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His
Em. Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos Prefect
of the Congregation for the Clergy ___________________________________________________ Catechists,
teachers of religion and
of the mystery of the church ___________________________________________________ Jubilee
for Catechists and Religion Teachers Rome,
December 9th 2000 "...
Everyone who calls upon the name of the
Lord will be saved. But how are men to call upon Him in whom they have not
believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard?
And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless
they are sent? As it is written, How
beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!" (Rom
10:13-15). 1)
Dearest catechists and religion teachers, these words spoken by the
Apostle Paul to the Church of Rome – which these days welcomes you for the
occasion of the celebrations of the Jubilee – are addressed to you in a
particular way; inasmuch as, by the mandate received, you are the ones who
communicate in a closer and more intense way the evangelizing mission of the
Church. As
you well know, the last directives given by Jesus to His disciples, before the
Ascension, make up a clear and unequivocal missionary mandate; in the Gospel
according to Mark we read: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to
the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who
does not believe will be condemned...- and immediately after, the Evangelist
says – And they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked
with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it" (Mk.
16:15-16:20). To
begin with, I would like to stop upon the tie that unites the resurrected
Christ to the Church; we have just heard: "...the Lord worked with
them,"; only by using this reality as a starting point can one fully
comprehend the mystery of the Church and take upon oneself the style able to
express this truth; for you catechists, being in harmony with the profound
mystery of the Church – its being in Christ
-, is an essential characteristic, because this involves significant and
multiple falls for your mission. Even Vatican Council II, at the beginning of
the dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium,
asserts in an eloquent way " … the Church is in Christ like a
sacrament" (LG no.1: EV 1/284). 2)
Therefore, the Church does not only live in the memory and by the
historical memory of Jesus, that is to say, what He said and what He did. In
other terms, the disciples of the Lord, and in a particular way the catechists
and those having the burden and the honor of teaching religion, do not only
look at Jesus alone – and here the accent falls on the adverb only – with
the intent of reconstructing the lines from a critical and historical point of
view, as if dealing with one of the many personalities in history, even if
surprising. The
Church, while facing the One she recognizes and professes as her Lord – He
is the Domnus Iesus! -, cannot
limit herself to this. If she should do this, she would be unnatural, she
would give a diminished or rather an image that leads astray; on the contrary,
the Church is the new people of God on the path towards the day of the Lord,
she is the faithful spouse, she is the living body of Christ; therefore, a
living and beating reality, and more accurately, the living organism of the
Holy Spirit who is, par excellence, the Paschal gift from the crucified and
resurrected Christ. The
fourth Gospel narrates how Jesus on the cross, at the moment of His death,
bowing His head, breathed forth the Spirit and, again, just like the evening
of the same Easter Day, once again presenting Himself alive to His disciples,
at dinner, breathed the Holy Spirit upon them, ordering them to perpetuate His
salvific work: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any,
they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (Jn
20:22-23). Therefore,
on Easter Day, the promise made by Jesus during the Last Supper is achieved,
when He announced: "...the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit whom the Father
will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your
remembrance all that I have said to you" (Jn 14:26). 3)
From the Church, considered as the living organism of the Holy Spirit,
derive the important consequences on the way you, catechists, and you,
religion teachers, must do your precious mission, the one entrusted to you.
First of all, your are called upon to live and to express the greatness of the
ecclesial mystery; this means growing in the theological and experienced
knowledge of the Church, which is the mystery of communion originating from
the Holy Spirit and, at the same time, the company of those who believe in the
Resurrected Lord: the way, the truth and life. Thus,
the Church, in primis, is not an
institution created by men and left to its free development; on the contrary,
she is born from an event which is at the same time divine and human:
Pentecost, and is the family of those who, in the mystery, but truly, are
saved, through grace, from the Resurrected Lord; thus in the truest sense, she
gives us the contemporaneousness with Christ who unceasingly acts in history,
through the Holy Spirit: "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide
you into all the truth... He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine
and declare it to you" (Jn 16:13-14). 4)
The catechist, the teacher – as mentioned – is he who possesses
this conscience of faith, lives it and communicates it in his mission as
announcer and educator of the faith in the different specificity of the duty
you have as catechists and religion teachers. Just as different as the areas
you work in are: the school for teachers, who are entrusted with the job of
continuing, through education and culture, the teachings begun in the family.
But "what matters is to evangelize man’s culture and cultures… always
taking the person as one’s starting-point and always coming back to the
relationships of people among themselves and with God" (Evangelii
Nuntiandi, no.20). Religion classes in schools emphasize the relationship
between personal conscience and freedom with the ultimate goals, with God.
Therefore, the hour of religion in schools is the scholastic time
expressly dedicated to the answer to crucial, ultimate questions, which have
always resided in the heart of man, the motor of his existence: "What
must I do to give worth and full meaning to my life?" (John Paul II, Letter
to the youths for the Year of Youth del 1985, no.3). You,
the catechists and teachers, are those who have received the mandate and who,
in the name of the Church, accomplish the duty of catechizing; that is to say
– while staying close to the etymological meaning of the verb katechein
-, through your lively voices, echo strongly and comprehensively the good
news of Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world, He who is the meaning and
the end of all, He who is the realization and the happiness of man, to the
generations of the Third Millennium of the Christian era. And,
as recalled in the Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi
tradendae: "... very soon the name of catechesis was given to the
whole of the efforts within the Church to make disciples, to help people to
believe that Jesus is the Son of God, so that believing they might have life
in His name, and to educate and instruct them in this life and thus build up
the Body of Christ. The Church has not ceased to devote her energy to this
task" (Catechesi tradendae,
no.1: EV 6/1765). In
the light of the ecclesiological reality recalled above, and by the passage
quoted from the Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi
tradendae, precious indications can be drawn; in particular, we are
alluding to the tight link between the Holy Scriptures, Tradition and the
Magisterium, which the catechist must bear in mind when faith and his
communication are in play. In
other words, catechesis cannot be reduced to a sort of Biblical exegesis for
specialists, who operate apart from the Church, the only one able to
guarantee, with certitude, to every man, the encounter with Christ the Savior,
by overcoming all partial and subjective views of the Christian mystery. 5)
When, instead, we place ourselves outside of the ecclesial
interpretation, on every page of the Bible – the Old and the New Testament -
we only find ourselves, one’s culture or, more generically, the dominating
thinking of one’s era. Then, the facts and persons of sacred history are no
longer perceived as so many “signs”, through which the salvific plan of
God evolves in history, until the day of the Lord Jesus. Thus,
the bond that unites Scriptures and Tradition should not be overlooked in any
way, since it is in Scriptures and in Tradition that one finds the source of
catechesis. Let us listen once more to the words of the Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi
tradendae that guide our Jubilee reflection: "catechesis must be
impregnated and penetrated by the thought, the spirit and the outlook of the
Bible and the Gospels through assiduous contact with the texts themselves; but
it is also a reminder that catechesis will be all the richer and more
effective for reading the texts with the intelligence and the heart of the
Church and for drawing inspiration from the 2,000 years of the Church’s
reflection and life" (Catechesi
Tradendae, no.27: EV 6/1826). 6)
Following this, I would like to recall what the General
Catechetical Directory says with regards to the fundamental functions of
catechesis, that they may be the objects of reflection during our Roman
Jubilee days: "More
decisively one must go
back to faith. The relationship with God, in fact, begins with faith;
which on one hand is trusting adherence (fides
qua), on the other, it has context (fides
quae)". Thus,
even for faith – in other words, our relationship with God – what can be
found on the human level has value; when one is tied by friendship to a person
and has a relationship based on trust, one wishes to know more about that
person; thus, without tiring, one dialogues, raising new questions on
everything concerning that person, his history. The same must happen with
Jesus and His Gospel.
When one reaches a deeper knowledge of faith, all of Christian life is
illumined; then, one feels how essential it is to answer the questions faith
raises (Cf. 1 Pet 3:15); this is the delicate question that concerns the
reason-faith relationship and which catechesis must illustrate as a priority
in the light of the recent Encyclical Fides
et ratio. Finally,
I wish to mention the gesture with which, during the path of education to
faith, one receives the symbol: while
the symbol contains Scripture and
the faith of the Church, the gesture of receiving
expresses the commitment to new responsibilities by the catechumen with
regards to his own life of faith. You, the catechists, must give this
important sign its due, rich content.
7)
A second point concerns liturgical
instruction. As to this, we must not be content with only explaining
the meaning of the celebrations, the sacraments or liturgy itself. We must aim
at something else, that is to say, to the authentic and profound liturgical
formation, without falling into arbitrariness, into personal expressions, into
passing modes tied to the passing times and last ever less, into exasperated
particularities since the world has become so small. Substantially, and
without prejudices towards age, towards culture – while bearing in mind the
possibilities and limitations of each and every one – all must be formed
“for prayer, for thanksgiving, for repentance, for praying with confidence,
for a community spirit and for the symbolic language..." (General
Catechetical Directory, 1997, pg. 88). The catechist should not, must not
give up when facing the inevitable difficulties of this job. The
third indication concerns the moral
formation. In fact, the Christian Gospel has a very clear moral
announcement: catechesis simply consists in transmitting the attitudes of the
Master to the disciple. These attitudes: thoughts, words and behavior mark the
passage from the old man to the new man, inserted in Christ. Finally, in the
moral proposal, the words pronounced by Jesus will be of special importance:
"I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them" (Mt
5:17); thus, one must clearly emphasize that the speech on the mount is
not an alternative to the Decalogue; Jesus, in fact, recalls the Decalogue,
impressing the great novelty of the spirit of the beatitudes. Finally,
the catechist will take great care in teaching
Christian prayer, focusing on the specific, helping to discern among
the many ways of meditation or of elevation of the psyche that have little or
nothing in common with Christian prayer, because they do not bring to the
encounter with God in Christ but, perhaps, to the encounter with one’s
“ego”. The
Our Father, which reflects the filial feelings of adoration, praise, thanks,
piety, request, admiration will be the starting-point for all teaching on
prayer. Finally,
the gesture of the consignment of the
Our Father – that is, the prayer that contains all of the Gospel within
it – symbolizes the path towards the invisible but real world of prayer
that, along with being a gift and a commitment, is also the best help when one
finds oneself facing the most arduous pages of the Gospel or the ineffable
gifts of the Grace of God. 8)
I end my reflection, on the occasion of your world Jubilee, dearest
catechists and religion teachers, asking you to commit yourselves – with a
renewed spirit of communion – in the new evangelization, lead so to speak
throughout the three-hundred-sixty degrees, that is to say wherever man is
present with his suffering and his joys, with his fears and his hopes.
You
who are called upon to be the free and courageous instruments of the new
evangelization must, ever more, rediscover and live a strong bond of
faithfulness and of love for the Church, mother and teacher, in yourselves and
among yourselves. My
wish is that during these Roman days, where you have had the great joy of
“seeing Peter”, the rock upon which Jesus Christ founded His Church, you
may – purified by the grace of the Jubilee – grow in faithfulness and in
love for the Church and that the love and the faithfulness to the Church may
be the distinctive signs of your identity and mission as catechists and
religion teachers. Once again I wish you and all the receivers of your fundamental mission to constantly have three reference points, three illuminating lights, three regenerating loves: sacramental Jesus, the Immaculate Virgin, the Holy Father! |
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