• Training |
Teachers and Catechists Catechist Training The training presented here is from The Catechist's Companion by Cullen Schippe and can be purchased through The Benziger Catalog. As a catechist, you do a lot of planting and a lot of watering. But you also need the seeds of enthusiasm, hope, challenge, love, and self-giving planted in you. Your good will and sacrifice of time and energy need to be watered. You need to see yourself as an important and integral part of the work of the Church. You are not a function that needs to be carried out in the parish. You are a witness to God's grace and truth. This training is not to improve your teaching skills. Instead, you are invited to participate in a series of experiences that will help you develop the spirit and the identity of a catechist. This will plant some seeds you need. It will water the gifts you have, and feed your already generous spirit. But the growth is still up to God. Both Feet On the Ground Catechists need to have a realistic assessment of themselves and of their ministry. A catechist who feels that he or she bears the responsibility for the faith of another human being has overstated the case. Nobody has that much responsibility. What can botch the catechetical process is losing contact with the people you are called to teach. Keeping in touch with people means knowing and caring what others think and what they feel. There is little time for advanced psychology courses. There is, however, an extremely simple technique or habit that you can develop that will help you stay in touch. And if you stay in touch, you have all the more chance of being real. The habit has four steps—ask, listen, observe, relate. These four steps do not always follow one another in tidy order, but they go on constantly in the life of someone who sees the value in having the virtue of being real. Being real is a habit you can develop. It doesn't come easy, but part of the actual grace that comes with the job of catechist is the help you need to be real. If you think for a minute about the people you respect most you will see that they are often grounded in a sense of reality—a practicality that focuses on the ideas but is not afraid to get dirty in order to help others. These people are models for you of the attitude and the virtue of having both feet on the ground. Definition Write your own definition of the virtue of being real. Put into the definition the elements of reality that lead you to find God. (These need not all be glorious sunsets or mother love either.) Then test your definition on others. Check Up Just how real are you now? Give yourself a little report card. For each of the following statements give yourself the grade you think you deserve. Be very honest!
Read at least one of the following passages from the Bible. After you have read the passage record your impressions. How does this reading help you develop the virtue of being real? What realities in your life will bring this passage to mind for you?
Write out your own personal plan for developing the virtue—the good habit—of being real. Keep your plan very simple. Don't try to do too much. Remember that little steps mean a lot! Good planning and good growing!
A catechist who is formed by the Word of God is most definitely a person of the Gospel—a person of Good News. Remember a time when you were bursting with some good news to share? You could hardly wait for your wife or husband to come home. You pushed the outer edges of the speed limit to get to a friend's house—just to see the look on his or her face when the news was announced. The newly discovered pregnancy, the engagement that was sealed the night before, the vastly improved report card, the unexpected raise or promotion, the clean bill of health from the doctor, the article accepted by the local newspaper—all of these are so exciting to share. As a follower of Jesus, the Gospel can have the same excitement. The stories, teachings, events, and mysteries locked up in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are filled with bits of good news. As a catechist, your own life needs to exude that Good News. And that is not quite as tough to do as it sounds. You are not being asked to look holy, to act "religious," or to run around pointing fingers and preaching. What you are asked to do is to develop a Good News habit. Here are five steps that can be a method both for getting into the habit and for checking to see just how well you already have the habit.
Attitude Check Read the attitudes listed below. Then rate yourself on each attitude. Use a scale of 1 to 6 for your rating. A score of 1 means the statement expresses your attitude exactly. A rating of 6 means that the statement in no way expresses how you feel. Be painfully honest.
Take a few moments each day to pray some Scripture. Choose single verses from the Psalms, Gospels, and/or Paul's Epistles. Use the following little plan for this—pause, read, listen, speak. Get quiet before you read the verse. Read the verse slowly and thoughtfully. Listen in your heart for the message of the verse for you. Talk to God in your own words. This simple routine squeezed into your busy day will go a long way to giving you the Good News habit.
Read each of the passages listed below. They are all quite short. After each reading, write down what these words are saying to you. Keep your impressions simple, and try to avoid "religious language" in describing your discoveries.
Write out a personal plan for developing the Good News habit. Don't write what you think people expect. Write a plan that fits you and the way you live. You need not become a Bible scholar. You do need to give the Scripture an important spot in your heart. Not an Island A catechist needs to be passionate about community. Church is community! To be a follower of Christ means to join with other people in a family relationship. From the earliest moments of his ministry, Jesus gathered people. His words "Come follow me!" stick in the ear and in the heart. "By this will people know that you are my disciples, that you have love one for another." As a catechist, one of your most important functions is to bring people into the life of the community. To do that, you have to be convinced that there is community life in the Church. You need to be a contributing member of that community, too. You do more than teach. When your students look at you they see the Church family. Throughout the centuries, the Church has been the strongest when it was a most loving and caring family—when it extended this love and care to others. Certainly, there are many characteristics that go into the mix of extending the family of faith but there are three habits that are particularly important for those people who would teach and form people in the ways of the community—for the catechist. These three qualities are:
List five experiences you have had in your parish community which you feel gave you a real slice of Christian common life. Then list five experiences in the parish that you feel are obstacles to real community. Try to compare notes on this with another catechist. How can the two of you work to preserve the feelings of community and to overcome the obstacles to community?
Dream about your future. How would you like your relationship to the Christian community to be for you five years from now? What personal strengths do you have to bring this about? What help do you need from others? How can you expand your horizons in community? How can you reach out beyond the borders of your parish?
As Saint Paul traveled throughout the Roman Empire he spread community. He stressed over and over again the importance of the relationship between the members of the Church and Christ the head. Read each of the following passages from Saint Paul. Record your reactions to the passages in the space provided. If you wish choose a phrase out of one of these passages to memorize. Repeat it frequently from the heart. Let it be a constant reminder to you of the importance of community.
Sense of Community Write out your own personal plan for developing the good habit of community. Build on your positive experiences. Keep your plan simple. Don't make so many demands on yourself that you are doomed to fail. Every positive step will contribute to your sense of belonging to the community and that sense will shine through in your teaching.
Prayer is communication—pure and simple. It is the way the covenant relationship with God is nourished and sustained. As a catechist, it is important that you pray. You will be called on more than once to teach about prayer. It is difficult to teach others something you do not or cannot do. There are two mistaken notions about prayer. The first is that prayer—-real heartfelt prayer—-is the task of professionals. Priests are trained to pray. Monks and nuns go to monasteries to pray. Then, there are those special lay people who know how to pray. But for the rest, prayer is pretty much limited to Sunday worship, a garbled morning or meal prayer, and those times of personal need. The second mistaken notion is that prayer is a snap. Anybody can pray. All you have to do is recite a few Our Fathers, read the prayers out of the missalette or prayer book, read a little something out of the Bible or make up a prayer of our own. Right? Wrong! If communication were a snap, their wouldn't be three rows of shelves in the bookstore trying to show people how to communicate better. Just as people need to practice good communication in order to develop good communication habits, people need to practice praying in order to develop the habit of prayer. Some of this practice can be pretty feeble. Some of it can be gut wrenching. But every point of contact is a step toward developing the habit. To get a better understanding of the ways of the personal prayer habit, it helps to take a look at the ways people communicate personally with one another and at how these simple human expressions are clues about prayer. These simple expressions include:
Read Romans 7:26-27. Think about the help you are going to get from the Holy Spirit as you develop the habit of prayer. Then, locate at least five messages in the Gospels or in the Epistles of Paul that tell you about the habit of prayer. Record each message to assist you as you develop the habit of prayer in a prayer journal.
It isn't always easy to catch a little silence. One way to do this is to make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Nobody has qualms about popping over to a friend's house for a cup of coffee and some conversation. Why not pop into church for a cup of silence and some prayer? Try this. You might find the few moments alone in the quiet of a church or chapel not only refreshing, but an important part of your routine. Record your feeling about your visits in a prayer journal.
It is pretty easy to get through the Sunday Eucharist without too much thought. Next Sunday, plan to get actively involved in the Eucharist. Be prepared to join in the singing, to really mean the prayers and responses you say, to listen to the readings, to tune in during the Eucharistic Prayer, to really mean the Lord's Prayer and the Greeting of Peace, to talk to Jesus directly during Communion, to linger after church to chat with other members of the family. Record your reactions to the following in your prayer journal.
Outline your personal plan for developing the habit of personal prayer. Try to avoid a lot of religious language in outlining your plan. Keep in mind that prayer is the communication that keeps your relationship with God alive, that keeps you awake to what is happening, and that helps you stay in love with the God who loved you into being!
On the night before he died, Jesus took off his outer garment, wrapped a towel around his waist, took a basin of water, and washed the feet of the disciples. Jesus said, "You call me Master and Lord, and you are right, I am. Well, if your Master and Lord washes your feet, you are going to have to wash one another's feet." In the family of faith, rank has no privileges. The lowliest, poorest, most disenfranchised member of the family is just as important as pope or bishop or priest or sister or wealthy lay person. In fact, the more official and visible a person's ministry is, the greater are the service demands on that person. To really follow in the footsteps of the Master, one needs to have a foot-washing attitude. This foot washing attitude is discovered in asking simple questions:
The attitude of service goes beyond the boundaries of the faith community right smack into the big wide world. As a catechist, it is important to face reality and help meet the needs of this wounded world.
Read some of Scripture with an eye to the habit of justice and peace. Read each of the passages listed below. Then think about how this passage is inviting you to build a new earth.
Try to get better informed and to understand the needs for justice and peace in the world. What positive actions can you take to help these situations?
Review some of the Church's social teachings. The teaching and learning community has taken some pretty strong stands on social issues. How can you become better informed about these teachings? Read some of the social teachings found on these website links: National Conference of Catholic Bishops Just and Peaceful Plan Outline your own plan for developing the habit of peace and justice. Keep your plan simple, honest, practical, and realistic. Don't be afraid to challenge yourself.
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