Lesson 2: God Comes to Meet Us

"My Soul Longs for You Oh God" is the title of our first lesson. "God Comes to Meet Us" is the title of this lesson. This past Wednesday, the day we studied our second lesson, I had a very pronounced longing for God and a strong sense that God wanted to meet with me. As is usually the case when I am experiencing difficulty, like I currently am with work, I was drawn to visit the Blessed Sacrament. I left work Wednesday morning to visit the Blessed Sacrament at Saint Benedict Catholic Church in Chesapeake before meeting Bonnie for lunch. The photo in this post is of the altar at Saint Benedict.

Saint Benedict Catholic Church is one of two parish apostolates that are part of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter in the diocese of Richmond. An apostolate is a Christian organization "directed to serving and evangelizing the world". In 1988, Pope John Paul II established the Priestly Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right. The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter was founded in response to the Holy Father's call to ecclesial unity and the new evangelization. Hence, the name Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter denotes a filial love and loyalty to the Supreme Pontiff. You will find this information and more about the fraternity at http://fssp.com/press/what-is-the-fraternity-of-st-peter/

I had heard about Saint Benedict parish but I had never visited. I heard that the priests celebrate Mass according to the Latin rite and that women wear veils in the sanctuary. That's about all I knew about the parish. I didn't know anything about parish apostolates and the establishment of the Priestly Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right by Pope John Paul II. It would have been easier for me to visit the Blessed Sacrament at our home parish but I felt a call to go to Saint Benedict. It isn't easy to find Saint Benedict but, thanks to my GPS, I finally did. I will share more about my special visit to the Blessed Sacrament in another post. For now I will move on to our second lesson in the catechism.

As I mentioned in the post for our first lesson, we decided to read the "green book" paragraphs for this lesson during lunch before we studied later that evening. As is often the case, our reading from the "green book" seemed dry and we were trying to relate to how we could apply it to our lives. However, we were also excited knowing that we would study it in more depth later that evening with  the lesson in the "red book".

As we expected, the lesson in the "red book" helped illuminate what we read in the "green book" earlier that day. It helped make what we read earlier in the day more tangible, relatable and applicable to our lives. We began our lesson with a prayer to the Holy Spirit followed by one of the scripture readings suggested in the "Study Guide". We chose Exodus 3:1-15; 4:10-16 which tells the story about when God reveals His Holy Name to Moses. As it turned out (and we know it is no coincidence), that is the same reading at the beginning of Chapter 2 in the "red book". We continued our lesson by following the outline in the "Reader's Journal". The "Reader's Journal" walks you through each of the following sections of the chapter: God Reveals His Holy Name, God's Loving Plan to Save Us and The Gospel and Culture.

These sections were followed by thought provoking discussion questions, a review of the doctrinal statements in the "green book", meditation and prayer. 

The meditation for this lesson is from the "green book" citing St. John of the Cross about Jesus Christ being the definitive revelation of God. The meditation encouraged us to record a word or phrase from the meditation and reflect on it often, even daily. Here are the phrases that we reflected on:

Bonnie: "Fix your eyes on Christ."

Dave: "I will fix my eyes entirely on Christ so as not to offend God."

We concluded our lesson with the section "Putting Faith into Practice" by reflecting on what we had studied and completing the statement "I am inspired to...". Here is how we were inspired to put what we learned into practice.

Bonnie: "I am inspired to study pointedly Christ and keep my gaze on Him at all times and in all situations and to continue to come to know my faith so deeply that I can be a true evangelist and make a change in this culture."

Dave: "I am inspired to dive deeper into my faith and gain a keen vision of culture so that I can evangelize effectively." 

We completed the lesson in about 1.5 hours. What a wonderful way to end the night and retire to bed. Our next and third lesson is this Sunday: Proclaim the Gospel to Every Creature. We can hardly wait until Sunday to arrive.

As a tribute to our friend and Brother in Christ, Paul Harvey, we highlighted the following statement at the top of page 17 for Lesson 2. This statement spoke clearly and emphatically to us about why it is so important for us to study the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

"Evangelizing a culture relies on deep insight into the mysteries of our faith and keen vision for understanding the basis of our culture".

Keeping Father Brian Informed

We know that it is important to keep our pastor, Father Brian Rafferty, informed about activities that involve or could affect the parish so we met with him after Mass this morning to get his thoughts on the U.S. Catholic Catechism for Adults and share with him our plan for self study and for eventually embarking on a catechism course for adults in our parish. He was very supportive of both the catechism and our plans.

We will keep him informed about how our study is progressing and, as we get closer to completing our study, talk more about the best way to teach the catechism to other adults. We are currently thinking that the small group discussion approach, led by trained lay people like ourselves, will work well. We also talked about setting aside sessions where he or one of our deacons could come in for questions and answers. Perhaps this would occur midway through and at the end of each group of sessions.

Lesson 1: My Soul Longs for You Oh God

It's July 3rd and we just completed Lesson 1 on our back deck in cool 72 degree weather. Yes, 72 degrees in the middle of the afternoon at the beginning of July! With heavy cloud cover and a slight breeze, it was actually a little chilly. This is after what has to be record rainfall over the past few days. As you can see in the photo above, we put many of our resources to use. That is Bonnie's right leg and foot in the lower right of the photo. At the lower left of the photo is Maggie, our chipin (chihuahua and miniature pincher mix) dog. She was intent on getting in on our study.

Here is a list of the reference material we started with:

• The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, Ignatius Press
• The New American Bible, Saint Joseph Edition
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition (Green book)
• United States Catholic Catechism for Adults (Red book)
• Reader's Journal for the United States Catechism for Adults
• Compendium - Catechism of the Catholic Church
• Study Guide for the U.S. Adult Catholic Catechism

We actually began our study last Wednesday by reviewing the introduction in both the Red book and the study guide. This helped us gain an understanding for the organization of the material and how we can use it for our study. We decided that we will set aside time two days each week to dedicate exclusively to our catechism study. We chose Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon. With 36 chapters to cover, we will be on track to complete our study by early November and be ready to roll it out for small group study by the first of the year if not the end of the year.

 

We weren't quite sure how to conduct our first lesson: Do we use the study guide along with the red book or just the red book? It seems that the red book alone was organized in a way that is conducive to self study. However, the lesson in the study guide begins with a prayer to the Holy Spirit and included several Scripture verses to chose from for reflection. That appealed to us so we decided to use the study guide as our starting point. However, as we progressed through our study, it became distracting to go back and forth between the study guide and the red book. Needless to say, we got off to a bit of a rocky start and then we realized that the Journal was more than a place to record our thoughts. We realized that the Journal is a companion to the red book and it navigates you through each part part of each lesson. Part way into our study we began to use the Journal more and the study guide lesson. We decided that we will use the Journal for the other lessons.

However, there is value in the study guide but we consider is more of a companion to our study for reference and we don't plan to use in directly in our study. At the end of the study guid ether is a list or references for further reading. This lists includes Second Vatican Council Readings, DVD's about the various saints and writings from early Church Fathers among others.

 

After about 2.5 hours we completed most of our lesson but we still had not read the applicable sections from the green book. We decided to take a break and have dinner before we actually read from the green book. Reading from the green book after completing our study in the red book allowed us to get so much more out of the green book than we were able to before. Each lesson can  go on for hours because there is so much to talk about but we know we need to set a time limit. We are going to work towards completing each lesson in 90 minutes. On Wednesday, we will read the applicable sections from the green book during lunch and then complete the lesson in the Journal and red book that evening. Check back with us later this week to see how that lesson went.

 

Lesson 1 ended with a meditation from St. Augustine's Confessions and a call to put what we learned into practice. The meditation encouraged us to record a word or phrase from the meditation and reflect on it often, even daily. Here are the phrases that we reflected on:

Bonnie: "Late have I loved You!!!!!"

Dave: God is always with me.

Here is how we were inspired to put what we learned into practice.

Bonnie: " I am inspired to take this catechism study very seriously as I feel called to educate my self and, in turn others, in the faith."

Dave: "I am inspired to invite God into all that I do."