Catechesis and Training
Ephraim Radner, priest and professor at Wycliffe College and honorary canon of the diocese of Dallas, writing in “First Things” in January: “Catechesis is today the main task of our Christian communities…. Catechesis is the micro-climate of patience, and patience is what opens us to God’s own time and timing, to what God gives.”
I was surprised by how many people told me they had taken a look at one or more of the catechesis videos I mentioned last week. They are here: https://edod.org/resources/articles/a-post-pandemic-catechesis/ I think, also, that they are good material for study classes, growth groups, home fellowships, and the like.
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He was jogging north; I was walking south with my loaded, 17-pound backpack. “Are you training?" he asked. He had earpods; I assumed he was talking on the phone. But no, he was talking to me. I said yes, that I was going to take a long pilgrimage in Spain. He was excited; he knew about the Camino. “I’m going to walk the JMT,” he said, ”and I need to start training for it.” The JMT stands for the John Muir Trail. I said that his trek would be much harder than mine; that he’d have to take a tent—at which he grinned. “No, actually I’m planning to do it cowboy-style, just sleep on the ground and pull a cover over me.”
His delight and friendliness encouraged me, and I guess I encouraged him in turn. I’ve often thought, though, that none of us is ever just training. The meaning of what we do is never just in the future.
Children, for instance, are not the church of the future. If they are baptized, they are part of the church of the present. Just so, my walking over this fascinating city of Dallas is not only getting ready to walk over a thousand-year-old path in Spain. It is a meaningful thing to do right now.
And Lent is not a preparation for Easter. And this life is not a preparation for the life to come. The value of this life—like that of Lent, and of children, and of walking around Dallas—is here, now, and always.
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Mr. Michael Ossorgin, tutor at St. John’s College, complained ironically about the highway signs that said, “Courtesy Pays.” He said: “Courtesy is good in its own right.”
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Also in that January issue of “First Things,” Wilfred McClay writes on the importance of memorization. When, say, a prayer is memorized, it “becomes one’s own, alive in one’s mind and spirit…. It is ours, more fully than the books on our shelf.” And when a prayer is “shared by heart by many” it contributes to forming “the soul of a people. This is why we need to pay more attention to what we are putting into our memories, and those of our children.”
So I thought I would start to include a bit of memorization here at the end of my blogs. This first one is one of my favorite prayers for evening, and it is short. Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.