If you want to be a catechetical success, you need to know and love the Scriptures.
In his Wednesday Audience on March 23, 2011, Pope Benedict highlighted St. Lawrence of Brindisi, a Capuchin friar ordained in 1582.
He was brilliant!
An extremely talented preacher, Lawrence engaged all types of audiences from different levels of society.
He had a great gift for languages.
In addition to Italian, Latin and French, he was fluent in German, which helped him make inroads into Protestant Germany.
But like many other Saints, his greatest assets were an immense knowledge and love of the Bible (he had it memorized!) and a deep life of prayer. He believed that God’s Word had the power to transform hearts.
Knowledge and love and of the Bible
In his audience Benedict said, “Lawrence’s success helps us to realize that today too…Sacred Scripture, interpreted in accordance with the Tradition of the Church, is an indispensable element of fundamental importance.”
Lawrence believed in the power of the Bible to change hearts:
“The word of the Lord”, he said, “is a light for the mind and a fire for the will, so that man may know and love God. For the inner man, who lives through the living grace of God’s Spirit, it is bread and water, but bread sweeter than honey and water better than wine or milk…. It is a weapon against a heart stubbornly entrenched in vice. It is a sword against the flesh, the world and the devil, to destroy every sin”.
The Pope commented that his love of Scripture was the underlying foundation of all of his activity.
Deep life of prayer
Meditative prayer is a must for handing on the Faith in a meaningful way. You need contact with God through prayer that is a conversation.
Benedict quotes St. Lawrence:
“Oh, if we were to consider this reality!”, he exclaimed. “In other words that God is truly present to us when we speak to him in prayer; that he truly listens to our prayers, even if we pray only with our hearts and minds. And that not only is he present and hears us, indeed he willingly and with the greatest of pleasure wishes to grant our requests”.
The kind of prayer St. Lawrence is emphasizing here is lectio divina. Benedict often writes about the benefits of lectio divina for the lay faithful. I think there’s great benefits here for catechists as well.
Check out this post for more on lectio divina: God is Talking, Do You Know How to Listen?
The source of catechetical success
The Pope ended referencing the source of St. Lawrence’s success:
“St Lawrence of Brindisi teaches us to love Sacred Scripture, to increase in familiarity with it, to cultivate daily relations of friendship with the Lord in prayer, so that our every action, our every activity, may have its beginning and its fulfilment in him. This is the source from which to draw so that our Christian witness may be luminous and able to lead the people of our time to God.” (emphasize added)
Catechetical Takeaway
Love of Scripture and the habit of deep prayer were the underlying foundation of St. Lawrence’s success as a preacher and teacher of the Faith. These two elements filled his every action with God’s love and made them powerful!
This is actually a common theme in the Catechetical Saints.
So, why are you waiting to start praying with Scripture and falling in love?
My 2 cents on Bible reading:
If you haven’t done much Bible reading, and aren’t real comfortable with it, get a cheap paperbound NAB. Read it without a schedule, structure, goals, or any expectations. Find stories you know and read them. Highlight & stickytab stuff…it’s a cheap Bible on purpose. Get used to moving around in the Bible, check out the notes on passages you find interesting, get comfortable with the prose style. Flip around as you like, get a sense of the whole Bible before plowing through some single book. Put it down if you get bored. If it takes you a year to feel at home in Scripture that’s fine. The important thing is to start and not get discouraged. It’s a very, very Catholic book, but it doesn’t reveal itself all at once.
An easy thing is to bring your Bible to Mass, and get there 15 minutes early. Spend that time reading the Bible; you may even flip between it and the Mass readings. Within a year you’ll be cruising; no longer a Bible spectator, but a player.
This is awesome advice Christian! Thanks for posting it!