Keynoter will try to explain how to explain unexplainable

Dr. Carole Eipers, director of catechetics for William H. Sadlier Inc., a New York-based religious publisher, has adopted the theme "a love beyond all telling" for her keynote address. The theme was the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' choice for Catechetical Sunday this year; it refers to the magnitude of God's love for us.

Spring Enrichment is a four-day series of workshops and courses for religious educators, held at The College of Saint Rose in Albany. It is sponsored by the diocesan Office of Evangelization and Catechesis (OEC). Catechists, youth ministers and other parish personnel attend the event.

A "love beyond all telling" is "certainly a major theme of our faith," Dr. Eipers noted. The reason Jesus became one of us, she explained, is that God's love for the world was beyond all telling and needed to be shown by God's presence among us.

But teaching catechists how to communicate that to their students can be difficult.

"It's like saying, `Here is your job: to write the article that can't be written; to produce the movie that can't be produced,'" said Dr. Eipers. "How do we tell them to tell the thing that is `beyond all telling'?"

To explain that concept, Dr. Eipers plans to use examples from Scripture and Catholic tradition of how God has proclaimed and continues to proclaim love for us.

The bottom line, she said, is that every Catholic is a catechist in some fashion and can benefit from her talk.

"There ain't gonna' be nobody in the audience who isn't a catechist, or at least an evangelizer, because that is the call of our Baptism," she said.

(Registration for Spring Enrichment is required by April 26. Fees are $6 per session/$48 per person. For more information, call the OEC at 453-6630.)

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