By Rita McInerney

The universality of the Church transcends culture, race, caste and economic position, Father Eugene LaVerdiere said during his homily at the liturgy on opening day of the 1991 Catechetical Institute.

The priest, a Scripture scholar and popular lecturer, was keynote speaker for the institute held Sept. 13 and 14 at St. Joseph Church.

The fourth annual institute drew more than 900 archdiocesan catechists to the Marietta church and school. Archbishop James P. Lyke, OFM, was presider and homilist for the Saturday morning liturgy.

This universality, Father LaVerdiere said, is one of the reasons he is a Catholic. Another reason is the “depth of our traditions.”

The third reason he gave for being Catholic is the Church’s sacramental vision, that “vision of universe” that speaks of God through little children, the beauty of a human face, the wind, mountain and valleys.

The sacrament of universe, he said, “Speaks to us of God and speaks to God of us.”

He shared “occasions to grow in appreciation” of this vision of welcome and outreach experienced during a recent trip to China. One was a “wonderful morning spent with a young Chinese priest, 33 and pastor of a small church where 300 Chinese Catholics come to worship from distances as far as 150 miles.

Neither priest spoke of other’s language, but Father LaVerdiere knew the Chinese word for “Father.” That was all they needed.

“I just wanted to be with someone like me,” the homilist admitted. At one point in the visit they sang the Gregorian chant together. When the American priest left, his host bade him farewell with “Dominus vobiscum.”

The visit with his Chinese counterpart gave him “an appreciation of another human being dedicated to the same things,” he told the congregation.

Walking down the road from the church he met a young bicyclist who asked him, in halting English, where he was from. When the priest told him he was an American Catholic priest, the youth surprised him with his response.

“I know who Catholics are. They are those who go like this,” he said while making the sign of the cross. “I saw people do this in a restaurant, will you explain it to me?” the young man asked Father LaVerdiere.

“Such simple things like water and the sign of the cross,” the priest told the catechists. “How characteristic of who we are.”

While in China he had the opportunity to travel to Sancian, the island off the mainland where St. Francis Xavier died. As he walked with a companion near the small restored church dedicated to the saint, an old man approached them. The priest couldn’t understand his language but the wide toothless smile and the sign of the cross the old Chinese man made was his way of “telling us who he was. How would we speak across barriers?” Father LaVerdiere asked the attentive catechists.

A wide selection of workshops were geared to catechists working with children and teenagers. This was in response to comments from people at past institutes who wanted more on youth ministry, according to Robert Melevin, archdiocesan consultant for leadership formation in religious education and ministry.

One presenter, Marilyn Kielbasa, regional director of the Office of Youth Ministry for the archdiocese of Cincinnati, began her program with an experiment. Through a series of questions, she quietly led participants back in memory to their own teens, both happy and painful times. This opened everyone to what they were about to hear.

With 14 years in youth ministry and catechetics, she’s found that it’s not always the big problems—abuse, dysfunctional families, suicidal depression—but “just some of the issues of growing up,” that trouble 13-and 14-year-olds. These could include the loss of a friend, death of a pet dog, or moving away.

“Helping Young Teens Deal With Tough Times,” her topic, could mean “constant tension between religious literacy and religious conversion. Sometimes, literacy has to take a back seat. Kids are struggling,” she said.

Catechists to adolescents have the “twin tasks of passing on the traditions of the Church and helping them birth their own faith. We’re acting as midwives.” Children can feel part of the community of faith from the earliest years, by learning the simple prayers, by absorbing from the adults.

“We need to lead kids in the direction of God. You are the only God they know. Their image is very much in human terms. In tough times we reach to this God. The same is true for kids.”

“They see God as something they study, not someone who lives with them. We have to help them make the connection,” she said.

She suggested Scripture stories that show young teens the “historical Jesus who ate, loved, argued with people.” She cited the story in Mark of the rich young man who was sad because he could not give up his “many things” in response to the “loving challenge” from Jesus.

The story of Jesus on the road to Emmaus with the two men is another favorite. The two, like many teens today who are confused and alone, were sad because, “after all the promises, he died. Yet in the breaking of the bread, literally and figuratively, they come to know God.”

Another Scripture story Ms. Kielbasa uses to help young teens answer the frequent question “Was Jesus like me?” is Luke’s account of Mary and Joseph searching three days before finding Jesus, then 12, in the temple. “He argued with his parents and was lost for three days,” she reminded the group.

“Teach them to pray and not just rote prayers. Let them enter into a Scripture story and transfer their own ideas to it.” She recommended.

Young teens lack the life experience to know that crisis or rejection can be overcome. “They tend to overreact. That’s not a character flaw – they’re only 13,” she reminded the catechists.

Give them examples of others who have been in the same plight. “Help them deal with the fact that a lot of people feel the same way and that God is there for them.”

It’s valuable for them, she added, “to know that you have walked their path” as a teenager. And it’s “OK for them to know you’re having a bad week. Ask for their prayers. It can help them to know career adults don’t have it all together.”

She told of asking one group of about 35 junior high school students to make a list of their fears and worries. Nine in this class wrote parents who drink too much among their top three worries. When the class discussed what the lists revealed, these nine “realized they were not alone and that they could begin to deal with the issue of alcoholism.”

She advocated getting the young people to talk about how they handle stress not just in 40-minute class session, but during one-to-one sessions, inviting them to lunch or dinner, and on retreats planned with the youth ministry. Try and deal with these losses, loneliness, fears and coping as they come up, she urged the group.

Journaling on reflection questions is another way to get them sharing, she has found. The catechist must respect their personal accounts and comment on them with sensitivity. Be attentive to their hurts, whether it is parents divorcing or a quarrel with a best friend.

“Do whatever you can to enhance their self-esteem. Affirm them. Have them affirm each other,” she concluded.

Ms. Kielbasa wrote “Dealing With Tough Times,” a six-session course in the Discovering series from St. Mary’s Press. She has served for some time as a volunteer with a suicide prevention center that works with junior and senior high school students.

Catholics begin every Mass with the penitential rite of asking God’s forgiveness. Yet many times they don’t do it inwardly, one presenter told participants in her workshop.

“We have to come in touch with this because as leaders of catechesis we are coming in touch with parents,” Dr. Andrea Zbiegien, SFCC, said on the topic, “Reconciled Parents Beget (By Example) Reconciled Children.”

Reconciliation is always needed, she reminded the group. Jesus, appearing to them with “Peace.” He was saying ‘Be gentle with yourself, forgive yourself.’ The apostles were down on themselves and the loving concern he showed for them in the upper room was the first reconciliation experience.”

Avoid being “judgmental,” she said. “That’s the Creator’s role. We all make mistakes.” Catechists need “introspection to accept others in their growing stage” and conviction that they can be “avenues of growth and grace” who make parents realize they can also light these paths for their children.

Traditionally, children find their earliest faith identity in the family, a little later from a neighbor who might introduce them to grace before meals, and even later from such “ritualistic habits as their mother reading the Bible.”

In working with parents she has found that “people want to go back to their securities,” such things as wearing a veil for first Communion. She asks parents to jot down on cards the areas they find new or cannot agree with and then form into small groups to discuss them.

Using the cards for discussion is an “icebreaker” that opens the parents up for introspection, she finds.

“We have to kick back before we go forward” she said in getting parents to accept their role in preparing children for the sacraments. Sacraments, she concluded, are “the channels that tune us into the Father and become a channel to others.”

Sister Zbiegien, a Religious for 33 years, is in charge of RCIA at St. Francis Xavier parish in Brunswick, Ga. She is a Sister of Charity of the Sisters for Christian Community formed in 1970 by Sister Audrey Koop.

Music for the liturgies was planned by Alan Brown, minister of music at St. Jude the Apostle in Sandy Springs. Soloists for the Sept. 13 liturgy were Janis Griffin, Victoria Jackson and Alphonso Nuckles. The St. Jude choir sang at the Sept. 14 liturgy. Peggy Stapleton and Father Richard Brennan also assisted with the liturgies.