Can't stop learning, can't stop teaching

By Ana Rodriguez Soto - Florida Catholic newspaper

Photography: ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FC

SOUTHWEST RANCHES | Seated on the grass between buildings at Archbishop Edward McCarthy High School, Carmelite Sister Isabel Sandino munched on her lunch and soaked in the sunshine.

Surrounded by fellow catechists similarly engaged in consumption and conversation, Sister Sandino pronounced the 2014 archdiocesan Catechetical Conference as “great. We all need to learn more and more and more. Can’t stop,” said the catechist at All Saints Parish in Sunrise.

Can’t stop indeed: Can’t stop learning. Can’t stop teaching.

That’s the witness of the veritable army of catechists—nearly 1,200 strong and nearly all volunteers—who filled the classrooms and crowded the pathways at McCarthy High Oct. 25, along with the church and parish center next door at St. Mark.

Don’t stop learning. Don’t stop teaching: That also was the exhortation they received from more than a dozen speakers at the day-long, bilingual gathering, which for some catechists began long before dawn, as they boarded mini-vans in Homestead for the trek to southwest Broward.

“We bring people from all over the nation. We’re trying to bring the best people so they can learn, so they can expand their horizons as catechists, so they can teach the children,” said Franciscan Sister Maria Elena Larrea, a member of the archdiocesan committee of catechists that helped the Office of Catechesis plan the conference.

“That’s the commitment that they made. They want to plant the seeds so the new generation will be strong and faithful Catholics,” added Sister Larrea, director of parish ministry and co-director of religious education at Little Flower Church in Hollywood.

Models of that commitment filled the front pews of St. Mark at the morning Mass that kicked off the conference: the innovative confirmation team at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Kendall, who received the Esperanza Ginoris Award for excellence in catechesis; and seven “extraordinary” women who were honored with the Lifetime Catechetical Leadership award for their many years of service to the ministry.

Among them were Sister Clementina Givens of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, who at 93 continues to work as director of religious education at St. Patrick Church in Miami Beach; and Amparo Martinez, who spent 16 years as a volunteer catechist at St. Joachim in southern Miami-Dade before taking a paid position as director of catechesis at St. Kevin Church in Miami.

What motivates such dedication? “My love for the Lord,” Martinez said. “I’m a very blessed woman. I owe him a lot. That’s what kept me going. One day at a time. That’s the only way you can do the ministry.”

Seated next to her, fellow honoree Lydia Mayorga agreed. She has been director of religious education at her parish, St. Catherine of Siena in Kendall, for the past 16 years.

“Sometimes you don’t see the outcome of what you are working so hard for,” Mayorga said. “But you have to think that you are doing this for something else, another dimension that is not the human one. It is frustrating at times and challenging.”

But, she added, “The Lord gives you the energy. Otherwise, there’s no way.”

Her words were echoed by English-language keynote speaker JoAnn Paradise, national consultant for Our Sunday Visitor’s Curriculum Division. She compared faith in Christ to the love-fueled union between husband and wife: Just as the sacrament of marriage turns two into one, baptism literally immerses people into the body of Christ.

“If I am a baptized person, I have no identity outside of who I am in Christ,” said Paradise. “In him I have everything. My whole life is immersed—as those waters of baptism remind us—into the very being of Jesus Christ.”

The catechist’s role, then, is that of matchmaker.

“You can teach what a disciple looks like and acts like but they’re not going to be a disciple until they fall in love,” Paradise said, adding that “staying in love is an intentional choice.”

And who is a disciple? “A disciple is someone who chooses Christ, who chooses a relationship with him. And once you do that, the Church says you become a missionary,” Paradise said, echoing the theme of this year’s conference, “Missionary Disciples of Hope: Setting Hearts on Fire.” That, in turn, echoed the motto of the recent archdiocesan synod, “Disciples in Faith, Missionaries of Hope.”

“Are your hearts on fire?” Archbishop Thomas Wenski asked in his homily to the catechists. “Well, spread the fire—the fire of God’s love.”

But he reminded them that “the days are long over when ‘Father said…’ or ‘Teacher said…’ could end an argument.”

And at any rate, arguments are not going to convert anyone.

“To bring people into the Church, we need to meet them, befriend them, listen to them, accompany them and evangelize them,” the archbishop said. “But those eyes will need to see witnesses and not just authorities. If they’re going to listen to your talk, they must first see you walk.”

Another exhortation came from Auxiliary Bishop Peter Baldacchino, who taught one of the breakout sessions at the conference. Using plain language and examples from the Bible as well as Greek mythology, he impressed upon his listeners the four characteristics of the “good news” of Jesus Christ: Urgent, worth dying for, of great value, and not dependent on the quality of life of the proclaimer.

The bishop’s animated teaching matched the excitement Peter Ductram sensed among the catechists.

“People are excited,” said the director of the Office of Catechesis. “The thing I heard is that we have so much talent in Miami. And they are seeing it now through our talks.”

Not to mention the honorees, whose decades of service impressed the out-of-town speakers, Ductram said. “That is rare in other parts of the nation.”