A Shepherd’s Message

By Daniel Cardinal DiNardo

We are amid the first weeks of the school year, and we are also beginning our religious education formation sessions for children, teens and young adults. We are also continuing our formation sessions for our children and adult catechumens. Because we are human persons, we are born to learn and be catechized. We also look to those who are generous in imparting knowledge and an ethic of goodness and beauty.

An act of thanks goes out to all the teachers in our schools: Catholic, private and public. Teachers are most frequently quiet, even unassuming. However, they are essential leaders and active agents in our culture who can inspire both young and old to learn and embody subjects worthy of human knowledge and discipline. How much we owe our teachers!

In the same breath, we must also honor all our catechists. In what is one of the oldest ministries in the Church, catechists generously give of themselves and share the deeper dimensions of their own Catholic faith. Catechists have the challenge to teach and proclaim publicly the genuine truth and beauty of the Catholic faith to children, adults, accomplished learners and new catechumens.

With the words and power of the Scriptures in their hands, with the prayer of the Our Father and Hail Mary in their heart, with the understanding of the faith and the Catechism in their heads, with the surrounding sound and beauty of Catholic art and imagination covering them, catechists go forth with boldness. They also must show great courage since nothing can be more fearful than to teach the faith to a group of rowdy sixth-grade students! It is only God’s love manifesting itself through a catechist that explains who and what a catechist is and does. MAY THEIR NUMBERS INCREASE IN THIS LOCAL CHURCH IN ALL LANGUAGES!

Since we are celebrating a Eucharistic Revival this year in the Church in the United States, one of the major themes for catechesis this year is the Mystery of the Eucharist.

In an Apostolic Letter to the whole Church last year titled “Desiderio Desideravi,” Pope Francis gives eloquent expression to the purpose and meaning of the Liturgy and to his desire that there be a deepening catechesis and formation on the Liturgy for all God’s people.

In one beautiful section, the Holy Father writes about amazement and astonishment before the Paschal Mystery, that is, the event of the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. The Christian Mystery is an event and not just a subjective feeling of interior grace before a vague sense of the eternal.

The Paschal deed of Jesus has the power to reach towards each one of us, here and now, with an abundance that goes beyond us to the end of time when Christ will come again in fullness. A human being is capable of symbolic action and symbolic understanding; Baptism makes one capable of a sacramental understanding.

The Holy Father wants us to “unpack” this sacramental understanding with the help of our catechists. It is a slow and patient kind of learning and acting. The liturgical celebration requires us to be active and prayerful listeners and celebrants. I hope that you will read his letter and study it.

Pray for our catechists (and all teachers) that they do their work well! †