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Hope for a Reimagined Future

One of the hardest working groups of people in the Catholic Church today are the men and women who serve as directors or coordinators of religious education. Some of my closest friends serve in these roles, so the conversation I had with a DRE unnerved me. Usually, I am quick to defend, but somewhere deep inside, her story irritated me.

I was at a meeting, listening to complaints, suggestions, and the like. One person expressed concern that the idea of reimagining faith formation was overwhelming because she was, after all, the only one doing anything in her parish. I did not have time to point out the absurdity of that statement, so the conversation continued. At the end of the meeting, the DRE came up to me and said, “You are not going to believe this,” she said, as she relayed a story of a mother bringing her son in for an interview for confirmation. The DRE asked the child to name the seven sacraments. The young man could not. The DRE was flummoxed. The mom demanded the Sacrament. The DRE wondered aloud to me about her predicament. “How can I say that this child is ready when he cannot answer the simplest question?”

I do not think she liked my answer. If a child gets to the ninth grade and cannot name the seven sacraments – especially after nine years of religious education – he or she is the victim of institutional failure. His parents have failed him. His religious education program has failed him. His catechists have failed him. And yes, this holy woman standing before me telling her story has failed him. Every person responsible for his faith formation – including himself – has fallen short.

The reality is this: we have to rethink the way we prepare parents when their infants are baptized so they understand their role as first teachers. Then we need to give them the tools to accomplish this. Moving backward, we have to rethink how we prepare couples for marriage, so they know the responsibility that lies ahead. We have to rethink early childhood education so something actually happens between baptism, first reconciliation and first Communion. We need to accompany families as they raise faith-filled children. We need to rethink comprehensive ministry to, with, and for young people. We need to rethink confirmation preparation and stop thinking of confirmation as graduation. Even when we use the correct language, many parishes still treat confirmation as graduation, evident by the lack of ways young people can be involved and are formed in the years that follow the sacrament. If we want young people to stay involved in the parish, why not provide an environment for them from a very early age so the parish community is an extension of the family, not a sacramental marketplace where we check in once in a while? This will require a profound cultural shift, but if we reimagine the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and marriage, I believe we might have a shot at changing the future of faith formation.

Directors and coordinators of religious education have a really, really tough job. Parents often abdicate young people’s faith formation to these men and women, some of whom are prepared for the challenge while others are not. This happens, in part, because mom and dad do not have the skills to articulate their faith. But it also happens because we have become a society of letting someone else take care of the hard stuff.

My request of parents is this: If you have children, take responsibility for your children’s faith formation. Talk to them. Read with them. Study with them. Ask them about the presence of God in their lives. If you are a catechist or coordinator, or director of religious education, do two things: first, ask yourself if you are prepared for the role you play. If not, enroll in formation for yourself. Second, put the textbook down and have a conversation with your students. Find out what they know and what they believe. See if God is real to them or if they are just going through the motions.

In a recent conversation with a close friend, who serves a large, suburban parish as a director of religious education, she relayed her concern with the way parents transmit the faith:

The main thing that I am noticing with this group [of parents] is the fact that they seem to forget the role that families play in formation, not to mention the role families play in the parish. The children were asked to draw in their book a picture of who was present at their baptism. All but 3 pictures depicted parents, usually their mom holding them, and a priest or deacon. Very few, however, drew pictures that included Godparents, grandparents, or any other family or friends present.

The story is anecdotal, but I believe it is also emblematic of how children see their families in relation to the rest of the community. Younger families are struggling to find their place in the parish. Parents lack the language to articulate the faith at home. We must help parents find the right words to tell the stories of faith, to share their own experience of encounters with the person of Jesus Christ. It takes a village to raise a child but only if the villagers work together.

Shortly after being elected, Pope Francis said, essentially, that the Church is a love story, not an institution. That gives me hope.

Because love never fails.

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First Teachers

Today is graduation day, so my studies are on my mind.

As a parent who is also a practicing Catholic, hoping to raise his child to be faithful, there were, perhaps, no more daunting words that those the priest prayed at the end of the Rite of Baptism for my children. In concluding this ritual of initiation, the celebrant prayed first over my wife, the mother of the child, reminding her to give thanks for the gift of this child now and in the future. Then the celebrant blessed me, the father of the child, reminding me that, together with my wife, we “will be the first teachers of (our) child in the ways of faith.” The celebrant continued, “May they be the best of teachers, bearing witness to the faith by what they say and do, in Christ Jesus our Lord.”This is a tough challenge for any parent, but it was a challenge that unfolded for me more and more as I journeyed through my coursework at LaSalle.

In those early years, when the children were quite young, the primary role of my wife and I was to feed and care for our helpless children. As parents, we taught our children to walk, talk, count, identify colors, and be kind to others. Parents like us, who wish their children to grow up in the faith – any faith – also tell stories of Jesus. Catholic parents help their children make the Sign of the Cross correctly and we teach them their prayers. As first teachers in the ways of faith, we are storytellers and witnesses to a loving God on whom our children can depend. As Saint John Paul II stated in 2003, “people today put more trust in witnesses than in teachers, in experience than in teaching, and in life and action than in theories. Therefore, a loving witness of Christian life will always remain the first and irreplaceable form of mission.”This charge to be witnesses certainly extends to parents. The obstacles to raising faith-filled children today do not involve public games of chance with a lion at the center of the ring, but the rise of anxiety, shootings in our schools, and the onslaught of technological devices certainly do their part to make it harder for parents to be strong witnesses to the faith.

As a theologian in the Roman Catholic tradition, these questions are paramount to the future of our faith communities. As a parent, the answers might save my children’s souls.

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Telling the Story

In the midst of my doctoral studies, I took a course, “The Christian Tradition.” The early martyrs, whom we hear about in the daily readings after Easter,  intrigued me. In the face of death, these people stood stalwart, accepting that a proclamation of faith in Jesus of Nazareth would lead to being set ablaze, fed to animals, or (mercifully) beheaded. Yet the Gospel continued to spread. In fact, I found an article in The Wall Street Journal about the movie Paul, Apostle of Christ. The article cited a remarkable fact: when Paul died in A.D. 67, there were 2,500 Christians. By the year 350, there were 34 million (WSJ, 5/1/18). That gave me pause. In a time when you would be killed for professing faith in the Risen Jesus, the Good News spread, more people came to faith than left it, and the church flourished. Then Constantine came along and institutionalized the faith into religion and things have never quite been the same. It seems we might have been better off when we had to tell the story than when we were allowed to tell the story.

I remember in my readings for “The Christian Tradition” course studying the early church and its first members. In his book, The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1, Justo González reminds readers that, “The earliest Christians did not consider themselves followers of a new religion” (González, 27). He repeats that sentiment more than half a dozen times in the pages that follow. I suppose this struck me not because it was new information but because it is often a misunderstanding among many of today’s faithful, who assume Jesus said, “Peter you are rock…” (Mt 16:18) and then finished the sentence with the command, “Now go put on your Alb and stole because you are the first pope.” In fact, González is clear:

All their lives they had been Jews and they still were. This was true of Peter and the twelve, of the seven, and of Paul. Their faith was not a denial of Judaism but was rather the conviction that the messianic age had finally arrived. . . The earliest Christians did not reject Judaism but were convinced that their faith was the fulfillment of the Messiah whom Jews over the ages had been anticipating (27).

With the influx of Gentile believers, we see the conversations unfold about how these new converts will be instructed, how they will be introduced to Judaism, and what, if any Jewish laws will be required of these non-Jews. The acceptance of Jews and subsequently of Christians – at least initially – by the Roman authorities is another misunderstanding. That the persecution of Christians led to the “consciousness of Christianity as a separate religion” (30) is ordinarily where most people pick up the story of the early church, perhaps because of Paul’s writing (see Acts 9:29, 2 Timothy 3:11) and because of the lure of the persecution stories that encourage saintliness and sacrifice. Still, go back to The Wall Street Journalarticle: the faith spread. That much is clear.

What intrigues me about this period of time was howthe faith spread. Since written texts were in their early forms, the faithful depended on others to tell the stories of Jesus and his early band of followers orally. In addition, those early followers cared for one another: the orphans and widows were fed and protected, wages became communal as collections were taken and needs were met. It was, in essence, through storytelling and in taking care of the most vulnerable that the faith gained momentum.

González writes that the early Christian communities eventually separated their gatherings into two parts – readings and commentary and communion, focusing not on the events of what we now call Good Friday, but instead on the resurrection of Jesus and the “promises of which that resurrection was the seal” (108). Gonzalez writes, “A new reality had dawned, and Christians gathered to celebrate that dawning and to become participants in it” (108). The key word, for me, is “celebrate” and I am reminded of Pope Francis’ admonition in one of his homilies early in his pontificate, “Often Christians behave as if they were going to a funeral procession rather than to praise God, no?” as well as his call in Evangelii Gaudium: “Consequently, an evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral!” (EG, 10) Somewhere along the lines – between those early Christian gatherings and today, we have lost the idea that Mass is a celebration, at least in many Catholic churches. Gonzalez speaks of that coming change and mentions the shift from communion to preaching and the influence of the Reformation, but I appreciate his focus on the “remarkable characteristics of those early communion services” (108). Even as the world around them was changing and the faithful were being fed to the animals (quite literally), there was a weekly celebration of joy and gratitude because Jesus had been raised from the dead and the implications of that event on the lives of the faithful were enormous.

As I reflect on this, I find myself thinking back to Pope Paul VI and Evangelii Nuntiandi and his charge: “Above all the Gospel must be proclaimed by witnesses” (EN, 21). How do I witness to my own children? How do I showthem the Gospel each day? How do I show them that faith in the person of Jesus Christ leads to joy?

May we bravely witness to the Gospel this week, allowing others to see our lives as celebrations of resurrected joy.

 

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Easter Monday

It is good to have the Gloria back.

It is good to have our Alleluia back.

It good to be free of Lent.

It is good to have journeyed well, to have sacrificed much, to have fasted intently, and to have prayed often.

It is good to be loved so much that His sacrifice is enough. Once. For all.

It is good that Springtime is finally here.

It is good that Easter dresses and shirts and ties fit this year, even if daddy’s shirt is a bit tight.

It is good that we celebrate good health.

It is good to be with family.

It is good that we live and work and pray in a country where we fear little when it comes to where we worship and how we worship. And though there is violence, it pales in comparison to the violence elsewhere.

It is good to hold your children close.

It is good to be forgiven. Redeemed. Saved. Blessed.

It is good.

It is very good.

We are, after all, the people of Easter.

And “Alleluia” is our song.

~pjd

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The Doctor Is In

Four years ago, I wrote about going back to school. I mentioned how the children put together a packet of pencils, pens, a notebook, and paper. They sent me off to La Salle University in the summer of 2015 to begin my doctoral studies.

Last Thursday, I finished.

After four summer sessions, dozens of research papers, course work, comprehensive exams, and a final, 250-page dissertation called, “Is Reimagining Faith Formation in the Roman Catholic Tradition Enough to Save the Church for Future Generations?” – it all came down to a conversation with colleagues on Thursday afternoon.

Friends and family gathered in the classroom to hear me pitch my ideas and then engage in a lively conversation with my three readers, Brother John, Father Frank, and my good friend Charlotte. After a little more than seventy-five minutes or so, they opened the conversation to the rest of the room. The first question came from a faculty member, “Isn’t this reimagining just a Hail Mary from the Church?”

The second question came from my own daughter, who I thought had been nodding off during the questioning, but who apparently paid enough attention to ask a pretty good question.

Then another one from another colleague. Then another follow up. Then our ninety minutes were up.

We were all asked to leave the room while the committee met.

After a few minutes, we were called back in and with the iPhone video rolling, my mentor, Brother John, announced, “Well, there is no use delaying it…..Congratulations, Dr. Donovan.”

I have to tell you, it was a little surreal.

So this week, I rest. I pray in thanksgiving for all those who brought me to this moment: my wife and children, my co-workers, Fr. Joe, Brother John, Fr. Frank, Charlotte, and especially, my parents – my first teachers in the ways of faith.

May you be able to unplug this week. May your palm branches find a place of honor in your home. May your feet be washed. May your cross be light. May you find time this week to just sit and be with the Lord in his passion. Read the story. Remember the suffering. Enter the sacrifice.

And celebrate the Light.

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The Wife’s Helper

This weekend’s Gospel reading is always a fun one to explain to children. As we sat in Mass this weekend and the deacon talked about the woman caught in adultery, child number four leans over to her mother and asks, “What is adultery?”

“Let’s just say the woman was caught in the company of another man,” came the response.

“Isn’t that just dating?” the child replies.

“Well….”

The oldest child wanted to know what happened to the man. Why is it always the woman caught adultery? What ever happened to the man?

Good question, but the deacon never got to that.

The whole situation reminded me of a day a lifetime ago when I was teaching middle school. We were discussing Henry VIII and had just finished reading Robert Bolt’s play “A Man For All Seasons” about St. Thomas More. We engaged in a powerful discussion about the formation of our conscience how we too could shape our lives so as to be “God’s first” above all that society tells us is better or more important.

At some point, the discussion turned to the mistresses of the late king. For the first time that afternoon, I saw a couple of blank stares on a few faces in the crowd and upon questioning the reasons for such looks, I was told that while I had been cruising along quite nicely discussing kings and servants, popes and acts of succession, I had never really outlined what a mistress was or how these women had worked their way from housemaids to queen.

Puzzled, I asked “Yo,u know what a mistress is, don’t you?”

“Oh sure,” came the response from one student in the front row, “she’s like a wife’s helper.”

Sit with that for a minute.

I must have grinned from ear to ear because she knew from the laughter of those more experienced than she that her answer had been off the mark just a bit. When I explained a better definition of a mistress, she too joined in the laughter at her previous answer and left class that day with her head held high that she had been the one to not only cause us to take a break from some serious discussion, but that it had been her uninformed answer that had left us laughing right up until the bell rang.

As teachers and parents, children arrive before us with an emptiness that we feel obliged to fill. We fill it with information we think they should know and beliefs we think they ought to hold. Sometimes we forget to leave a little room in that space for them to learn for themselves. Daily, we pour in facts and experience that are unique to us and expect them to shape their lives accordingly. We ignore the individuality before us until one of them says something that makes us realize that what we have created is not quite what we had expected. We have told our version of the world, but we left out some important details.

Parents are first teachers, but we better make sure we always lead in the right direction.

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The Father Who Runs

At Mass on Sunday, most people heard the story of the Prodigal Son – the little brat who says, “Hey, Dad, can we pretend you’re dead so I can have my inheritance and go do whatever I want?”

You know the story. Dad says, “Sure” and the son goes off and soon finds himself destitute.

But put yourself in that first-century audience. The story is always told to Pharisees when Jesus is surrounded by tax collectors and sinners. Almost from the beginning of the story, we are in trouble. Not because the son asks the father for his inheritance – though we might find that absurd – the Jews would not have. Where the wheels fall off the wagon is that the son not only loses the money, he clearly loses his faith. After all, he becomes a swineherd. He takes care of pigs, which the Jews knew to be unclean. Not only does he care for them, he longs to eat from the food on which they feast. A swineherd, to the Jews listening, was beyond the pale of God’s forgiveness. There was no reconciliation available to such a person.

Then we have another problem. The inclination is to feel sorry for the son. But he  actually practices his apology before ever returning home. If we pay attention, we understand that while he might be sorry he is poor, but the contrition is contrived. It’s rehearsed. He knows just what to say.

But none of that matters. While the son is still a long way off, the father sees him and runs to him.

The father runs.

At this point, the Jews in the audience are really squirming. For a Jewish father to run in a long tunic, he would have to lift the tunic and bare his legs – in public. He would have to shame himself and this father is only too happy to do this to get to his son. Nothing is more important to the father than bringing the son home. He waited for him. He was moved with compassion. He runs to him. And he doesn’t let the rehearsed speech continue. He stops the son midstream and forgives.

Would we ever do as much for a family member, a friend, a coworker? Or would we let them squirm through their apology while we wait for them to finish, silently enjoying their pain?

The hits keep coming as we see the story turn from the forgiving father or the prodigal son towards the unbelievable mercy of God. Everything is exaggerated. The robe is a sign of importance. The ring is a sign of authority. The sandals are a sign of a free man. The fatted calf is a sign of a family meal. The Jews who are listening would not have missed these clues. They would have understood that the storyteller was putting two things – swineherd  and forgiven – in the same sentence. And they would have been embarrassed.

Then there is the older brother. Looking into the party from the outside and thinking, I would imagine, “What the heck is going on in there?” Again, the father goes to the son. The son says, “I’ve always kept the law” just like a Scribe or a Pharisee in the audience would say. The older son calls the prodigal, “your son” not “my brother.” He has already distanced himself like we distance ourselves so quickly from someone who offends. We are so quick to walk away from someone who needs mercy.

In the end, the older brother doesn’t look that great. But he doesn’t look as bad as the Pharisee who Jesus chastises for praying, “Thank God I am not like these people.”

It’s a parable – a story that is meant to invite us in and then turn us on our heads. Why? Because with Jesus, history has to stop being ibid, ibid, ibid. All things are new. You can only be a part of the reign of God if you are willing to have your life turned upside down, to be converted. You will never reform your life if you are not open to the possibilities that people who sin can be forgiven, that hate can be overcome by love, and that evil can be beaten by prayer and good works.

It is easy to stand outside the party and criticize. It is easy to stay inside and wait for someone to approach you and beg forgiveness.

Yet, we are called to forgive. We are called to lift our tunics – even at the risk of shaming ourselves – and run to those who need us most.

And yes, we are called to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and enter the party where all are welcome equally.

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Annunciation

As my attention turns to the final edits, pagination, and printing of my dissertation, I fill this space not with my thoughts, but the very appropriate words of Malcolm Guite, who offers this sonnet on this Feast of the Annunciation:

We see so little, stayed on surfaces,

We calculate the outsides of all things,

Preoccupied with our own purposes

We miss the shimmer of the angels’ wings,

They coruscate around us in their joy

A swirl of wheels and eyes and wings unfurled,

They guard the good we purpose to destroy,

A hidden blaze of glory in God’s world.

But on this day a young girl stopped to see

With open eyes and heart. She heard the voice;

The promise of His glory yet to be,

As time stood still for her to make a choice;

Gabriel knelt and not a feather stirred,

The Word himself was waiting on her word.

Gabriel knelt. The Word waiting. What powerful images. May your week be filled with opportunities to announce God’s Word, leading to hidden blazes of glory in God’s world.

Peace.

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St. Joseph, Pray For Us

Tomorrow, we celebrate the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He is the patron saint of fathers (Joseph is also the patron saint of the Universal Church, families, fathers, expectant mothers (pregnant women), travelers, immigrants, house sellers and buyers, craftsmen, engineers, and working people in general), so he and I share a bond. I don’t have any kids like Jesus, but they try.

When I was in the Holy Land last year, we stayed at a convent built over the site of where Joseph might have lived with Mary and Jesus. It is just down the street from the Basilica of the Annunciation and next door to Joseph’s workshop, so who knows?

Nothing is recorded in Scriptures about St. Joseph’s words to his family. He gets a message in a dream, but even the Blessed Mother gets to speak once in a while. And yet, he is a model for fathers everywhere. There’s a lesson in there, albeit an ironic one, about who gets to talk and who gets to listen.

Joseph always makes me think about my father, quiet as a bookend and just as strong. As I try to land my dissertation, I am finding more and more research that speaks to the importance of fathers when it comes to raising faith-filled children. Nothing, it seems, can make up for a distant father. As I think about Joseph, I realize that in the Jewish tradition, the children learn their faith from the parent most like them. Dads teach boys and moms teach girls. It stands to reason, then, that Jesus’ own foundation in faith came from Joseph. He was the one who taught Our Lord to read, to pray the Shema, to understand the great commandments, how to worship in the synagogue, and how to rest on the Sabbath. Joseph was Jesus’ first teacher in the ways of faith. He was the best of teachers. Sure, Jesus was human and divine, but do any of us really believe that, as a small child, he was fully aware of everything, fully conscious of what was ahead? How do you square that with humanity? How do you put that in the head of an eight-year-old? No, Joseph taught Jesus, I am sure of it.

Like Joseph, I must teach my children – by word and example – what an intimate relationship with God looks like. I must teach them to pray, how to love, how to forgive, and how to rest. This week, I will be like Joseph and listen more. I will speak less. I will work hard. And, like Joseph certainly did for Jesus, I will teach my children well.

St. Joseph, patron of fathers everywhere, pray for us.

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Have It All

One of the cool things about telling the Amazon Alexa in the kitchen to play music is that, every so often, she (yes, we think she’s a she) will play music that we have never heard before and we uncover a new artist or a new song. That was true last week.

The tubular device played Jason Mraz’s song, “Have It All” and we were hooked. We paused the song to ask Alexa what it was and then immediately grabbed the phone to download it. We store up credit on iTunes and share music as a family so everyone can enjoy it. It’s an earworm kind of song that gets stuck in your head, but, in this case, I am okay with that.

Apparently, the artist was visiting Myanmar some years ago, participating in a concert aimed at ending the exploitation and trafficking of young people. While traveling, Mraz noticed that Buddhist people commonly greet each other with the phrase “Tashi delek,” which translates to, “May you have auspiciousness and causes of success.”

And the song was born.

I have long thought that all music is directional – God to us, us to God, or us to each other. Most the music that I would label, “garbage” is from us to each other. Most of the music that praises God is us to God. This song, in my head, is clearly God to us. Here is how it opens:

May you have auspiciousness and causes of success
May you have the confidence to always do your best
May you take no effort in your being generous
Sharing what you can, nothing more nothing less
May you know the meaning of the word happiness
May you always lead from the beating in your chest
May you be treated like an esteemed guest
May you get to rest, may you catch your breath

And may the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows
And may the road less paved be the road that you follow

What a great invitation. What a challenge. We have a God who loves us unconditionally. A God who always wants the best for us. I do not believe that God wants us “to have it all” in the material sense. But I do believe God wants us to share in His love, His life, His Spirit. For me, that’s what the song says. That’s what went through my head as we danced around the kitchen, playing the song again and again.

Well here’s to the hearts that you’re gonna break
Here’s to the lives that you’re gonna change
Here’s to the infinite possible ways to love you
I want you to have it
Here’s to the good times we’re gonna have
You don’t need money, you got a free pass
Here’s to the fact that I’ll be sad without you
I want you to have it all

We are going to be hurt, but we have the power to change the world. Material things are not necessary. Just live Jesus and know that when we wander away from God, our presence is missed, though God never leaves us.

May you be as fascinating as a slap bracelet
May you keep the chaos and the clutter off your desk
May you have unquestionable health and less stress
Having no possessions though immeasurable wealth
May you get a gold star on your next test
May your educated guesses always be correct
And may you win prizes shining like diamonds
May you really own it each moment to the next

And may the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows
And may the road less paved be the road that you follow

So there is our challenge for the week. Love one another in a way that makes the love of God real in our lives. Be a window into the heart of Jesus. Greet others with “Tashi delek.” Wish others well by being the presence of God in their lives.

And don’t forget to sing.