Michael Therrien’s recent post focused on the important relationship between Catechesis, Evangelization, and Apologetics. He summarizes the article, “We must reach the heart through love and mercy before we can reach the head with truth.” There have been other such articles that emphasize the need for someone to be properly evangelized before going into catechesis or engaging them in apologetics. Another main point, Therrien states, “When the time is right, we instruct people in the content of the faith and elevate their understanding of the sacred mysteries.” I will not necessarily get into the distinction of apologetics, evangelization, and catechesis, but I would like to offer a rebuttal to these two ideas.
First, let us look at the idea that we must get them to love Jesus before we teach them systematically. This idea can be challenged with the simple principle that you cannot love (or love rightly) what you do not know. The idea that we can simply influence the person’s will to love without addressing the intellect is theological backward.
To understand this principle, we can look at the Trinity.
Love and Knowledge in the Trinity
In the Trinity, there are two processions. First the Word proceeds from the Father. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus Christ. The second procession is the Holy Spirit, who comes from the Father and the Son.
Several saints have spoken of the Word as corresponding to the intellect. St. Thomas quotes St. Augustine’s de Trinitatis: “The Word we speak of is knowledge with Love.” St. Thomas writes that the Intellect (to know) and the Will (to love) are how we are made in the image and likeness of God.
St. Bonaventure writes that the three highest faculties of humanity are memory, intellect, and will reflecting the Trinity. In His divine plan, God created us to know and to love him. Continuing, St. Ignatius of Loyola writes, “Charity and kindness unwedded to truth are not charity and kindness, but deceit and vanity.”
The Word has been classically understood as the object of the intellect. The Holy Spirit has classically been viewed as the Love that exists between the Father and the Son. Love resides in the will and is motivated by the object seen in the intellect. Similar to the order of processions in the Trinity, the Trinity works (Trinity ad extra) within the created world.
We must come to know who Christ is before we can love him. The idea that we can come to love Jesus before we know him is theologically backward. It is possible to come to this without a teacher—in an act of divine infusion of knowledge—but it still remains in the order of knowledge. So there is a primacy in order for the intellect before the will and therefore, the head before the heart. To clarify, you do not need a degree in theology to love God, but there needs to be knowledge in order to have an object to love.
Therrien states, “Why explain the ‘what’ if one has not first encountered and come to believe in the ‘who’?” Plainly, the “what” explains the “Who”. He died for my sins because He is God and came to do the Father’s will.
He states elsewhere that “Arguments and logic are not operative in evangelization.” If our proclamation is not logical, the message will seem like nonsense. The message of salvation is not nonsense and should speak to the intellect and the experience of the person we are speaking to. For many today, our proclamation will be an argument against the modern culture’s denial of sin and an affirmation of what human experience tells us: we sin and stand in need of a Savior.
We can also look at how Jesus reveals himself after the Resurrection in the Road to the Emmaus Story in Luke’s Gospel. What is it that causes their hearts to burn? When Jesus taught them along the road, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” The Person of Christ is revealed in the teaching.
A Right Time to Teach?
We cannot “wait for the right time.” We cannot wait for our entire class to be properly evangelized before they are catechized. We can say this for many reasons.
Conversion and even commitment to Christ is not a once-and-done thing. Therefore, we cannot restrict it to a linear process. If we wait for some perfect time we will misuse the time that God has given us with this person or group.
The General Directory for Catechesis states,
“The process of evangelization, consequently, is structured in stages or “essential moments…These moments, however, are not unique: they may be repeated, if necessary, as they give evangelical nourishment in proportion to the spiritual growth of each person or of the entire community.” (GDC 49).
The elements of evangelization are not exactly linear. If it is anything like a process, it is a continual exitus/reditus in response to God and his revelation. Elsewhere in the GDC, when speaking about the distinction of catechesis and the other elements in the process of evangelization, it states, “In pastoral practice it is not always easy to define the boundaries of these activities.” (GDC 62). We must use the time that God gives us to form the intellect to the realities of the mysteries of God. This gives a clear object to the will; the Who that we are called to love.
To Teach
There is no silver bullet to convert everyone, nor is there a magical program we can put into our parishes that will form disciples. However, we can begin with the words of our Lord’s command to, “teach them all that I have commanded.” (Matt 28:20).
The title used more than any other for Jesus throughout the New Testament is “Teacher.” Teaching is the golden thread that weds evangelization, catechesis, and all of the ministries of the Word including apologetics. It takes on many forms. It is important to not divorce teaching from evangelization nor reduce catechesis to mere teaching.
Now, Evangelii Nuntiandi that states in paragraph 41, “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than he does teachers and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are first witnesses.” This is very true, and it is why teachers and catechists must believe what they are teaching. The GDC plainly states in paragraph 142, “For this reason there cannot be teachers of the faith other than those who are convinced and faithful disciples of Christ and his Church.”
Further, as Monsignor Eugene Kevane says, “Your teaching is your witness.”
It is important to recall here the object of our teaching. “The believer’s act [of faith] does not terminate in the propositions, but in the realities [which they express].” (St. Thomas Aquinas, STh II-II,1,2, ad 2). Intellectual formation deals with reality; evangelization deals with reality. Faith is an adherence to this reality and the one who created it.
Remember, “Faith comes by hearing” (Romans 10:17) and so we preach and teach. For, “God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (CCC 74). So while catechesis and apologetics are not evangelization strictly speaking, they are moments and thus can be evangelizing. Christ is revealed in the teaching and your teaching is your witness.
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Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
