Having a faith conversation with old and new friends is as easy as setting the table.
FAITH FEEDS GUIDE LET US DREAM
CONTENTS
Introduction to FAITH FEEDS 3
Ready to Get Started? 4
PROLOGUE 5
• Summary 5
Conversation Starters 6
PART ONE: A TIME TO SEE 7
• Summary 7 Conversation Starters 8
PART TWO: A TIME TO CHOOSE 9
• Summary 9
Conversation Starters 10
PART THREE: A TIME TO ACT 11
• Summary 11 Conversation Starters 12
• Gathering Prayer 41
We offer our gratitude to Bob Fanning for his efforts in helping to create this guide.
Presents
The FAITH FEEDS program is designed for individuals who are hungry for opportunities to talk about their faith with others who share it. Participants gather over coffee or a potluck lunch or dinner, and a host facilitates conversation about faith.
The FAITH FEEDS GUIDE offers easy, step-by-step instructions for planning, as well as materials to guide the conversation. It’s as simple as deciding to host the gathering wherever your community is found and spreading the word.
The Faith Feeds program is very pliable, offering you a chance to be creative with the content. The C21 Center is happy to offer FAITH FEEDS napkins, stickers, and gathering prayer cards. There are also FAITH FEEDS totes for give-away items.
The C21 Center
READY TO GET STARTED?
STEP ONE
Decide to host a FAITH FEEDS. Think of a comfortable space, conducive for conversation. Select a theme/article for your FAITH FEEDS conversation.
STEP TWO
Reach out to your students and let them know the FAITH FEEDS date/s /time/location and theme in advance. Arrange for coffee, pizza, or food.
STEP THREE
Reach out to Karen Kiefer (karen.kiefer@bc.edu) at the C21 Center and request FAITH FEEDS swag, including napkins, stickers, gathering message/prayer cards and FAITH FEEDS totes for give-a-ways.
STEP FOUR
Review selected article and questions in advance of your FAITH FEEDS. Conversation will grow organically. Enjoy!
PROLOGUE
“We are living a time of trial. The Bible talks of passing through fire to describe such trials, like a kiln testing the potter’s handiwork (Sirach 27:5). The fact is that we are all tested in life. It’s how we grow...
This is a moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities—what we value, what we want, what we seek—and to commit to act in our daily life on what we have dreamed of. What I hear at this moment is similar to what Isaiah hears God saying through him: Come, let us talk this over. Let us dare to dream...
Millions of people have asked themselves and each other where they might find God in this crisis. What comes to my mind is the overflow...
In our society, God’s mercy breaks out at such “overflow moments”: bursting out, breaking the traditional confines what have kept so many people from what they deserve, shaking up our roles and our thinking. The overflow is to be found in the suffering
that this crisis has revealed and the creative ways in which so many people have responded.
I see an overflow of mercy spilling out in our midst. Hearts have been tested. The crisis has called forth in some a new courage and compassion. Some have been sifted and have responded with the desire to reimagine our world; others have come to the aid of those in need in concrete ways that can transform our neighbor’s suffering.
That fills me with hope that we might come out of this crisis better. But we have to see clearly, choose well, and act right. Let’s talk about how.
Let’s allow God’s words to Isaiah to speak to us: Come, let us talk this over. Let us dare to dream.”
Excerpted from “Let Us Dream”
PROLOGUE
Qoutes:
“The basic rule of a crisis is that you don’t come out of it the same. If you get through it, you come out better or worse, but never the same.” p. 1
“The fact is that we are all tested in life. It’s how we grow.” p. 1
“To act in a Samaritan way in a crisis means letting myself be struck by what I see, knowing that suffering will change me. We Christians talk about this as taking up and embracing the cross.” p.3
“Embracing the cross, confident that what will come is new life, gives us the courage to stop lamenting and move out and serve others and so enable change, which will come only from compassion and service.” pgs. 3-4
“If we are to come out of this crisis less selfish than when we went in, we have to let ourselves be touched by others.” p. 5
Questions for Reflection:
1. Which quotes resonated most with you?
2. Pope Francis describes the pandemic as a cross and that we are called to “embrace the cross”, “to act in a Samaritan way”. Do you agree? How can we embrace the cross? How can we act in a Samaritan way?
3. What is a “hidden pandemic”? Can you give some examples? What is the implication of this concept?
4. Is the model proposed by the Pope (to see, to discern, to act) helpful?
PART ONE: A
PART ONE: A TIME TO SEE
“I think Covid-19 is making it apparent, for those with eyes to see. This is a time for integrity, for exposing the selective morality of ideology, and for embracing the full implications of what it means to be children of God...
This crisis has called forth the sense that we need each other, that the people still exists. Now is the time for a new Humanism that can harness this eruption of fraternity, to put an end to the globalization of indifference and the hyperinflation of the
individual. we need to feel again that we need each other, that we have a resonsibility for others, including for those not yet born and for those not yet deemed to be citizens.
We can reorganize the way we live together in order better to choose what matters. We can work together to achieve it. We can learn what takes us forward, and what sets us back. We can choose.”
Excerpted from “Let Us Dream”
PART ONE: A TIME TO SEE
Qoutes:
“They remind us that our lives are a gift and we grow by giving of ourselves; not preserving ourselves but losing ourselves in service.” p.13
“What the Lord asks of us today is a culture of service, not a throwaway culture. But we can’t serve others unless we let their reality speak to us.” p. 15
“To act against them (narcissism, discouragement, and pessimism) you have to commit to the small concrete, positive actions you can take, whether you’re sowing hope or working for justice.” p.16
“The essence of God is mercy, which is not just seeing and being moved but responding with action.” p. 19
“The indifferent person is closed to the new things that God is offering us.” p. 20
Questions for Reflection:
1. Which quotes resonated most with you?
2. Do you agree that we must “go to the edges of existence” to respond to the pandemic and other crises?
3. What is the “virus of indifference” and what are the antibodies to it?
4. Are narcissism, discouragement, and pessimism enabling us to escape reality and to block growth?
5. Is there such a thing as a “personal Covid” and if so what should we do about them?
PART TWO: A TIME TO
PART TWO: A TIME TO CHOOSE
“A time of trial is always a time of distinguishing the paths of the good that lead to the future from other paths that lead nowhere or backward. With clarity, we can better choose the first...
Most of all, we need prayer, to hear the prompts of the Spirit and cultivate dialogue in a community that can hold us and allow us to dream. Thus armed, we can read right the signs of the times and opt for a way that does us all good.
In walking together, reading the signs of the times, open to the new things of the Spirit, we might take some lessons from this ancient church experience of synodality which I have sought to revive.
First: We need a respectful, mutual listening, free of ideology and predetermined agendas. The aim is not to reach agreement by means of a contest between opposing positions, but to journey together to seek God’s will, allowing differences to harmonize. Most important of all is the synodal spirit: to meet each other with respect and trust, to believe in our shared unity, and to receive the new thing that
the Spirit wishes to reveal to us.
Second: Sometimes this new thing means resolving disputed questions through overflow. Breakthroughs happen, often at the last minute, leading to a meeting of the minds that allows us to move forward. But the overflow might equally mean an invitation to change our way of thinking and our lenses, to shed our rigidity and our agendas, and look in places we never noticed before. Ours is a God of Suprises, who is always ahead of us.
Third: This is a patient process, which does not come easily to our impatient age. But perhaps, in lockdown, we have learned better how to approach it...
Time belongs to the Lord. Trusting in Him, we move forward with courage, building unity through discernment, to discover and implement God’s dream for us, and the paths of action ahead.”
Excerpted from “Let Us Dream”
PART TWO: A TIME TO CHOOSE
Qoutes:
“In times of trial you need to be firm in faith, to stay faithful to what matters.” p. 51
“Like its members, the Church can be an instrument of God’s mercy because it needs that mercy. Just as none of us should reject other people because of their sins and failures, but help them be what they are meant to be, Christ’s followers should love and listen to the Church, build her up, take responsibility for her, including her sins and failures.” p. 72
“At those moments when the Church shows herself to be weak and sinful, let us help her get up again; let us not condemn or disdain her, but care for her like our own mother.” p. 72
“A Church that teaches must be firstly a Church that listens.” p. 84
Questions for Reflection:
1. Which quotes resonated most with you?
2. Do Catholics appreciate and understand the principles of Catholic Social Action?
3. Can the Holy Spirit help us to discern?
4. How can we choose to help the Church when it appears weak and sinful?
PART THREE: A TIME TO ACT
PART THREE: A TIME TO ACT
“The closeness of God calls us together...This time for action asks us to recover our sense of belonging, the knowledge that we are part of a people...
At the beginning of the story of every people is a quest for dignity and freedom, a history of solidarity and struggle...
Our age calls for a class of politicians and leaders who take inspiration from Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan, which shows how we can develop our lives, our calling and mission. So often what we find at the bottom of it all is the issue of distance. Faced with the man left at the side of the road, some decide to walk on: distant from the situation, they prefer to ignore the facts and carry on as if nothing had happened. Imprisoned in various kinds of thinking and justifications, they pass on by.
It’s the same problem as ever: poverty conceals itself in shame. In order to see, understand, and feel it, you have to come close..To recognize and come close—that’s the first step. The second step consists in responding practically and immediately, because a concrete act of mercy is always an act of justice.
But a third step is necessary if we are not to fall into mere welfarism: to reflect on the first two steps and open ourselves to the necessary structural reforms. An authentic politics designs those changes alongside, with, and by means of all those affected, respecting their culture and their dignity.”
Excerpted from “Let Us Dream”
PART THREE: A TIME TO ACT
Summary:
“Let it not be said, in years to come, that in response to the coronavirus we failed to act to restore the dignity of our peoples, to recover our memory, and to remember our roots.” pgs.99-100
“Jesus restores dignity to the people in acts and words that perform God’s closeness. No one is saved alone. Isolation is not part of our faith.” p. 104
“You can’t know poverty from a distance; you have to touch it.” p. 113
“Human life is never a burden.” p. 115
“To promote the Gospel and not welcome the strangers in need, nor affirm their humanity as children of God, is to seek to encourage a culture that is Christian in name only, emptied of all that makes it distinctive.” p. 119
“A sober, humble lifestyle dedicated to service is worth more than thousands of followers on social networks.” p. 127
“To guarantee a world where dignity is valued and respected through concrete actions is not just a dream but a path to a better future.” p. 133
Questions for Reflection:
1. Which quotes resonated most with you?
2. What did Pope Francis mean when he said, “Do not let this moment pass us by”?
3. What are the implications of the statement, “”No one is saved alone”?
4. Do you agree that “what will save us is an encounter not an idea”?
5. Are we all capable of “going to the margins”?
GATHERING PRAYER
Be With Us Today
St. Thomas More (1478-1535)
Father in heaven, you have given us a mind to know you, a will to serve you, and a heart to love you.
Be with us today in all that we do, so that your light may shine out in our lives.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
For more information about Faith Feeds, visit bc.edu/c21faithfeeds
This program is sponsored by Boston College’s Church in the 21st Century Center, a catalyst and a resource for the renewal of the Catholic Church.
(617)5 52-0470 • church21@bc.edu • bc.edu/c21