The Priest at Prayer, June 22

The Priestly Ministry

Catechetical Instruction

First Meditation - Divine Example and Precept

I. It was Christ's delightful task in passing through this world to evangelise the poor (Luke iv, 18); therefore, to teach the rudiments of the Faith to children and to those who in this respect are also children, the ignor­ant, is a work of the ministry which is nothing less than divine. What need had our Divine Lord of exquisitely-couched and loftily-proclaimed orations, or of intricate reasonings, or very abstruse arguments, when talking to poor ignorant people and to crowds uninitiated in the doctrines of the Redemption?

Apart from a few discourses to the doctors of the Law within the precincts of the Temple, His doctrine was usually imparted in the form of catechetical instruc­tion: an instruction full of unction, of suggestion, and of astounding simplicity. The very places He chose to preach from, His gestures, His illustrations, His parables, even the questions and answers He welcomed from His listeners: they all breathed a sort of heavenly fragrance born of a charming familiarity, of a teaching that was homely and appealing to the hearts of little ones. It was the perfect catechetical instruction. No wonder He could say: Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart. (Matt. xi, 29)

My Jesus, ever God, and yet, ever a Child and humble with little ones: shall I disdain as beneath me what Thou didst so love and practise?


II. And if Christ in His catechising had to accommodate Himself to the people and come down to the level of an illiterate audience, what of the Apostles? Our Lord, we must remember, spoke to Jewish believers who knew the primary truths and the preliminaries of our Faith - the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, creation, etc., etc. - but what did those countless multi­tudes know or believe whom St. Paul evangelised? What could his sermons be but the rudiments of our Faith expounded in conversational style by the wayside, in the street, in the forum, and within the home?

The same procedure had to be followed, and still is followed today, by that galaxy of apostolic men who by their lives of self-denial and by the spoken word have in every Christian age been instrumental in widen­ing the boundaries of Christ's Kingdom so as to em­brace barbarous and savage peoples. Of mighty little use would they find the embellishments of our pompous rhetoric when dealing with members of a stunted civil­isation, with races that never knew civilisation, or which are in a state of profound decadence.

No, I shall not be ashamed to be a catechist; it is the catechists who have changed the world.

III. The Gospels are abundantly clear on this matter. Jesus preaches to the poor; it is the hallmark of His Divine Mission, the motto, so to speak, of His royal escutcheon. It is the poor, usually, who are the ignorant (particularly was this the case in our Lord's time) and Christ teaches them wherever He finds them: in the fields, on the mountainside, on the road, on the banks of the lake, in their homes, in their villages. (Cfr. Matt. ix, 35)

He instructs them by using commonplace objects of comparison: the cornfields swaying within His view, the fig trees that shaded the road; and He invents for the people's benefit examples and parables of unequalled loveliness, borrowing materials from occurrences of everyday life. He repeats His maxims time and time again, invites questions, and gives answers. In a word, He reveals Himself towards the poor as their great Catechist.

Shed Thy divine Catechist spirit, O Lord, upon every one of Thy priests, or at least upon a goodly number of them, and they will renew the face of the earth.

Resolution
If my stupid pride and a false idea of my dignity have prejudiced me until now against the teaching of the catechism, with shame for the past I shall henceforth esteem this work of the ministry at its full value; as a work which is truly evangelical and absolutely necessary for the spreading and preservation of the Faith, and without which every other style of preaching is little better than a mere exercise of vocalisation.

It is a positive fact that the Church, now and always, needs far more catechists than famed orators.
_________________________
Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.

###
Please pray for our priests and pray for vocations to the priesthood!