Catechist Meeting Tonight!

Our new catechetical year gets off to a start tonight with our first catechist meeting! This will be an opportunity for me to meet the other 4th grade catechists that I’ll be working with as well as my aide. There’s always a sense of excitement at this meeting, as we all look forward to the challenges and opportunities of the coming year.

I’m honored to have been asked by Arlene, our DRE, to speak to the catechists about the Spirituality of the Catechist. In short, I’ll be talking about the following unique characteristics of the spirituality of the catechist, as drawn from The Guide for Catechists:

1. An Openness to God – we are called to be champions of the First Commandment, inviting others to place their trust in God above all things.
2. An Opennes to the Church – we are called to recognize that the faith we proclaim is a gift given to us by the Church. We are called to deepen our understanding of that faith so that we can better embrace it and effectively transmit it.
3. An Openness to the World – catechists are not called to withdraw from the world and to invite others to do the same. That’s what cults do. We are called to courageously enter into the world and help those we teach to recognize the presence of God that is already there.
4. A Missionary Zeal – we are called to communicate a sense of enthusiasm about our faith that is contagious.
5. A Coherence and Authenticity of Life – we are called to be the real deal, practicing what we preach and inviting those we teach to discover real and practical ways of living the Gospel in everyday life.
6. A Devotion to Mary – we are called to emulate Mary, the catechist par excellence. She embodies all of the above and from her, we can learn how to draw others to her Son, Jesus.

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