable.
Jesus is not some “topic” we cover along the way—even as a
foundation from which we build. We are not meant to ‘move on’. Jesus is always
and foremost the
topic.
Sacrament: Uniting With
Christ
Likewise, our catechesis on liturgy (the Breaking of the Bread)
should never be reduced to a merely external explanation of the historical and
structural facets of the Church’s ritual celebration. A deep intimacy with the
inner life of the Trinity must be clearly proposed, both implicitly and
explicitly, whenever we touch on the mystery of living a Sacramental
life.
The entire Faith centers on the liturgy, for the sacramental signs we
encounter therein point to the eternal reality of Love who is God. We enter into
this reality at every Mass. We are taken up into the mystery, given access to
the fullness of its life-giving power, and then sent into the world as
evangelizing soldiers.
At its core, liturgy is a dynamic movement of
love.
The mystery of participation
is unveiled in the Sacramental life. Stemming from our baptism—a sacramental
entry into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—we live now as new
creations. The mystical Body of Christ
is the New Creation. Now, as
members of His Body, we participate in His divine sonship.
Our access is
liturgical.
Baptism is a liturgical rite. Confession is a liturgical rite. And
everything liturgical draws its power from the cross, which makes the Mass—the
sacramental re-presentation of Calvary—the most fundamental act of liturgical
worship.
The Eucharist Christ celebrated at the Last Supper is united with His
self-offering on the cross as a single act. This “event” (which we call the
Paschal Mystery) fulfills perfectly the liturgical rites of
Israel.
Most obvious, the liturgy of the Eucharist is the New Passover; but in
fact all the Old Testament
sacrifices are taken up and fulfilled in the one sacrifice of Christ on the
cross—the perfect self-offering of the Son to the Father, in the power and unity
of the Holy Spirit.
Liturgy is divine love, sacramentally
veiled.
If we do not teach on the Sacramental life in this way, it becomes empty
ritual. Why do so many leave the Catholic Faith? Why are so many “faithful”
Catholics going through the motions every week without any real transformation
in their daily life? They do not really know what is present when they enter
into the Holy Sacrifice, the fulfillment of liturgical offerings, the perfect
act of worship, the celebration of the Mass.
Without insight into the Love
accessible in the liturgy, all aspects of the Sacramental life are reduced
to empty ritual. We obey out of fear, rather than out of love and adoration. Our
worship becomes a way of placating God, which is strangely similar to the
understanding of worship in pagan cultures. We miss the great gift He truly
intends for us. We miss out on the inner life of
God!
The liturgical (Sacramental) life is not reducible to following a
command—“Do this is in remembrance of me”—it is an invitation to participate
in the divine nature! God is calling us to rise up and enter into the
fullness of life and love. He has given us
access.
Why do we teach about liturgy in relation to
Christ?
The liturgy is a sacramental entry into the “one flesh union” of God and
man—“that they may be one, as we are one [Father], I in them and you in me, that
they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent
me, and that you [Father] loved them even as you loved me.”[i]
It is via our participation
in the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the God-man that we are
taken up into the eternal dialogue of Trinitarian
love.
Our share in the divine sonship of Jesus Christ is what we mean
by “heaven”!
The cross gives us access to this wonder of salvation. The Sacraments
give us access to the cross. Let us teach them in light of this truth. Let us
teach liturgy the way it is meant to be
taught.
It is all about Jesus.
Morality: Imitating
Christ
Similarly, our understanding of morality is fundamentally flawed
if the “imitation of Christ” does not act as supreme motivator for our actions.
Christ fulfills the Law.
What this most certainly does not
mean is that Christ loosened the moral demands of the Old Testament! His
words are clear, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until
heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a
letter will pass from the Law, until all things have taken place.”[ii]
What does it mean
that Christ fulfills the Law? First of all it means He perfectly lives out its
demands in His own life. He shows us what living a moral life ought to look
like. Second, He gives us the power
to fulfill it, too!
He has given us a new law, the law of Love. This one is
written not on tablets of stone but on hearts of flesh, and is of course the
Holy Spirit dwelling within us and living through us. Effectively, this “new
law” frees us from temptations to break the
Law.
The law of Love frees us from desiring
sin!
And so we teach morality in relation to Christ, not just because
He is the example par excellence of what it means to be moral, but also because
it is only by His power—the power of
the Holy Spirit in us—that we can live out that call in our own
lives.
If we want to “fulfill the law” we must learn to see
with the very mind of God. We need the Holy
Spirit.
Prayer: Communicating With
Christ
The fourth pillar of the Catechism is Prayer. It is in prayer
that we communicate with God and, more importantly, that He communicates with
us. Most important of all, God the Son—by the power of His Holy Spirit—prays in
us, through us, and for us.
“For there is one God. There is also One Mediator between God and man,
Christ Jesus, Himself human, who gave Himself as ransom for all.”[iii]
In our baptism we enter into the inner life of God. Our offerings are
united to Christ’s and our prayers become His prayers. Our life is a spiritual
journey of purification whereby we come to know Him more intimately each day
(hopefully), and unite our lives to His more perfectly.
As we grow in both our knowledge and our practice of prayer, we
experience a spiritual illumination of the intellect, and we experience more and
more the events of daily life with the mind and heart of
God.
Our catechesis is not meant to help students in the mere recitation and
memorization of wrote prayers, but to facilitate a dialogue between them and
Christ.
The interior life is a universe all its own, even more vast than the
external, physical world; and the better we are at listening for the voice of
our Shepherd (sheep hear their shepherd’s voice), the more prepared we are to
live as Christians in the midst of a
fallen world.
The interior life must guide the exterior.
The Catechism’s section on prayer focuses primarily on the Lord’s Prayer:
the “Our Father.” This is the prayer Christ Himself left us when He was asked
how we ought to pray. And in those words we have the secret to
prayer.
It begins by acknowledging God as Father, a relationship we have through
our baptism into Christ. We pray
that the Father’s kingdom would come, the kingdom in which Christ
reigns as King. We pray for our daily bread, the manna from heaven, the Body and
Blood of Christ. We pray for
forgiveness, the power to forgive, the strength to resist temptation and
deliverance from evil, all of which we have been given through the self-gift Christ made to us on the cross.
*
All that we teach as catechists in the Catholic Church is given concrete
explanation in the Catechism of the
Catholic Church. The “4 pillars” of doctrine therein constitute the entire
content of Faith, and we teach those pillars in relation to the cornerstone of
all doctrine, Jesus Christ.
The Creed is a treatise on understanding who Christ is. The Sacramental
grace encountered through the Church’s liturgical life is the means by which we
unite ourselves to Christ. The Moral life is the way in which we imitate Him.
Prayer is the gateway to intimacy; it is our way of communicating with Christ.
Everything should, in the end, lead us closer to
Jesus.
[i] John
17:22-23
[ii] Matthew
5:17-18
[iii] 1 Timothy
2:5
