As I visit the School or celebrate
the School Mass on Wednesdays, I engage our children in discussion about
matters of Faith and about what is going on in their lives. I am always amazed and delighted at the way
they see connections between things.
Their questions are also very revealing.
Encountering children in this way has been part of my own priestly
ministry since my first assignment at St. Mary’s in Lancaster Lancaster Fisher Catholic High School
Through the years, as I have visited
with children to talk about the Faith, I have noticed several things. First, our children are asking the “deeper
questions” earlier and earlier. What
used to be asked at the College level moved to High School, and High School age
questions are being asked in middle school and even earlier. Second, families are far busier outside the
home than ever before. Religious
practice has often been relegated to a secondary place in family life, both at
church (Sunday Mass) and at home (religious devotions shared between parents
and children). What this means is that
the questions children ask at School or in the PSR classroom about Faith may
receive an answer in class, but get little reinforcement at home. This situation calls for an intentional
change in our Catholic family culture in order to ensure that the next
generation learns the Faith.
The Solemnity we celebrate today,
the Ascension of the Lord (moved in our region from Thursday to Sunday in order
to allow a greater number of the faithful to experience the liturgical
celebration of this Mystery), speaks to the need to make the connection between
our culture and our Faith. The Ascension
tells us that Jesus is always able to be present among us in a real but
invisible way because He has taken our human nature into the very Life of
God. His Divinity entered our humanity
in the Incarnation.
Our humanity entered into Divinity
through the Ascension. The Outpouring of
the Holy Spirit that takes place on Pentecost is made possible by the
“stretching” of our human nature to encompass Divine Life. What God has done in Jesus Christ is to take
our earthly reality into the Divine Reality of the Life of the Trinity. So, our family life is meant to be lived in
the awareness of our eternal destiny.
Family prayer and devotions, and especially the weekly participation in
the Mass are necessary to put our Faith into practice in anticipation of what
God has in store for us.
Year of Faith October
11, 2012 – November 24, 2013
We continue our journey through the Year
of Faith. As one way of observing
this year, each week a small section of the Catechism
of the Catholic Church is read before the start of Mass.
ARTICLE
2 THE TRANSMISSION OF DIVINE
REVELATION
III. The
Interpretation of the Heritage of Faith
88 The Church’s Magisterium
exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it
defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging the Christian
people to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine
Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a
necessary connection with these.
89 There is an organic
connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas. Dogmas are lights along
the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our
life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed
by the dogmas of faith. (Cf. John 8:31-32.)
90 The mutual connections
between dogmas, and their coherence, can be found in the whole of the
Revelation of the mystery of Christ.
(Cf. Vatican Council I: DS 3016: nexus mysteriorum; Lumen Gentium
25.) “In Catholic doctrine there exists an order or ‘hierarchy’ of truths,
since they vary in their relation to the foundation of the Christian faith.” (Unitatis
Redintegratio 11.)
Comment: It has
become popular in our modern culture to discount the value and importance of
dogma. Unfortunately, this attitude gets
in the way of our understanding of the true meaning of dogma. It is possible to hold firmly to the dogmas
of our Catholic Faith without being “dogmatic” as the culture considers us. Simply put, dogmas are the road maps of
Faith. They make known to us how to get
where we want to go. They are not chains
binding us, but rather, tethers to Eternity, that help us to avoid traps and
pitfalls that have proven false. To
believe in the Faith of the Church, the Faith that opens us to the Revelation
of Jesus Christ, we must give assent to the dogmas defined by the Church, under
the guidance of the Holy Spirit Who leads us to all Truth. Only then do we have hope of coming to
understand the Faith in its purity and in its completeness. How do you respond to the Dogmas of the
Church?
No comments:
Post a Comment