Tag Archives: faith

Faith Formation Series: What’s Your Role?

When approaching the project of passing on the faith to our children, whether we be parents or catechists, we often wrongly conceptualize the teacher-student relationship. Our mindset has been influenced by decades of various educational systems that approach pedagogy from the perspective that teachers deposit information into the brains of children (a very modernist and anti-Catholic understanding of knowledge and the human person, by the way; but I won’t unpack that idea here). This perspective wrongly assumes, among many things, that the transmission of knowledge is moving in one direction—from teacher to student; and operating from that starting point, what other incorrect assumptions might we make? I can think of two problematic ones that we need to root out.

#1: There is little that children will teach me.

To be honest, I don’t expect that many adults would come out and say this; but I do see plenty of evidence from our teaching methods, our posture, and our tone that we interiorly hold this expectation. We don’t behave as if we expect children to teach us about God. But why not? We can’t have read much of the gospels if we believe that to be true. Jesus says:

“Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it” (Luke 18:16-17).

Jesus is saying that we have everything to learn from children. We have to actually become like them to be part of his kingdom. I would say that he intends us to gain much knowledge of himself and how we are to love him through our interactions with children. This ought to be a fundamental starting point for our posture as parents or catechists who want our children to know and love God. Moreover, it seems that it is in those interactions of passing on the faith to them that we learn with them and from them what loving God looks like.

#2: I am forming the children.

Many adults have come to believe that the parents and teachers are the “molders” of children, taking them in their ignorant state and transforming them into enlightened human beings. But if this is our mindset, then we have forgotten who is the true Potter (Jeremiah 18:6). It is not our hands on the clay, but our Lord’s hands. It is not our spirit and mind being transferred or duplicated in them, but rather the Holy Spirit giving them the mind of Christ. Our role is important, but we are not the molders; we are simply faithful tools in the Potter’s hands. Children are born whole persons, created in the image of God, and as such they are able to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and respond directly. It is He who is forming the children.

By being responsive to the Holy Spirit ourselves, we can correct these wrong assumptions and see our role as parents and teachers with fresh eyes. If we have a great deal to learn from and with children, and if we see ourselves at the service of the Holy Spirit, then how should we describe our role in the formation process?

British education reformer, Charlotte Mason (1842-1923), offers us her teacher’s motto of “guide, philosopher, and friend,” which I find to be just as applicable to religious education as it is in any classroom (Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 32). In passing down our faith we can be guides, because we have navigated the road of faith before them. We have valuable experiences to share. We are philosophers because we should be introducing to them the fundamental questions, directing them to the fundamental truths that are discoverable about God. (This question and answer model is, after all, the format that the child’s Catechism takes.) Finally, we are friends with the children. And the use of the word “friend” should not mistakenly convey any lack of authority on the teacher’s part; quite the contrary, we have been deputized with authority by Christ to follow his example of friendship with children (Mason, Parents and Children, p. 14).

Let us prayerfully consider what a difference can be made in our re-imagining of our role in passing on the faith to the children in our midst. It is a privileged position indeed; and I am convinced that it is one that will return the greatest blessings to ourselves. For through this relationship with children we will better know our Father.

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Mason, Charlotte M. 2017. A philosophy of education.

Mason, Charlotte M. 2017. Parents and children.

Eternal Reality

This week I was able to sit at the feet of Jesus, in His presence in the Eucharist. Our parish just started offering Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament for 12 hours every Tuesday, and I jumped on it. I stepped out after dinner dishes and got back in time to help with brushing teeth and bedtime; it was perfect. I had been wanting to establish the habit of regular Adoration for a while—not just experience it here and there at special events or retreats. I had sensed God drawing me into His presence in the Sacrament; and when I knelt facing the Eucharist in the quiet chapel I knew why.

He knew that I regularly need my vision to eternal reality restored. He knows that I get repeatedly sucked into the world’s version of what is “real.” It can so quickly consume, take over, and distract my heart from living for heaven; and when that happens, I—we all—lose our peace.

In our journey through this life there are endless sources constantly pulling us out of the eternal reality. Numerous siren calls lure us off our heavenly course with compelling whispers: “Maintain your pride, flatter your vanity, shower yourself with comforts.” Slowly we drift from the safe currents of Eternal Truth, sailing for a time among falsely calm waters of what the world assures us is most real. We are suddenly alarmed when we find our ships dashed against perilous rocks. We have lost our anchor in true reality; we’ve become untethered from the eternal.

In the silent power of His presence, I was immersed in the eternal reality. It was as if I had stepped through a veil into another world. I could still see the physical world around me; I knew well what waited for me outside those church doors. But the presence of God and the promise of what will never change—a hope for here and a home being prepared for me—was overwhelmingly present and real to me. I was able to see truly the lies that I let in; I was able to right my course, because I was making myself available to God and cooperating with His grace. When we run to Him, He draws us into His harbor, which always restores our eyes of faith to a supernatural view.

But that ethereal view isn’t visible from every stance. In fact, when we step out into the world away from His presence, there are many vantage points that angle out the eternal perspective. We can’t commune with eternal souls through glowing screens; we are unable to minister to Christ himself when we turn away from the faces that bear His image, faces of poverty and pain that make us uncomfortable. The endless compulsion to acquire more leaves us with less and less assurance of spiritual wealth. The over-extended and margin-less lives we live leave no room for contemplating eternal realities.

Yet…when we find ourselves at such hopeless vantage points, we may always accept God’s gracious invitation of re-entry into true reality. He is there for us when we choose to step into those moments of grace and locations of His presence. Whether an hour in silent Adoration, a Sabbath Sunday’s inactivity and rest, or the quiet of early (or late) moments in the personal prayer of our “interior castles,” the Father is waiting to change our hearts, right our course, and renew our view of what is eternally real for our human souls.

We go back into our physical reality with fresh life and clear vision. We live our vocations and look on the people in our lives with eyes of faith: “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it…” (Philippians 1:6).

I came home from Adoration with the image of that heavenly glow radiating from around the Eucharist; and as I tucked little people into beds, I was aware of that veil of re-entry and the grace extended to see with heavenward vision.

More “Real” Than Real

We live in a culture that is ultimately material. By that I mean that what is considered most “real” is that which can be experienced with our five physical senses. What we can see, hear, taste, smell and feel is what is real to us. Essentially, that means that what we observe in the natural world and what we have feelings and impulses toward are the only things that exist. Of course those things are real, and yes we experience them in the natural world. But where does that leave us with the question of the supernatural, the order of things not apparent to our physical senses, the truth and reality that is actually happening in the everyday life of the Spirit?

We say that we believe in God and the supernatural world; but unfortunately, many Christians today behave as mere materialists, interpreting their faith and the spiritual life solely within the dimension of the natural, material world. However, there is an ultimate reality — something more real than the reality known to our physical senses — in which we can participate, and I believe that the sacraments of the church are the daily means by which we live in that reality. In fact, the sacraments reveal that ultimate reality to us, as if lifting the veil to expose the full picture of God’s love and redemption story for all of creation.

What reality is revealed?

A sacrament is “the visible sign of the hidden reality of salvation,” and the Church’s Catechism explains how God has gifted us with signs observable to our senses that allow us to participate in a reality that exists beyond those physical senses:

“The seven sacraments are the signs and instruments by which the Holy Spirit spreads the grace of Christ the head throughout the Church which is his Body. The Church, then, both contains and communicates the invisible grace she signifies. It is in this analogical sense, that the Church is called a ‘sacrament.'” (CCC 774)

So within a sacrament something is actually happening in the spiritual life. This revelation certainly contributed to me becoming Catholic, and it daily awakens me to what is most real. I will give you a couple of examples of this deeper level of reality, what is actually happening, when we participate in the sacraments. I have been pondering the reality of three sacraments in particular recently: Baptism, Marriage, and the Eucharist.

Baptism — For some people Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation have become merely symbolic “events” worthy of photo shoots and parties afterward. Have we lost sight of what is really happening? Through the anointing oil, prayer of exorcism, and the cleansing holy waters poured on the child, the stain of original sin is being wiped away. This soul is entering into the life of the Church and beginning a pilgrimage in which those witnessing souls are also participating. Remember those Oxi Clean commercials? It’s like spiritual Oxi Clean for the soul! The dirt of original sin is literally removed to reveal a whiter than white fresh soul ready to begin that spiritual journey. But if you are only looking with your eyes you won’t see what is actually taking place right there in that moment in our time.

Marriage — Why is being married in the Church and according to her canon law so important? Because what is actually taking place when it is a sacramental marriage is nothing like a contractual agreement that may at some point in time be dissolved. When the two become one flesh something very real has happened in the spiritual lives of both of those people that impacts completely their physical lives and reality from that point forward. They are suddenly knit together, responsible for helping each other journey to heaven. In fact, the vocation of their marriage is the way God is choosing to sanctify them and make them holy. My husband is not just my companion, my partner in life, my lover — at that altar and in that sacrament he (with all of his flaws and charisms) became the person in this life that will participate in the sanctification of my soul. Mind-blowing. Awesome. Overwhelming.

The Eucharist — Maybe this one is both the most obvious and the hardest to comprehend at the same time. To my physical sense I am eating bread and drinking wine. If I approach that bread and wine as a symbol, I’m not acknowledging that something transformational is taking place. I must realize that I am taking the real presence of Christ into my own body, and that phenomenon radically changes me and spiritually sustains me with graces. That moment of consecration on the altar is not just some ritual; the most ultimate and supernatural reality is taking place before our eyes in every mass! Christ is offering himself for us, to sustain us on our earthly journey. When we enter into that reality — when we get that — we will only be able to participate with total reverence and awe, and our daily living will be sustained like never before.

How do we “sense” this ultimate reality?

If this is the realness that we can live in, then how do we then experience this ultimate reality that is always present with us? As human beings created in the image of God, we have been gifted with a sixth sense — the religious sense. The Catechism describes this religious sense in several places as the “supernatural sense of faith” (CCC 91-93, 889). Faith is one of the three theological virtues (faith, hope & love). Through the eyes of faith we are able to see our lives, the lives of others, and the world in which we live in a supernatural dimension — we are able to perceive what is most real, the ultimate reality available to us in the spiritual life. We access these eyes of faith, this religious sense, through grace; as with everything in the spiritual life, it is a gift.

But human agency is always a factor. Are we living in a way that opens ourselves up to that gift of faith? Are we taking part in the gift of the sacraments? Have we let patterns of behavior and distractions blur our vision and numb our religious sense? If so, we may find that we are merely living material lives day in and day out. But this will not satisfy. This is not the abundant life that Jesus speaks of in John 10:10. We must foster the religious sense if we want to live in the ultimate reality and be fully alive.

Jessica Ptomey

Author | Speaker | Catechist