Re-Play It Again

It’s that time again. We’ve heard the message for the last month. Religious Education is beginning soon, sign up the kids, and we need catechists and other volunteers! Just like the fall season, religious education comes back around.

The words sound the same and the invitation to participate is familiar, but religious education is a dynamic dimension in the life of the Church. At the heart of what the Church is, is the preaching and sharing of the Word of God. The Word is ever-new and creative, bringing people into covenantal relationship with God. Like any relationship, faith continues to grow, to change, and, hopefully to be more intimate. It may sound like a replay, but God’s encounter with our human family can’t just be played again. Our experiences, whether personal, familial, or communal, give us a new basis for believing and offers us new hope as we move on in our faith life within the Church.

Teaching and Mission
In this sense, the Church community is mission, embracing both teaching and preaching. The Word of God--clearly experienced in Jesus--is our invitation to come to know the actions of the Father in our world. We learn what that experience is by learning, sharing, and celebrating together as God’s People. Vibrant Church life presumes teaching and preaching, where we encounter the Lord through the living mission of the Church among us.

Mission presumes and urges believers who have experienced the Lord to share that faith in the sharing of their faith story. That’s what teachers (catechists), preachers, and missionaries are about – they share the Christ whom they have encountered in their lives. In the sharing, the Church is recreated. The learner grows in faith as does the believing teacher or preacher. In this religious education process, the Lord lives again among believers within the Church.

Catechesis and Worship
Catechesis, the teaching and sharing of the faith by believers, brings the inquirer, whether adult or child, to faith, which celebrates Christ within the community at worship. For this reason, catechesis initiates believers of all ages into the sacramental life of the Church. This is seen most clearly in so-called Christian Initiation, preparation in many diverse ways for Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist. Believers learn best as they encounter the Lord within the worshipping community.

Religious Education is more than some type of obligation for parents to see that their children “get” their sacraments. It is the opportunity for the parents--as believers--to share the great experience of life in Christ. The challenge, of course, for parents (as for all believers) is to know Christ in their own life. Faith is presumed throughout the catechetical process – one must first know Christ before attempting to share and teach Christ among us.

Parish Religious Education in its many forms is about the shared encounter with the Lord. Adults come to learn about the Lord within a community of faith. Children are supported in their journey by a community of faith. This support is marked with the Sacraments of Initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist. In these sacraments we enter the death and rising of the Lord, we are carried and energized by the Spirit, and we are gathered into the Body of Christ at the Eucharistic Table. Religious Education begins the journey to faith, which is a life process. Every day, in new ways, throughout our lives we learn and explore our life in Christ.

Religious Education is not a “same old” activity which the parish does every year. It is the Church in mission. It is re-discovering the faith of the Church and bringing others to life in Christ. Thanks to our Religious Education staff, catechists, co-catechists, assistants, monitors, and parents for helping us to be Church, people who know and walk in the love of Christ.

CDH