Inaugural Issue of The Catechetical Review

Feature
which gives life a new horizon.” 15 What are the practices
that prepare the heart for such an encounter
Witness Testimony: Regular exposure to personal, Christcentered
witness testimony is a profoundly valuable practice
in this regard. To encounter someone who has encountered
Jesus arouses wonder and curiosity. Good preparation is
essential. Besides the value of live testimony, what possibilities
exist in various forms of media (video, radio, social
networking) to expose people to real people, Catholics
whose lives have been changed by Jesus Christ For the
New Evangelization, giving explicit personal witness to
Jesus Christ must come to be understood as something
Catholics can do.
Meditation: Regular meditation on the Word of God
(above) prepares the ground for such an encounter. The
Word of God is alive and active and has a way of hitting
us between the eyes, if only we pray with it frequently
(and not just at Sunday Mass).
Sacramental Encounters: In what ways do our children
experience sacramental moments as a personal
encounter with Jesus Particularly
in the Sacraments of Eucharist and
Reconciliation, in what ways can we
intentionally foster this sense of a personal
encounter with the Lord Pope
John Paul II encouraged us to foster
the experience of “Eucharistic ‘amazement.’”
16 My friend asked her young
charges which of them had seen the
movie Spiderman. She then referred to
the fact that Spiderman was really Peter
Parker in disguise. Jesus, she explained,
also has a disguise—he disguises himself
as bread, but it’s actually Jesus. These
children were delighted with this discovery and soon began
to visit Jesus at church after school. Parents can foster this
amazement by attending adoration with their children, or
when stopping by the tabernacle together after Mass to
leave their prayers with him.
Likewise, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is a tremendous
encounter “with Christ saying, through the minister
of the sacrament of Reconciliation: ‘Your sins are forgiven’;
‘Go, and do not sin again.’…this is also a right on Christ’s
part with regard to every human being redeemed by him:
his right to meet each one of us in that key moment in
the soul’s life constituted by the moment of conversion
and forgiveness.” 17
These two sacraments enable a person to remain in right
relationship with God in order to be in communion with him.
Non-Sacramental Encounters: In what non-sacramental
ways can we develop the consciousness of living out a
personal relationship with the Lord during the rest of the
week For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church
The act of selfentrustment
to
God is the engine
for catechesis and
sacramental practice,
the engine for the
moral life, the engine
for vocations and
stewardship.
teaches us: “To pray ‘Jesus’ is to invoke him and to call
him within us. His name is the only one that contains
the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and
whoever invokes the name of Jesus is welcoming the
Son of God who loved him and who gave himself up
for him.” 18 Placing ourselves in the presence of Jesus at
home, in the car, and at work, is a tremendous antidote
to anxiety and loneliness, and profoundly enriches the
culmination of our relationship with Jesus in our reception
of Holy Communion.
3. Conversion requires an act of explicit, personal
self-entrustment to Jesus Christ by faith.
Another word for this is “the act of faith”—not just in
terms of reciting the creed but also in terms of entrusting
one’s whole life to God. This act of self-entrustment
is the engine for catechesis and sacramental practice, the
engine for the moral life, the engine for vocations and
stewardship. When Catholic catechesis is undesired, when
moral teaching is rejected, when Mass is boring, when
the experience of the faith community
is anonymous, lonely, and superficial;
all these are flags that little has been
invested in bringing people to a personal
act of self-entrustment to the Lord.
Witness testimony (above) is valuable
because it creates the opportunity for
people to share how they did it (or how
Christ did it to them), what the circumstances
were that occasioned it, and
what benefit there would be for others
to do likewise. 19 For maturing disciples,
witness testimony is especially powerful
when it exemplifies the profound
intimacy with Jesus that grows out of the shadow of a
cross we carry with him.
4. To enable the conversion of children and teens,
we must help their parents come to know Jesus
Christ, too.
What creative possibilities exist to expose parents to
personal witness testimony that is both Christ-centered
and Catholic, and put meditation materials in hand that
will help them to engage in dialogue with God through
his Word For parents whose children are preparing to
receive a sacrament, consider conducting a daylong retreat
to help parents come to know Jesus better, to spark their
own conversion, and to supply them with concrete resources
for growing in discipleship.
Conclusion
This brief survey is directed to the development of conditions
that favor the conversion of the baptized, but it only
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