Session 4: October 24, 2010

In this session we continued our exploration of Church, this time focusing on the Mass. Since we didn't get a chance to tour the 'brick and mortar' church last week, we took the opportunity to do so this week.


What Is Church?
When we say ‘the Church’ what do we mean? If we think only of Mass, it’s falling short of the reality. For example, if you join a gym and go a few times a year, does that make you an athlete? Being an athlete means living like an athlete, every day, in every way. It’s the same way being a member of the Church, the Ideal church that Jesus founded and gave a mission to. You live it every day in every way.

You’re lucky because your parents are members, so you grew up in the lifestyle without really realizing it. Going back to the athlete analogy, if one or both of your parents are athletes, chances are that you grew up eating healthy foods and exercising as a family. Your parents taught you right from wrong based on the teachings of the church, as they were taught. We hear all the time at graduations, baptisms, and confirmations how the parents are the first and best teachers of the faith, and you think, “I don’t remember my parents giving me lessons…” but they did, and still do. It may not be formal sit-down-with-a-pencil-and-paper lessons, they’re probably better lessons, like making you return the extra change, or hauling your butt out of bed on Sunday to go to Mass.

So when we say ‘the Church’ we need to remember that it’s not the building, not the Mass, not the parish, not the Holy See, and not the history. The church is US, and how we live every single day of our lives.

Why Do We Congregate?
We congregate in many ways:

• Sporting events- to root for our team
• Concerts: To share our love of music
• Family gatherings (both happy and sad)

We congregate to support one another, to share with one another, and to participate in something together. It’s human nature to gather. For Catholics, the universal ‘congregation moment’ is the Mass.

Why is Mass so important?
The Mass is the central expression of our faith. It’s more than just getting together for some songs and prayer, it’s an opportunity to actually be in the presence of God Himself, to share in the metaphysical moment when bread and wine are changed to the Body and Blood of Christ.

Session 3: October 17, 2010

If you were absent from this session, here's what you missed:

What does “Church” Mean?
When we use the word ‘church’ we may mean a lot of things related to religion (or not). For our purposes, we’ll look at three uses:

• The Ideal Church; that church that was founded by Christ and handed to Peter.
• The Church in Practice: How we, as humans, prone to sin and error, have executed the mission of Jesus to “go forth and make disciples of all nations.” Not always a pretty story.
• The Brick and Mortar Church: The buildings that house our sacred space.
  

The Ideal Church
When you hear the term “the church” what do you think of? Do you think of the building? Do you think of the worldwide organization? Do you think of your parish? It’s another one of those words that has many ‘meanings’ and little agreement. We’re going to look at three interpretations of the word ‘church.’ First, we’ll look at the church that Jesus founded, we’ll call it the ‘ideal’ church:

When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples,
"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter said in reply, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Then he strictly ordered his disciples to tell no one that he was the Messiah.
Mt 16:13-20

This passage in Matthew is what we Catholics identify as the founding of the church. Obviously, Jesus did not intend for Peter to physically become a stone on which to build a new building. Jesus was talking about us; those that would follow Him. So we have the very beginnings of this church, it’s founder, Jesus, ordaining Peter and granting him authority over this church. It’s interesting to note that the exchange we just read takes place during His ministry, with the Passion still a ways away. Jesus knew, even as he ordained Peter, that Peter would deny even knowing him. Jesus knew that His church was comprised of men and women who, despite the best intentions, would fail him on occasion. Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby) said it best: “A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”

The Mission of the Ideal Church
Jesus gave them this mission after the resurrection:

“Then Jesus approached and said to them, "All power in heaven and on earth has
been given to me. 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, teaching
them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always,
until the end of time."
Mt 28:18-20

This is one of those passages in the Gospels that is so loaded with meaning, we could spend quite a while unpacking it. At the center of it, however, is the mission of the church. Go and make disciples of all nations, teach them to observe what He commanded.

The Practical Church
It’s important to not that the apostles believed that Jesus would return in their lifetimes. There was an urgency in the early church, not a drive towards institutionalization. Issues that came up were discussed among the leaders of Christian communities with guidance from the apostles. We can see this process unfolding in the New Testament Letters. This is the Practical Church, the way we try to fulfill the mission of Jesus as a group.

The apostles experienced Jesus’ teachings, death, and resurrection first hand. Now they were tasked with sharing the message with others. Others being those who were pretty hostile to the message. For the first three hundred years, the church was actively suppressed, and not by strongly worded memos. Christians were hunted down, arrested and killed. Yet the church grew in number.

Around the year 50, the big debate of the growing church was whether or not new members had to become Jewish before being a Christian. From the early, ideal church, we begin to see the Practical church emerging. As Christians try to observe what Jesus commanded, they begin to run into unexpected circumstances. They meet in council and prayer to decide the outcome. This first meeting (sometimes called the Council of Jerusalem because it took place there) marks the point at which Christianity and Judaism parted ways.

After that first council, there have been 21 others, spanning the two-thousand years to the present. The Councils remind us that the practical church isn’t perfect, only the Ideal church is. The practical church stumbles, succumbs to corruption, loses it’s way, and falls. But the ideal church does not, and because each of us are part of the ideal church, the practical one gets picked up, dusted off, straightened out, and pushed towards the ideal, over and over again. Good and faithful men and women always step forward in times when the practical church goes astray. Even during our darkest hours, when the practical church was drunk with power and corruption seemed everywhere, God called from the ranks of the faithful men like St. Francis of Assisi to ‘Fix his church!’

Activity: The Council of Concord

We Are The Church
Councils are attended by Bishops, but they get their info and intel from us, the faithful. If it were all about the bishops, Councils would be pretty pointless. Every generation faces unique challenges. Paul faced the problem of pagan converts not wanting to go through circumcision to become Christian. Our generation faces challenges; some profoundly serious ones.
Your assignment is to identify the challenges of our age, then provide some ideas for dealing with the challenges. To get you started, here’s a few big-ticket items on everyone’s mind:

• Dwindling supplies of priests: The number of priests, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, is at critical levels, and the number of men in the seminary (training to become priests) isn’t enough to replace those priests who are ‘aging out’ of ministry and dying.
• Sexual abuse scandals continue to emerge around the world. These scandals destroy the confidence in the clergy and the hierarchy of the church, and seriously impinge on our ability to fulfill the mission of the church.

In your groups, discuss these and other issues you see facing YOUR church. This isn’t a macaroni-and-popsicle-stick exercise, this is real. You will be facing these issues as practicing Catholics, and you will deal with the repercussions if we don’t address them.

Session 2: October 3, 2010

In this session we move from expectations to the purpose of our learning. First, we talked about the foundations, then we talked about the meaning of the word "faith."

If you missed the session, then start by reading Genesis 1:1-3.

History and Salvation History
In the opening readings today we heard the story of creation. It’s actually the second story of creation, even though the bible begins with it. The older version of creation is a little further in the book of Genesis in the next chapter. We’ll be revisiting these two accounts of creation later in the year. For now, it serves as the starting point.

You now know that as far back as St. Augustine the story of creation was understood to be an allegory. The message is pretty clear: God Created. Simple. We can look at it from a cosmological standpoint and discuss how cool it is that the big-bang and Genesis (and John) pretty much all agree: God said, let there be light, and from an infinitely small particle, the universe burst into being, expanding in the brilliance of energy, without shadow (since there was nothing but light in the universe). The story of the passage of time from that moment to now, we call history.

So what is Salvation History? Interestingly, the current generation is probably more suited to understand the idea of a multi-threaded story than any previous generation. History as a tapestry of interwoven threads was a great metaphor, but with social networking, it’s no longer a metaphor, you can actually experience the threads weaving and warping in real time. Salvation History is the underlying path on which all other histories are written, and it begins at creation.

God Creates. Eventually, He creates Man. In the story of creation we started today, he actually creates mankind not just ‘a man’ (that’s in the first story of creation in Chapter 2). Now there’s a LOT of discussion and great studies about this part of the story of creation, but for our purposes, we’re going to keep it simple. Mankind disobeys God; turns away from God. This begins a cycle of sin, repentance, atonement, and forgiveness between mankind and God.

On Faith, Religion, and Belief
Words are powerful things. In ancient cultures, words were often so powerful that just naming something gave you power over it. But in modern times we’ve lost that awe of words, and we resort to linguistic shortcuts and references to communicate meaning, and in day-to-day activities this is usually fine, but we’ve all experienced that moment when you really thought the other person understood you, but you were speaking at cross-purposes.
We talk a LOT about “faith” as in “you gotta have faith” and “the Catholic Faith” or “the gift of Faith.” But what do we actually mean?

Let’s start with the easy one: “the Catholic Faith.” While it’s a valid use of the word, what we really mean is the religion.

Next, how about “You gotta have faith.” What does that really mean? That one leans towards the word belief and we’ll see the distinction shortly.

Finally, we have “the gift of Faith:”
1 Corinthians 12:17 tells us: “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit. To one is given through the Spirit the expression of wisdom; to another the expression of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit…”

This is the one we’re going to focus on.

The Gift of Faith
Faith is a gift. It cannot be learned, or taught, it cannot be handed out from one person to another. It is a gift of the Spirit, and so no one but God can give you the gift of Faith. So what is it? It is the deep, inner knowledge that God is. Faith is not a willful act, we cannot summon up Faith any more than we can summon up love or wisdom. It is just there. Or it’s not. The experience of the gift of Faith varies. Some people describe it as a ‘knowing’ feeling, unshakable. I think of it like the refrigerator noise; you notice it when it’s gone.

And yes, it can be ‘gone.’ It’s not an unusual experience, in fact, Mother Teresa describes long periods where she didn’t feel it. Can you imagine, doing what she did, and not feeling Faith? St. John of the Cross wrote La Noche Oscura del Alma, or The Long Dark Night of the Soul, a poem in which he describes the process of going through all the motions of being faithful, but there being no ‘light’ there. St. Therese of Lisieux, same thing. It’s a long list.

The thing about the gift of Faith is that it’s powerful, and so deep, that we may not even recognize that we have it. We kinda sorta know it, but it’s like this tent. It sort of looks like a tent, and in a pinch it will give us a bit of shelter from the rain or sun, but it’s ambiguous.

Faith and Religion
Now we go back to one of the synonyms: Religion. Very broad word there, loaded with it’s own baggage that includes the practice of something, the belief in something, etcetera. Let’s narrow it, so we don’t get bogged down by those heavy bags. Let’s call it being Catholic. The Catholic Religion is a set of common beliefs articulated and refined over time through much prayer and reflection, and with the participation of the Church (that’d be you and I). More on that at another time.

This part, the religion part, this is why you’re here. To learn the religion part. We can’t give you Faith, but we sure can give you religion. We can help you understand your Faith, help you support it to give you it’s full potential. As you learn about our religion, it begins to form your Faith.

A few years ago, what we’re doing here (students, teachers, all that) was called “Sunday School” because it usually took place on Sundays. Then it was called “CCD” which stood for “Catholic Combat Duty” – No, actually it stood for "Catholic Catechetical Doctrine” and we still have it, it’s this big book. But none of those terms really described what we were trying to do. Recently the term has been changed to "Faith Formation" which sort of sounds like something a really daredevil marching band would do, but it’s actually a pretty good description of what we’re doing here and now. Forming your faith. Like these poles form this tent.

Religion alone, that is, the intellectual knowledge of faith, is like the poles by themselves. Interesting and probably useful in some situations, but pretty useless in a rainstorm or in the blazing sun. Without the gift of Faith, without the experience of faith, we’re left with a head-full of information that doesn’t really seem to fit anywhere.

When we put Faith and Formation together, well, you can see the result.

Faith and Belief
That brings us to the last of the words we derived from “faith,” the word “belief.” This word is still used in a pretty straightforward manner. Belief, unlike faith, is a volitional act. That means we can choose to believe something.

Looking at our three-dimensional analogy here, before I put the poles into it, I had to believe it was actually a tent, and that the poles actually were for this tent. Taking it back even further, I had to believe that there is such a thing as a tent. Imagine for a minute, someone whose not from around these parts, whose idea of an outdoor shelter is a yurt, or a wigwam, or a condo. You show them this thing and you say, “Hey, this will protect you from the sun and the rain, and the cold, and the wind.” Think they’d believe that?

If you want the gift of Faith, you start with belief. Our culture likes to understand things, to explain things, and an unfortunate by-product of that mindset is to set aside anything that can’t be measured. Well, love can’t be measured, and neither can Faith. The definition of faith is the belief in something that can’t be proved. If you can prove it, it’s not faith, it’s science.

Getting the Gift
So how do we go about ‘getting’ the Gift of Faith?
The first step in the process is to be open to it, to believe with your mind and heart. If it’s hard, and if you feel doubt, or like you’re talking to an empty room, remember that list of folks that have been through the Dark Night of the Soul, and an awful lot of them have “Saint” in front of their names, so you’re in pretty good company.

The second step in the process is pretty simple. When you were younger, (and even now for some of you) you had no trouble asking for what you wanted. If you want the gift of Faith, you have to ask for it in prayer. We’ll be talking about prayer in the future, but for now, let’s think of it as a dialog between you and God. Emphasis on dialog. You talk, then you listen. So ask for Faith, even if you have it, or think you have it, ask for more. There’s more to this story, but we’re not ready just yet.

The gospel of Matthew tells us:
"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
(Mt 7:7-8)