This post was prepared by NCEA’s Assistant Director of Professional Development, Mickie Abatemarco.
“This week we celebrate Catechetical Sunday. It is a time to celebrate those who catechize, who echo the faith. As teachers in Catholic education you are challenged to do that every day. I hope these thoughts encourage you to be the catechist you have been called to be.
It is amazing to me that even though we spend many years studying our faith it takes life experiences to understand the message of Jesus. We spend our lives just scratching the surface. One of the exciting aspects of the Roman Catholic Church tradition is that we have 2,000 years reflecting on the marvelous teachings of Christ and the experience of the disciples and have only begun to understand. Once in a while we come across people in our lives that show us a glimpse of how true faith is truly live. My grandparents provided that glimpse of that faith life for me.
A few years ago my sisters and I were cleaning out the house that had been in our family for almost 60 years. In the room that was my grandfather’s we found the prayer book he received on his wedding day in 1913 and my grandmothers’ passport from 1923. It quickly brought back memories of these two wonderful people in my life and the journey they took through life together. They did not know where that journey would lead them, but they believed wherever it did God would journey with them.
They brought up four children during the depression. They sent three sons to war and only two came home. They watched their children marry and have children of their own and every day of their lives they started their day committed to journey with God, even when the road got too difficult to walk.
Faith is a great mystery we need to dwell with. We need to stay with it, live it, feel it and never think that we have uncovered it all. The essence of faith is believing, even when we don’t see or know the answer.
The Emmaus story is that of catechesis, to journey with Christ. The two disciples were walking along the road to Emmaus. They are walking away from Jerusalem and were confused. They placed high hopes in this person, Jesus. They saw him as a wonder worker. They saw the incredible things that Jesus had done and yet, because of his death, they thought the he wasn’t the one. They had hoped someone would come and really take care of them. They had hoped someone would come and free them from all the things holding them down. It is clear that these disciples, who spent a great deal of time with Jesus didn’t completely get it. After His resurrection Jesus appears again and again to show the disciples and us what we may have missed. That’s the gift of the story, the gift of our call to echo the faith, real life comes after death, but we must have faith to believe it.
We can spend a life time with our faith without really grasping it. Conversion is a lifelong process. The two disciples in this gospel are walking away; they are unable to embrace the heart of the message. As they walk Jesus appear and begins to walk with them. Just as we struggle we are called to the power of God with us.
Most of us turn to God because God is powerful. We often say, “ Look, I want you to help me. If you really are who you say you are, if you are really present in my life, than I want you to fix somethings”. And sometimes it doesn’t get fixed.
This experience often leaves us like the disciples who walked on the road to Emmaus, just a little depressed and dejected saying, “Well I know Jesus has promised to do all sorts of things for me, but it just isn’t working.” If we listen to Jesus, we notice that even though He has a great deal of power He wasn’t really going to change the culture of the time.
What changed the hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus? They recognized Jesus when they broke bread with him and exclaimed to each other “Were our hearts not burning within us?”. They became resurrection people! Jesus endured everything because of his inner strength. He didn’t crack. He didn’t break. He submitted to everything just the way it was, and then God our Father raised Him from the dead. Resurrection is the image of survival; Resurrection is the image of conquering, of becoming one who accomplished what needs to be done in the most successful way.
My grandparents were empowered people. It was not a word they knew, what they knew was that Resurrection was in the image of survival when they buried their oldest son. Resurrection was in the image of conquering pain and illness to share life’s stories with whose they loved. That is how they were able to walk everyday with and not away from the resurrected Christ.
If we are Resurrection people, if we choose to walk along the road with Jesus than we need to recognize that God longs to answer our prayers by empowering us to endure all things, to work with all thing, to be part of all things. He invites us to the table to break bread with Him and to be resurrected people. The disciples took the challenge, my grandparents took the challenge. Today the challenge is ours. Be true catechists, echo the faith.
