Kneading faith
By Fran Lavelle
My home in Starkville is out in the country.  On my way home by way of a narrow gravel road, I pass by the Volunteer Fire Department.   It occurred to me the other night that I have volunteers in my local rural community that are trained and prepared to come to my assistance if I ever experienced a fire on my property.  These folks are trained to save lives. I am grateful that there are people in my community who take on that responsibility and take with it the seriousness of being prepared.  Sometimes, however, folks in ministry are hesitant to ask “too” much of the people in the pews.  The concern is that as volunteers we fear that by placing too many requirements on them, they will quit. I think the opposite is true.
Proper training gives us a certain level of competency. The more competent one is, the more willing they are to take continue to take on responsibility.
It’s easy to become overwhelmed with and extensive increasing list of things to do and decreasing budget and/or energy to do them. Sometimes we just need to spend the money, time and energy to gain insight, perspective and rest that we most need to do our ministry with competency and care. So it was for the more than 50 people from the Diocese of Jackson who recently made the journey to Kenner, La., for the 33rd Annual Gulf Coast Faith Formation Conference.  This year’s theme, “Christ Centered People: Called, Gifted and Sent,” drew more than 900 people from the Gulf Coast region and beyond.
One of my favorite parts of the weekend was seeing contemporaries from around the diocese. Our delegation from the Jackson diocese included priests, sisters and lay people.  I am still very new to this job and this was the first time for me to attend this conference.  I take no credit for the success of the weekend, but I must say I was so proud of each and every member of our diocese who attended.  The weekend was educational, reflective and challenging.
One of the best keynote speeches was given by Father Steven Bell, CSP.  Father Bell was formerly on the staff at Busted Halo and now serves as the pastoral associate at St. Thomas More Newman Center in Columbus, Ohio. We had a chance to chat before his remarks as I had been asked to introduce him.  Father Bell challenged us to step out of our role as “church people” and look at our ministry with new eyes. What if I were coming to this event/activity for the first time?  What would my experience of hospitality be? How would I fit in?  Hospitality should resonate in every aspect of what we do in ministry.
It does not matter if one is the pastor, DRE, youth minister, catechist, book keeper or janitor hospitality should be the hallmark of all that we do. This is a challenge that I keep before me in my ministry and in working with college leadership underscored often. It does not hurt, however, to be reminded of it again.
While it is a regional conference, speakers came from all over the US.  Hearing the perspective of someone who comes from a different place can be beneficial and enlightening.  In those moments we realize how much a like we are and that no place is free of challenges. For example, a workshop speaker made a statement that I have not heard before but resonated with me immensely.  He said that we’ve got to stop treating youth like a problem and start treating them as vital and integral members of our parishes. Zowie! They are NOT, he reminded us, the future of our Church. They are in every way, the Church of today.
His challenge made me think about the ways our Office can better serve the people in our parishes chosen to minister to our youth. Just like my volunteer firefighters down the lane, I want our catechist and DREs/CREs to feel like they have the education, training and tools to do their very best.  And, like my volunteer firefighters, there is something life-saving about the mission.  If your parish is not already taking catechetical training seriously, maybe this will serve as food for thought.  I encourage you to make the investment.
(Fran Lavelle is the Director of the Office of Faith Formation for the Diocese of Jackson.)

Forming our future
By Jules Michel
Let the children come unto me!
As an educator, I have always liked this quote from the New Testament.  Jesus was a teacher who invited the children to come to him to learn about the kingdom.  What more powerful statement is there of the priority of Catholic education in the kingdom of God.
The Plenary Councils of Baltimore, Maryland, in 1852-1884 pronounced the support of the American Bishops of that period when they proclaimed that every new parish created in the country must have a Catholic school affiliated with it!
So many times Mississippi is considered last in education, but that cannot be said of Catholic education.  We have one of the oldest, continually operating Catholic schools in the country, Natchez Cathedral School, founded in 1847.  It is also the oldest school in the state still in operation despite a Catholic population of only 3 percent. The four remaining Catholic high schools in the diocese represent 593 years of uninterrupted Catholic education of not only Catholic students, but those of every race, nationality and religion in the world.
This could only have happened through the Holy Spirit as He inspired the religious men and women who founded and established our school system. It could not have happened without the parents and parishioners of the past 170 years social and financial sacrifices. Yes social sacrifices, as there were times when it was not socially acceptable to attend a Catholic school.  In the African American community it was an even more socially dividing institution.  In the black communities some Catholic school patrons were made to feel as if they were trying to “be white.” In the white communities many felt the Catholic Church should not educate the African American for fear he might learn enough to buck the white social system existing in America.
I am sure the Italian, Syrian, Irish and German immigrant Catholics in America were made to feel the same way in their respective communities. (This is not unlike the social road blocks that existed in the time of the early church as it followed its mission of evangelizing the Gentiles.) For nearly 2,000 years we have seen that you cannot separate God and learning!
So what about Catholic education in Mississippi? We have seen from where it has evolved, but where is it going? Does the Catholic school system have the same mission as it did in 1847 or has that changed also?
As a person who has spent 43 years of his life in Mississippi’s Catholic Schools, I can say without a doubt our mission has NOT changed.  In fact I think it is even more appropriate now than it was 168 years ago.  If we consider that the mission is to provide a Catholic, faith-based academic education to all those persons desiring such a school, then it has not changed. What has changed is who. Who is staffing our schools and who are our current students.
In the post Vatican II era of the 1960’s we saw a dramatic decrease in the number of religious men and women choosing Catholic education as their vocation. I began working in the Catholic schools about this time, 1974. Within 10 years, the schools became almost totally staffed by lay persons, some even non-Catholic.
The challenge of the schools at this time was to make sure the lay staff and administration was totally vested in the original Catholic school mission and the charism of the religious who founded the state’s Catholic schools. Among men and women religious, even on a national scale, there was concern that lay educators just could not keep our schools “Catholic.”  Amid many obstacles I feel we have not only kept them Catholic but added the dimension of the lay Catholic charism. Since most of the Catholic school educators were products of religious-led Catholic schools, they tended to keep these traditions alive. In addition many of our lay administrators were married and had children which added another dimension to how they perceived their ministry of Catholic education.
I believe one of the most successful changes in the new era Catholic school has come in the teaching of religion or theology. These programs have not only embraced the traditional teachings of the church but also the social teaching of the universal church. Lay staffs are modeling how students must take not only their academic training into their adult life but also the spiritual training that requires them to be lay, adult witnesses to the teaching of Jesus Christ. They have become the St. Pauls of modern times.
The second major change in the 21st century has been the larger number of persons of other faith beliefs choosing a Catholic education. We can assume they are not all here to become Catholic, although a significant number do convert. No, they are here for quality academics, a safe environment and an education intertwined with Christian values. This addition means we have added a new dimension to Mississippi Catholic education, that of evangelization!
So what does the future hold? Well, that is up to you, the patrons and alumni and to our former students. If you feel our schools have given you a quality education and preparation for life, then you will support us with your children and patronage. If you are open to selecting a ministry in Catholic education you will support us with your talents. With only 14 of our schools still open since 1847, I can only hope that the Holy Spirit will work in them as He did in the early, catacomb church.  As Father (Alfred) Camp always said, “It ain’t easy!”
(Jules Michel is principal of Vicksburg, St. Aloysius, and has been principal of Jackson St. Richard School, Natchez Cathedral School and Greenville St. Joseph Schools.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
It’s common for us to see God’s grace and blessing in what unites us. We naturally sense the presence of grace when, at our core, we feel a strong moral bond with certain other persons, churches, and faiths. That, biblically, is what defines family.
But what if what separates us, what if what makes other persons, churches, and faiths seem foreign and strange is also a grace, a difference intended by God? Can we think of our differences, as we think of our unity, as a gift from God? Most religions, including Christianity, would answer affirmatively.
Thus in both the Jewish and the Christian scriptures there is the strong, recurring motif that God’s message to us generally comes through the stranger, the foreigner, from the one who is different from us, from a source from which we would never expect to hear God’s voice.
Added to this is the notion that when God speaks to us we generally experience it as a surprise, as something unexpected, and as something that does not easily square with our normal expectations as to how God should work and how we should learn. There’s a reason for this. Simply put, when we think we are hearing God’s voice in what’s familiar, comfortable, and secure, the temptation is always to reshape the message according to our own image and likeness, and so God often comes to us through the unfamiliar.
Moreover, what’s familiar is comfortable and offers us security; but, as we know, real transformative growth mostly happens when, like the aged Sarah and Abraham, we are forced to set off to a place that’s foreign and frightening and that strips us of all that is comfortable and secure.
Set off, God told Sarah and Abraham, to a land where you don’t know where you’re going. Real growth happens and real grace breaks in when we have to deal with what is other, foreign, different. Learn to understand, writes John of the Cross, more by not understanding than by understanding. What’s dark, unfamiliar, frightening, and uninvited will stretch us in ways that the familiar and secure cannot. God sends his word to the earth through “angels” and they’re not exactly something we’re familiar with.
If this is true, then our differences are also a grace. Accordingly, seeing things differently does not mean that we are not seeing the same things. Accordingly, different notions about God and different ways of speaking about God do not mean that we’re speaking of a different God. The same holds true for our churches, having difference concepts of what it means to be church does not necessarily mean that there isn’t some deeper underlying unity inside our diversity.
Similarly for how we conceive of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, how we imagine Christ as being really present inside of bread and wine, can take many forms and can be spoken of in different ways, without it meaning that we’re speaking of a different reality.
John Paul II, addressing an interfaith gathering, once commented that “there are differences in which are reflected the genius and spiritual riches of God to the nations.” Christian de Cherge, after a lifetime of dialogue with Islam, suggests that our differences have a “quasi-sacramental function”, that is, they help to give real flesh in this world to the riches of God, who is ineffable and can never be captured in any one expression.
Our differences then are part of the mystery of our unity. Real unity, which needs to reflect the richness of God, does not exist in uniformity and homogenization, but only in bringing into harmony many different gifts and richness, like a beautiful bouquet of flowers brings together of a variety of different flowers inside one vase. Our legitimate differences are rooted inside of the same God.
This has implications for every area of our lives, from how we receive immigrants in our countries, to how we deal with different personalities inside our families and places of work, to how we deal with other Christian denominations and other religions.
Without endorsing a naive syncretism and without denying the rightful place for discernment, it must still be affirmed that our differences, conceived as an expression of a deeper unity that we cannot yet conceive, open us up more fully to the deep unfathomable, ineffable mystery of God and, at the same time, prevents us from making an idol of our own ideas, our own religious traditions, our own ways of understanding faith, and our own theologies and ideologies. Moreover, accepting differences as being intended by God and as the presence of grace in our lives should prevent us from constructing our identity, particularly our religious identity, on the basis of opposition to others and the unhealthy need to forever protest our own uniqueness and truth against what’s other.
God loves us all equally. Difference, then, understood as part of the mystery of unity, should help keep us humble and honest enough to let others take their proper place before God.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)