Jesus lies at heart of catechesis

By JEANNE SCHREMPF

Across the nation, the third Sunday of September heralds the beginning of a new catechetical year. It is a time of new beginnings, a time of hope and promise, a time of dreams and possibilities.

The theme for this Catechetical Sunday and for the entire year is "Jesus Christ, Yesterday, Today, and Forever." This theme, taken from the liturgical readings for Sept. 21, is also the 1997 theme selected by the Holy Father as preparation for the new millennium.

The new catechetical year and millennium theme offer each of us -- in each stage of life, in each place in life -- the opportunity to center our lives and our ministry on the person of Jesus Christ. This theme calls us to wrestle over and over -- in prayer, at Eucharist, at home, in the car, in all the quiet and busy times of our life -- with the question Jesus asked 2,000 years ago and still asks today: Who do you say that I am?"

The question and the answer are worth the struggle. Although some of us are called forth to catechize in the formal sense by teaching the third grade or the Confirmation group, or by breaking open the Scriptures with the catechumens or children at the Liturgy of the Word, or through homilies and writing, all of us are called to be catechists by how we pray, care for one another, work to build a just society, and live as disciples of Jesus in the world.

Jesus is the heart of all catechesis. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reiterates this strongly and reminds us: "to catechize is to reveal in the Person of Christ the whole of God's eternal design reaching fulfillment in that Person....Catechesis aims at putting people in communion with Jesus Christ." Whether we do this formally or informally, it is the task of the whole parish, the whole Church.

This theme calls us to reflect on who we are and what we actually teach, proclaim, believe and witness. In order to put others in communion with Jesus Christ, I am challenged to first be there myself. There is always a risk that I may know about Jesus -- and never know Jesus the Christ. There is a danger that my image of Jesus is made in my likeness and is not Jesus fully human and fully divine. There is a concern that I can talk about Church, community and service, and never teach or witness to what it means and what it costs to be a disciple.

And so this catechetical and millennium theme presents both a gift and a challenge: to faithfully, personally, prayerfully, scripturally, theologically, historically, catechetically make "Jesus, Yesterday, Today, and Forever" the center of our lives and our ministry.

We owe this to our children and our youth; we owe this to those inside and outside of our churches; we owe this to friends and strangers; we owe this to our families and our world. We owe this gift and opportunity to ourselves.

(Editor's note: The author is director of the diocesan Office of Religious Education.)

(09-18-97)