Today, in the Catholic Church in the United States, we celebrate Catechetical Sunday. Last weekend, we kicked off our parish’s religious education program for the school year. Today, we also want to recognize the commitment that our religious education teachers and that we as a parish make in educating our children, our youth, and ourselves in the faith.
The theme for Catechetical Sunday this year is taken from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, which is wonderful, because we have been listening to readings from the book in our daily masses for the past several weeks. Our theme is: “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to You.” This theme focuses on the main substance of catechesis: an invitation to a new life given to us by Christ himself. This theme emphasizes that living faith necessitates movement, inspiring all those who hear God’s Word to share it as witnesses of the true and living God. Our catechists are the instruments through which many come to encounter Christ and hear this invitation. We are very grateful here at St Jude to have a very wonderful group of dedicated, hard-working, faith-filled catechists.
Paul is a great example for us to hear from on Catechetical Sunday. Paul himself had a very real encounter with Christ on his journey. He was going all over the countryside persecuting the followers of Jesus when Christ literally knocked him off his horse and blinded him with a bright ray of light. Christ called Paul to a very special mission, which he accepted with courage and tenacity. If all of us Christians could have the joy, commitment, and enthusiasm that Paul had in his faith, there would be no limits to the ways we could bring Christ’s message to the world. Religious education for children, youth, and adults is more important than it ever has been, especially in the ways it has been difficult to practice our faith with the reality of the pandemic we are living through. With the many pressures our families and our society are going through, our faith is not being passed down to many of our youth and children. Our faith and our faith community help us on our faith journey and they help us overcome and endure what we face in life. This is why it is so important for us to always educate ourselves in our faith. Growing and educating ourselves as individuals and as a community help us along this life-long journey of faith. Being a part of our religious education program and going to Mass and receiving the Eucharist are important building blocks to our Catholic faith. We must realize that our faith is not something that stands still and remains stagnant in our lives. It is like a plant; if it is not growing and developing and being nurtured, it will wither up and die. We nurture our faith by the Eucharist, by our religious education experiences, by the way we apply our faith in our daily lives.
At different times in my homilies, I have told you a lot of stories about my missionary work down in the jungles of Ecuador. We had one mission site that served around 90 different villages throughout a vast river-system in that jungle. I have told about how I would travel on foot and by canoe for hours to get to any one of those villages. You can image how most of the people living in the jungle rarely had the opportunity to go to mass on a regular basis. Some of the chapels in their villages did not even have Mass once a year. Here at St Jude, we are blessed with a Catholic community that has a wonderful history. We are blessed with a beautiful church grounds and with resources the members here have worked hard to provide. Yet, I will be very honest with you. If we don’t fight for our faith, if we don’t make a commitment to our Catholic faith, if we don’t nurture our children and ourselves in the faith, what will happen to Catholicism in our country? This is an alarming reality, but if we all work together, if we all make a commitment to our faith and reflect in our community and our lives the real presence of Christ that is with us, our faith will grow and develop and attract others. Today, Catechetical Sunday, is a good place for us to look at the ways we want to grow in our faith.
I love one of the verses we hear in our psalm today, as the psalmist is able to say: “Every day will I bless you, and I will praise your name forever and ever. Great is the LORD and highly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.” This statement could only be said be a person of faith. A person that continues to be formed in the the faith, that has enthusiasm for his faith, and that passes on the faith to others. May we aspire to be that same kind of of person of faith.
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