Catholicism Session 2 - Our Lenten Journey
Our second attempt at reaching out to fellow parishioners using Bishop Barron’s Catholicism DVDs saw a smaller turnout of 6. Some were familiar faces from the first session, while others were new to the series. (It also led to the organisers getting slightly flustered over issues with the AV system before they were ably solved by a participant, which just shows how God equips us with what we need to carry out His work =P)
The second session focused on insights from the parable of the Prodigal Son and Jesus’ direction for social mission, and then touched on the biographies of two saints who had transfigured themselves through grace. Participants were invited to share their reflections from the videos, as well as the resolutions they had formed for Lent.
Outline The structure of the session was similar to the first: • Catholicism DVD - Episode 2: The Teachings of Jesus (The Prodigal Son and Matthew 25) • Catholicism DVD - Episode 8: The Communion of Sain
ts (Katharine Drexel and Therese of Lisieux) • Handout and small group discussion
Link to the session handout can be found here.
Summary of salient points Episode 2: The Teachings of Jesus • Once we see our existence as a gift from God, we resolve to give our lives as a gift in love. When we do that we find ourselves increased as divine life floods into us. • The parable of the Prodigal Son describes the nature of God and the manner in which we should properly relate to God. God’s nature is to give. The right way to relate to God is to receive what is freely offered and then to give it away as a grace to others, thereby allowing more of the divine life to flow into oneself. • Matthew 25 (“Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”) may be the most powerful evocation of Jesus’ teaching that “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”, because it illustrates that to love Christ is to love the ones Christ loves. • Individuals who understood and carried out the principle of Matthew 25 were Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day, as well as Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Episode 8 – A Vast Company of Witnesses: The Communion of Saints • We need to know about the saints to come to a richer understanding of God, because each saint in his or her own manner reflects an aspect of God’s perfection. They have allowed Jesus to enter their lives and have thereby allowed Jesus thoroughly to transfigure them from within. • Mother Katharine Drexel’s dedication to the Native Americans (the poorest members of the American population) was borne of elevated and transfigured justice, justice under the influence of grace. • Mother Katharine Drexel’s story also served as an example of carrying out a social mission. • Therese of Lisieux’s holiness was borne of transfigured prudence (knowing the right thing to do), because “the little way” calls for the capacity to know in any situation the precise demand of love, how best in the present moment to will the good of the other.
Small group discussion
We started off with frank sharing about how we could relate to the parable of the Prodigal Son within the context of our own families, as well as how it could reflect our approach to God. Several participants were struck by Katharine Drexel’s and Therese of Lisieux’s examples, with one suggesting that we could adopt Therese’s “little way” in carrying out small but meaningful actions for Lent.
As for the topic of Lent, we were reassured to find out how most of us had had experience in making Lenten resolutions only to fail at carrying them out fully. Nonetheless we were all inspired by one participant’s decision to use her savings (from fasting on Ash Wednesday) to buy food for a homeless person, which seemed to reflect both the teaching of Matthew 25 and how we could bring God’s love to those around us in small but meaningful ways.
Happily our sharing proceeded more smoothly this time round, perhaps because a few of us had already met, and we were heartened at the end when participants asked to be kept updated on the next BB4 session. We’ll continue to listen closely to both Bishop Barron’s words and everyone’s comments to plan the rest of the BB4 series!
