How to live like saints in a secular age

Sep 07, 2023

My daughter goes to a Catholic elementary school with a robust religious life. Catholic identity here is more than just tenets of belief. It’s gritty. It’s multi-sensory.

This past May, she and I spent an evening picking out flowers together for a school-wide May crowning ceremony. I look forward to it every year because of the ways in which it draws together heaven and earth: The gentle perfume of our grocery store carnation commingles with gratitude and reverence for the Blessed Mother’s heavenly care for us. Here, a $5 flower becomes an invitation to the mystery of the Incarnation.

More regularly, there is a monthly family Holy Hour where the children sit before the altar with one of the school’s Dominican sisters. Worship music is played in the background (this time, for my daughter, by Mom), and the children learn to pray with the sister’s accompaniment and witness. Each time, I feel I’m able to peer directly into the Gospels and see Jesus among his beloved children. You can sense that Christ — ever ancient, ever new — moves with the same mercy and power in our own nondescript corner of the world as he did in the rural villages of Galilee so many years ago.

Questions of a child

This gritty and imaginative formation in the Faith is deeply Catholic. But the school doesn’t exist on an island. As my daughter has encountered and grown in the Faith, I’ve noticed her beginning to compare her experience with those of her friends and family, especially those who go to public schools. For her, public schools are like Catholic schools without religion. But since religion is so immersive in her education, she has trouble conceptualizing what that can mean. If schools can be “Catholic” or “public,” she’ll often ask the same about people: “Is my friend, Mary, Catholic or public?” She also once asked if the Olive Garden was Catholic or public as we arrived for butter noodles and breadsticks. We, of course, help her make the necessary distinctions, but it’s clear she’s trying to understand the landscape of the environment she inhabits.

This experience of faith formation being joined inseparably by an encounter with rival beliefs about God has become commonplace for nearly all of us.

While her experience of the Faith is transcendent, the context of her belief is a world where many don’t think and act and believe the same, particularly about God and the ways in which his transcendence shapes our daily lives. Many of the people she sees daily — family, neighbors, friends — believe differently, often in no God. This causes some sort of confusion that needs to be sorted out that makes her ask questions about her own faith: Why don’t they believe what I believe? Why don’t they go to Church on Sundays? Why don’t they believe in God? Why do we? If you hold still before these questions, they’re not easy to answer, especially for a child. The context creates a sort of self-consciousness in her faith; it can make it seem fragile.

This experience of faith formation being joined inseparably by an encounter with rival beliefs about God has become commonplace for nearly all of us. Your experience may not seem as pristine as a child’s, but, arriving at our theme, this sort of experience is a good entry point to understanding what is meant by the word “secular” or “secularity.” This is the experience of having faith in a secular age.

This article comes to you from Our Sunday Visitor courtesy of your parish or diocese.

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Big “T” traditions

16 Sep, 2023

Traditions are important to families. Singing the family birthday song, making grandma’s banana bread, praying in a special way at holiday meals — traditions are the foundation on which strong families are built. Likewise, the Church was built upon the rituals and traditions of the apostles and the early Christian communities. This body of ritual and teaching is called Tradition (with a capital T), and it serves as a unifying force in the Church today. This Tradition is so important that the teaching office of the Church, called the magisterium, safeguards it. We believe that that sacred Word of God is found in both Scripture and Tradition. In fact, the Tradition of the Church was in place before the Gospels were even written. It’s true! We practiced our faith long before we wrote about our faith. The first Christians were already meeting together, mostly in homes, celebrating the Eucharist, sharing the teachings of the apostles and encouraging one another at the time the New Testament was written down. This was the beginning of St. Paul addressing his letters to these early Christian communities. Those who argue that Scripture alone should be the source of Christian teaching fail to recognize that in the first several centuries of the Church there was no “Bible” in the form we have today. Early Christian communities read from the Old Testament writings, the prophets and from the letters from leaders like Peter and Paul. The earliest writings in the New Testament reflect the belief and practice of the early Christians as the Holy Spirit guided the Church and her leaders. If we truly wish to understand Scripture, we must understand the context in which it was written — the Tradition of the Church.

The reality of sin and forgiveness

15 Sep, 2023

by Catherine Cavadini

September 15, 2023

15 Sep, 2023

Jn 19:25-27 Luke 2:33-35 Today, we pray the Sequence Sabat Mater, which means the mother was standing. Mary stands at the foot of the cross on which her son hangs. She remains with him until the end. Years before, Simeon had told her of her son’s destiny and her own suffering. Mary stood with Jesus through it all. This content comes to you from Our Sunday Visitor courtesy of your parish or diocese.

We are not orphans

15 Sep, 2023

"We are not orphans, we have Mothers: Mother Mary. But the Church is Mother and the Mother Church is anointed when it takes the same path of Jesus and Mary: the path of obedience, the path of suffering, and when she has that attitude of continually learning the path of the Lord. These two women — Mary and the Church — carry on the hope that is Christ, they give us Christ, they bring forth Christ in us. Without Mary, there would be no Jesus Christ; without the Church, we cannot go forward". – Pope Francis Reflection: Today is the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. What is your typical response to pain or extended times of difficulties? How do the two women – Mary and the Church – offer you hope in the midst of suffering? This content comes to you from Our Sunday Visitor courtesy of your parish or diocese.