Last weekend, several parish catechists and a few tag-alongs joined in a retreat at Conception Abbey in Missouri celebrating the completion of our 10th year of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd at All Saints.
The theme of the retreat which was facilitated by the very talented Katie
Patrizio was "Mercy: The
Message of the Catechist." Katie closed the retreat with
reflections on this question:
"Which is the most important thing: to love or to be loved?"
She ventured a guess that many of us would consider it a much more noble thing to love than to be loved. I remembered, for example, the famous Franciscan prayer and song where I pray to never seek "to be loved" so much "as to love with all my soul..."
Yet her reflection grew much, much deeper. When it comes to our fellow travellers, our children, our spouse, our friends, our enemies--this sentiment of loving first holds. We must seek not their love, but to love. Or as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said, "Where you do not find love, put in love, and you will draw out love!"
But if your own tank is empty, where are you going to get the gas to fill up someone else?
Katie suggested that when frustration comes our way and we find ourselves unable to love, it is because we are laying hold to love in the wrong order. We think that we must love first in order to be lovable. We think we must be well in order to go to the physician (see Mark 2:17).
She proposed that it is far more important for we humans to know deeply we are loved than to love. In fact, when Jesus gives the commandment to love, he does so only in reference to his own love for us: "Love one another as I have loved you." (John 13:34) It is impossible for us to do all God asks of us, if we don't live and experience and trust in that merciful love each day.
It is probably the greatest trick that the devil ever pulled off to make the core proclamation of the Gospel - that God loves you - sound like a platitude.
"Which is the most important thing: to love or to be loved?"
She ventured a guess that many of us would consider it a much more noble thing to love than to be loved. I remembered, for example, the famous Franciscan prayer and song where I pray to never seek "to be loved" so much "as to love with all my soul..."
Yet her reflection grew much, much deeper. When it comes to our fellow travellers, our children, our spouse, our friends, our enemies--this sentiment of loving first holds. We must seek not their love, but to love. Or as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said, "Where you do not find love, put in love, and you will draw out love!"
But if your own tank is empty, where are you going to get the gas to fill up someone else?
Katie suggested that when frustration comes our way and we find ourselves unable to love, it is because we are laying hold to love in the wrong order. We think that we must love first in order to be lovable. We think we must be well in order to go to the physician (see Mark 2:17).
She proposed that it is far more important for we humans to know deeply we are loved than to love. In fact, when Jesus gives the commandment to love, he does so only in reference to his own love for us: "Love one another as I have loved you." (John 13:34) It is impossible for us to do all God asks of us, if we don't live and experience and trust in that merciful love each day.
It is probably the greatest trick that the devil ever pulled off to make the core proclamation of the Gospel - that God loves you - sound like a platitude.
So many complaints about
catechesis over the past 50 years center around the fact that we traded in the
"real" catechesis for the fluffy "you are special" and
"God loves you" catechesis, and yet, this is the most fundamental and
important truth.
If we are looking for reasons of the failure of catechesis, I would say that the finger should not be pointed so much at the lack of moral formation (how well we love others), but of a failure in initial evangelization (how deeply we understand that we are loved). No moral formation (parenesis) will ever be successful without a firm grounding in this first and always primary proclamation (kerygma) which gives us joy!
This proclamation of mercy should be not only on the lips of priests and catechists, but of each and every one of us. Yet before these words can be truly sounded, they must echo deep in our own hearts. We must know deeply that we ourselves are loved in a radical, unconditional way. As my dear friend Tom always says, "Nemo dat, quo non habet."
In plain English, "You can't give it, if you don't got it!"
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