September Start-Up

As the school year starts again this week, Christ the Redeemer comes to life again. It’s not like the summer hasn’t kept us on the move, but the parish stirs itself with renewed action in our religious formation programs.

We often hear that the Church constantly renews itself with the sharing of the Word and the doing of mission. That’s the feel and the reality of CTR as the parish community turns its attention to our multiple forms of religious education. The preaching of the Word, the sharing of the faith, and the gathering of God’s People energizes the Church. Likewise, in mini-form, the beginning of our religious education efforts gives the parish new life.

Christ the Redeemer puts forth a lot of its efforts in religious education. For several weeks now we have been urging parents to register their children for religious education. We have been looking for volunteer ministers to help with the various tasks in this important work of being Church for our children. This important ministry allows us to see the centrality in the Church of sharing the faith and passing it on to our children. Central to that task, of course, are the parents in the home. It is in the home that the faith is first learned and supported. Around the family table is where the questions about God are asked. It’s there where values and moral direction are given on the front lines of family life.

Our religious education programs are planned to assist parents with their task as the primary religious educators of their children. From the days of the baptism of their children, the parents and godparents have heard about the community as the context of faith-sharing and affirmation for the newly baptized. Our religious education programs do not substitute for parental religious training and formation of their children.

Parish: Context of Religious Education

The parish community is the context of religious education, but the parish is

made up of real people. It is parents, it is catechists, it is assistants, it is hall monitors, it is our religious education directors, it is the staff and priests at CTR. Together we share the faith and encourage each other in that multi-leveled task.

Worship and Formation

Obviously, classroom instruction is important to the sharing of the faith with our children. It is there that they learn that the Church is larger than their family. We are able to teach them the values and traditions which bind us together as Church. They learn the words which we have traditionally used to describe our experience of God and a vocabulary to allow their access to faith and religious experience.

Family participation in the worship life of the parish is the context of learning to pray and worship with the community. It is where children are integrated into the life of the Church’s prayer and celebration. Children learn, even more than adults, from the rhythms and patterns of worship. They learn how their family is joined to other families and people in the larger Church community. They learn in ritual, song, and the sights and sounds of worship how God shares his presence with us.

Praying With Children

Prayer in the home is to the domestic Church what Sunday worship is to the larger Church. Children learn intimately about God from praying in their homes. Children learn the love of God and constancy of his presence in the context of a loving and caring family. Prayer to start and end the day affords the opportunity to know God is with them all day long. Prayer at the table offers the chance to learn to be thankful for the blessings of their life. It is in the family that they learn to forgive and to accept forgiveness. All this is learned with the parents and with family members. It is presumed before they come for religious instruction.

In the end, the family in their home and the parish community preaching and celebrating the presence of God is the Church gathered.

CDH