Bring Jesus as Savior, Lord, and Friend

After the summer break, the Convocation for Catechists signals the beginning of each new year of religious education. 225 directors of religious education, catechists, and youth ministers from across the diocese gathered on Saturday at Most Precious Blood, starting with a Mass celebrated by Bishop Michael Mulvey.
 
In his homily, the bishop questioned whether the catechists, priests, and deacons were truly qualified. “The only person who can qualify us is Jesus.” Being a catechist is less about sharing theoretical knowledge and more about putting into practice what we preach—‘to be what we proclaim.” Many young people seek community, which presents us with a challenge: “We need to stop petty fights and instead build community,” said the bishop. St. John Paul II stated in his encyclical Novo Millennio Ineunte, “To make the Church the home and the school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning.”

Deacon Bob Rice, PhDDeacon Bob Rice, who teaches catechetics at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, chose the topic, “Savior, Lord, Friend – Proclaiming Jesus in the Stages of Evangelization.” He challenged the catechists to reflect on whether they would be “teaching about what God wants from us, but not who God is.” With the invitation at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:20), Christianity is the first religion not bound to a geographical area or ethnicity. And the quote continues, “I am with you always, until the end of the age,” meaning, “Jesus is made present.”
 
Proclaiming Jesus as Savior, Lord, and Friend always conveys the same message, so the deacon says, “The immense love of God, who gave His life for us on the cross.” And this God desires a relationship with us: “Let Jesus be the Lord of your life,” continued Bob Rice. The goal of catechesis is communion and intimacy with Jesus Christ.
 
Rice described a good catechesis with five keywords: it should be

• Christocentric (“talk about Jesus, not around him”)
• kerygmatic (“telling over and over that Jesus loves you”)
• systematic (it needs to be well prepared, not improvised)
• organic (“we need to love God more and love our neighbor more”)
• beautiful (not only right and true).

 
It all culminates in the new commandment, “love one another as I love you” (Jn 15:12). Rice explained, “God’s love is unconditional, but friendship is always reciprocal. He wants to be our friend, but it requires a response.” To bring catechumens or young people into this friendship with Jesus, it needs to be “moved by the Spirit, nourished by the sacraments, by prayer and the practice of charity, and assisted by an ongoing education in the faith.”