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| USCCB Catechetical Sunday Resources |
It all starts with a joke: The junior high teacher asks the class, "Who can explain the difference between ignorance and indifference?" After a long, awkward silence, a weary student responds, "I don't know, and I don't care." Exactly!
The old educational adage is that students will never care how much the teacher knows until they know how much the teacher cares. In terms of teaching the Catholic faith, people will never care to learn more until they experience why they should care.
An evangelizing catechesis starts with helping people care. It begins with the awareness that, before we can hand on what we have received from the Apostles, we need to help people hear and respond to the Good News of Jesus--personally. We need to return to the basic proclamation of the Gospel, the Kerygma, so that baptized Catholics might encounter the life-changing revelation anew--personally.
An evangelizing catechesis helps people move from caring into life-long learning. Once people care about how the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ directly impacts them, they care to embrace ongoing conversion of heart and thus walk the path of missionary discipleship.
An evangelizing catechesis is rooted in the first announcement or kerygma. In the words of Pope Francis (EG, n. 164):
- "In catechesis too, we have rediscovered the fundamental role of the first announcement or kerygma, which needs to be the center of all evangelizing activity and all efforts at Church renewal. The kerygma is trinitarian. The fire of the Spirit is given in the form of tongues and leads us to believe in Jesus Christ who, by his death and resurrection, reveals and communicates to us the Father’s infinite mercy. On the lips of the catechist the first proclamation must ring out over and over: 'Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.' This first proclamation is called 'first' not because it exists at the beginning and can then be forgotten or replaced by other more important things. It is first in a qualitative sense because it is the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another throughout the process of catechesis, at every level and moment..."
In the 2017 Prayer for Catechists from the U.S. Bishops, we ask that the Church's heroic and evangelizing catechists might help more people care to know the Truth which alone sets them free:
O God, our Heavenly Father, you have
given us the gift of these catechists to be
heralds of the Gospel to our parish family.
We lift them up to you in thanksgiving
and intercede for them concerning their
hopes and needs.
May we be attentive to the presence of
your Word in them, a Word that lifts up
and affirms, calls forth and challenges, is
compassionate and consoles.
given us the gift of these catechists to be
heralds of the Gospel to our parish family.
We lift them up to you in thanksgiving
and intercede for them concerning their
hopes and needs.
May we be attentive to the presence of
your Word in them, a Word that lifts up
and affirms, calls forth and challenges, is
compassionate and consoles.
We pray that our parish family will always
be blessed with those who have responded to
the call to share in Christ's prophetic mission
as catechists. May we too be open to the
universal call to service that Christ addresses
to all of his disciples, contributing our gifts to
the communion of faith, the Church.
We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen!
be blessed with those who have responded to
the call to share in Christ's prophetic mission
as catechists. May we too be open to the
universal call to service that Christ addresses
to all of his disciples, contributing our gifts to
the communion of faith, the Church.
We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen!
