Of stoups and collects

Monsignor Charles Pope (Archdiocese of Washington DC) as always is on the money with some observations about churchy language.

one time I proudly announced, “RCIA classes will begin next week, so if you know anyone who is interested in attending please fill out an information card on the table just outside the sacristy door.” I thought I’d been perfectly clear, but then a new member approached me after Mass to inquire about the availability of classes to become Catholic and when they would begin. Wondering if she’d forgotten the announcement I reminded her what I had said about RCIA classes; she looked at me blankly. “Oh,” I said, “Let me explain what I mean by RCIA.” After I did so, I mentioned that she could pick up a flyer over by the sacristy door. Again I got a blank stare, followed by the question “What’s the sacristy?” Did I dare tell her that the classes would be held in the rectory?

The faith brings with it a new vocabulary. There are words like grace, mercy that have specific meanings in the context of the Christian life. There are things we do, like baptism, Eucharist, and things that are used to do those things, ambo, thurible. Specialized language allows us to be precise, but it can be confusing to the outsider, or for that matter, to many insiders. A few years ago I brought the class in to the church for a “Liturgical Scavenger Hunt”. Among the items they were to find were the Holy Water stoups. Our DRE at the time admitted she did not know that was what they were called. For my part, I mispronounced Collect for more than a decade after my conversion.

Part of what I do each Sunday is to give children the vocabulary of faith. I work with an age group that are word sponges. Give them a batch of new words and they pounce on them like a hungry lion. That vocabulary will serve them the rest of their lives.

20+C+M+B+17

The year 2016 being over and done with, here are some things I’ve learned over the last 365 days.

• The child who is always first to class will always be the first to class even if she arrives 30 seconds after class was supposed to start.
• Some children speak very softly. Others are very loud. There is no in between.
• If you want to feel old, explain to a ten-year-old what the Soviet Union was. Bonus Old (Wo)Man points if you happened to be in Europe on November 9, 1989. (I was in Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1989 and again in 1990; the difference was like night and day.)
• Lectio divina can be done with children. Just not very much of it.
• Children remember stories long after they have forgotten facts.

The picture? That is my view of the world on Saturday afternoons. I’m part of the choir that provides sacred music for the 4:00 p.m. Saturday Masses.

Inclusivity and Gratitude

Lectionary-based catechesis has its pluses and minuses. I think is important to immerse students in the Bible, especially the Gospels. When we were teaching according to a textbook-based curriculum, I used to do a ten- to fifteen-minute Gospel reflection. Sometimes I would read it aloud, than have one of the better readers read it aloud a second time. Then we’d go over difficult or new words, and a question-and-answer to elicit understanding and get the students thinking about the passage. Other times, I took a more Ignatian approach, encouraging the students to put themselves in the scene and imagine walking with Jesus. A lectionary-based approach encourages this kind of thing, and provides ample opportunities to connect the Gospel to the Old Testament, to the Law and the Prophets who found their fulfillment in Christ.

This is all very well, but there are drawbacks to this approach. First, it is hit-or-miss. The curriculum is at the mercy of the cycle of readings for that year. Important readings are lost, either because of weeks off in the class schedule, summer break, or because the reading occurs on a weekday Mass or on a Holy Day that is not transferred to Sunday. By its nature, lectionary-based catechesis is unsystematic.

Another problem is that the richness of Scripture requires curriculum developers and catechists to be selective. It is impossible to draw every possible lesson from the Sunday readings. This week is a case in point.

The Gospel reading for the 28th Sunday in Year C (and that would be October 9 this year) is the story of the ten lepers. They were healed by Jesus, who then instructed them to present themselves to a priest to be declared free of the leprosy as required by the Law. Only one, a Samaritan rather than a Judean, returned from the priest to give thanks for the great gift our Lord had given him.

Most of the lectionary-based materials for this Sunday take up the theme of inclusion or inclusivity. There are good reasons for this. Lepers in were the outcasts among the outcasts, literally untouchable. Their healing brought them back into the greater community. Moreover, the grateful leper was the Samaritan, and in a sense he would remain an outsider even after he was healed. Moreover, grade four is the age when children start to worry about who’s out and who’s in. It’s when social circles, cliques if you will, begin to form. Now is the time to begin inculcating the Christian premise that all are welcome, to begin teaching against discrimination and exclusion.

But something greater, more important, is missing from all of the materials I’ve reviewed, and that is the question of gratitude. The gratitude we owe to each other, and first and foremost the gratitude we owe to the Almighty. Today most people, even Catholics I should say, no longer say grace before eating. The Thanksgiving holiday, coming in a few short weeks, is more an occasion to pig out and watch football than to, well, give thanks.

The materials not only failed to mention the need for thanksgiving and gratitude, they failed to make the connection to the Eucharist. That word, I trust you know, means thanksgiving.

Speaking of Catholics, we sometimes hear distressing statistics regarding how many Catholics believe, or rather don’t believe, that Jesus Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. One of the more recent surveys shows that only 65% of “practicing Catholics” believe that the Eucharist is “the true presence of Jesus Christ”. Moreover, a large number of Catholics say that going to Mass is not important. Never mind that one of the Precepts of the Church is “to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation”. If we truly believed Jesus was present in the Eucharist, would we not want to be at Mass every time we could? Would we not go out of our way to be there?

In preparing for this week’s lesson, I made sure that the class won’t miss the fact that we owe gratitude to God and to each other for the blessings that we have, and that the greatest way we show our gratitude to God is in our joyful and active participation in the liturgy.

The Sacred Page has an excellent article on the topic of gratitude and the Eucharist.  Please give it a read.

Prayer before the Lesson

Last week, I briefly discussed the usual arrangement of our class altar. Now, I’d like to briefly describe the structure of our opening prayer. One of the guiding principles here is to stick with the traditions of the Church as much as possible, which means that prayer texts are almost always from the Bible, the Liturgy of the Hours, and other traditional devotions. These prayers may often be abbreviated for time.

Before the prayer begins we have one student light a candle and another prepare a small quantity of holy water. A third student is chosen as the reader, or this task is given to the assistant if the reading is long or presents too many pronunciation difficulties. After the candle is lit, and all gathered have blessed themselves with the holy water, we begin with the Sign of the Cross and then a traditional call and response. Most commonly one of the following:

Our help is in the name of the Lord.

Who made heaven and earth.

or

Open my Lips, O Lord.

And my mouth shall declare your praise.

or during Lent

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you.

For by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

The designated reader immediately proceeds with a Biblical text. This will either be from one of the Lectionary readings for that particular Sunday, or something directly connected to the lesson plan. Afterwards the teacher names the intentions for the week and students have the opportunity to add their own (verbally or silently) as they desire. Then the reader or teacher reads the concluding prayer.

We break with this format when the occasion calls for something different. In November, for example, we use the Little Litany of the Holy Souls and the Litany to St. Charles Borromeo. In a more musically inclined class, we might try our hand at chanting a Psalm text.

The Class Altar

This past Sunday was, of course, Catechetical Sunday, and as always in our parish, the first day of class for our K-8 Religious Education students. Our first day of the year format allows only about 20 minutes of classroom time, so I prefer to forgo the traditional icebreakers (ours is a fairly stable community and most of the kids already know each other by the time they reach grade four) and instead use the time to introduce the group to the class altar.

It may sound pretentious to refer to what I’m about to describe as an “altar”, but I use the term quite deliberately. What may be an ordinary student’s desk has been dedicated to a sacramental purpose for the next 60 minutes or so, and for that time ceases to be just a desk. If you’ve ever heard the story of Dorothy Day and the coffee cup, you know what I mean by this.

Our class altar is made from any available table in the room, or a student’s desk in a pinch. It contains, at a minimum, the following:

• A covering in the liturgical color of the day. (The plastic table covers sold at “dollar” stores work well enough.)
• A crucifix.
• A vial of holy water and a small stoup.
• A candle.

On the first day I also added:

• A bible.
• A sacramentary. We have an old one that was donated to us after the release of the 2011 Missal. Although no longer suitable for liturgical use, it’s nice to have around because the students are often curious about the “Big Red Book” that the priest uses.
• A Rosary.
• A can of beans, recalling the Corporal Works of Mercy.
• A copy of the Apostles’ Creed.
• An icon of Saint Luke.

The students were asked to name each of these items. As they did, I had the opportunity to tell them what we would be studying this year.

Next week, I’ll describe how we use the class altar for opening prayer.

To It and At It

There has been a too-long hiatus in posting. Nothing unusual in that: many blogs go unattended after a month when their creators get bored with them. But in my case a lot has happened in the interim with two children graduating high school, job changes, stray kittens showing up on the stoop and whatnot. In a few days we start Religious Education and my aide and I will be working with a fresh crop of fourth- and fifth-graders. I’ve decided it’s time to get at it and to it. I hope to keep you posted on how it goes.

In the meantime, an explanation the banner image. From left to right: St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican; Mount Vernon and the Washington Monument in Baltimore; Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore; and dessert.

 

Sundæ Sermon Notes: 25th Sunday (OT)

Today most of the sermon was on Amos. Father picked up on something that previously escaped me: the dishonest merchants were in a hurry for a religious feast time (“when will the new moon be over?”) and the Sabbath to end so they could get back to work. He pointed out that we might be honest in our business dealings but if even so we cannot put our business before God. He reminded us not to count anything, business, sports, whatever, as more important than our Sunday obligation and our service to those in need.

He also reminded us not be fooled or discouraged by media reports of what the Holy Father says, and urged us to read the America interview for ourselves, and let the Pope speak for himself.

Catechetics

The always excellent Monsignor Charles Pope is calling for a back to basics catechesis. This is a topic naturally dear to my heart and as usual, he nails it. “It became clear to me in that moment that we could no longer do business as usual when it came to catechesis,” he writes.

[W]e have to go back to basics and tell the “old, old stories” again of mankind lost in sin, living in the dark shadows of death and ensnared in the mystery [of] iniquity. Yes, It was time to re-read the Genesis account of Original Sin and all the old stories.

He goes on to describe the program in his parish, in which all grades are taught from the same Bible text each week, with parents in their own group going over the same material. He describes his own approach, based on the three pillars: Sin, Redemption and Grace, but what strikes me is the weight he assigns to Bible stories:

Bible Stories are both memorable, and teach fundamental truths in ways that reach deeper than merely the intellect. They touch the heart and draw the children into the world and mind of God.

When I first started working in the classroom, my job was to take the Gospel for that particular Sunday. After reading it to the class I opened the floor for discussion, guiding the students to relate Christ’s teaching to their lives.

This year in my parish we are starting a lectionary-based curriculum. Each week takes the Gospel (or occasionally an Epistle or Old Testament reading), which we will explore in detail, tying it into specific Church teachings. Children in the same family will be on the same page, so to speak, so families can pick up the theme together if they wish.

Such an approach carries a risk. This is not a systematic ticking off of the CCC point by point, and some critics have described it as hit-or-miss. I have criticized “content-free” catechesis myself, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Before the upheavals of the 1970s, a teacher could count on the children growing up in an environment where the Gospel was part of the fabric of daily life, and going through the questions in the catechism book simply added some intellectual rigor to what the child lived in his family and in the parish. Today, we cannot count on any of this, and catechists have to be evangelists as well. The times may well call for some good old fashioned kerygma.

Sundæ Sermon Notes: 22nd Sunday (OT)

The humble man uses his strengths to serve God while understanding and accepting his limitations. The humble man depends on God and trusts him rather than his own powers.

Sundæ Sermon Notes: 20th Sunday (OT)

The transitional deacon spoke today at his last Mass before leaving for Rome to finish his priestly formation. He linked all three readings to the theme of martyrdom. He said the virtue of charity is a sharing in the love of God. Love means to empty oneself for the good of another and Jesus did this perfectly. Human love is limited, but divine love is not limited. God transforms our finite charity to conform to his infinite charity. He also mentioned the example of St Lawrence, the deacon martyr.

He asked whether we loved early things so much that we are willing to forgo heavenly things, and he asked this of himself.

Personal note: Some people don’t like to hear a priest or deacon admit his own struggles. These are the folks who were scandalized when Pope Francis, in his first appearance as Pope, asked for the people’s prayers. I don’t think it diminishes the special nature of the ordained priesthood for a priest to view himself as a brother to parishioners. A priest is not a plaster saint to be put on a pedestal, after all.