RCIA Presentation Is Not Just Any Presentation

A new and inexperienced RCIA catechist (RCIA = Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) told me she had to spend a great deal of time to prepare for each RCIA presentation. Worse still, if the preparation was painstaking, the actual presentation was nerve-wrecking. She asked if I had any helpful suggestions to offer.

To me, the differences between preparing for an RCIA presentation at church and preparing for a project presentation in school or at work are significant and unmistakable both in terms of the presenter’s mindset and of his motivation.

For example, when I was preparing for, say, a budget presentation at work, I was motivated to perform well so that my board members would not only approve the budget, but also would have confidence in me as the person entrusted with the important task of looking after the company's finances. Obviously I also needed the success to please my boss. It's all part of the hard work required to pave the way for a good performance evaluation, for getting a good bonus or salary increase, and for strengthening my position as a key member on the management team. Notice that my motivations were mostly people-oriented, and my desire was for financial gains and people’s recognition.

When I’m preparing for an RCIA presentation, none of the above-mentioned human factors and self-serving desires are applicable - at least not to the extent that my intent is pure. If I want to please my audience - in this case the catechumens instead of the board members - it's because I want my message to get across effectively so that they will benefit from the word of God. If I want to please my co-workers or my "boss" (if the pastor happens to be in the audience), it's not because of monetary considerations or vanity, but because of the need to build good rapport and to promote team work.

But the most important difference, I think, is this: in the case of an RCIA presentation or, for that matter, any other ministry-based presentations, the one thing that really drives me is an urge to spread the Good News of Christ. I can really feel its power: it’s a heart-warming sensation, a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment enticing enough to drive me to work non-stop, and rewarding enough to make all my hard work worthwhile. It is, I suppose, the same urge that St. Paul had felt so irresistible because of "the love of Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:14).

Depending on the depth of the catechist's personal relationship with God and the personal encounters with Christ that they have had in their journeys of faith, the urge may be weaker or stronger. But it should be there somehow, hidden in the background like an invisible force that drives and empowers, simmering beneath the surface like a source of energy that stimulates and propels. As long as the love of Christ is urging us on, the preparation will be a happy ride, not hard labor; the presentation will be a passionate and engaging discourse on religious convictions and experiences, not a nerve-wrecking exercise.

Test of Fire

Like Jesus, our Lord and Master, we Christians are first and foremost ambassadors of love and peace. But promoting peace doesn't mean just sitting back passively and letting the truth be trampled upon without doing anything. How did Jesus react when the scribes and Pharisees tried to mislead people by discrediting him? He confronted the transgressions of his opponents head on and called them "hypocrites", "whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men's bones and every kind of filth", "serpents",  "brood of vipers" (cf. Mt. 23:27-33). Yes, we don't resort to violence. But we must also stand firm on our ground when it comes to defending the truth.

I like this commercial. It makes my apologetic blood boil! Whether it's in the upcoming U.S. election, on our home turf of Canadian politics, or in this world at large, the uncompromising Catholic values of life, marriage, and freedom of religion must be vigorously defended.

If you agree with what I said above, you will love this video "Test of Fire"

March for Life on Thursday, May 10!

The March for Life event this year will take place on Thursday, May 10.

Pilgrims in support of this event will be departing from the Chinese Martyrs Catholic Church on May 10, Thursday at 7:30 a.m. after attending a 7 a.m. mass. By 12 noon the bus will arrive in Parliament Hill. There will be talks by MPs, a walk through Ottawa downtown and back to Parliament Hill, for talks by women who will share the aftermath of abortion. At 3:30 to 4 p.m. the bus will head back to Markham, arriving at around 9 p.m. at the Chinese Martyrs Catholic Church. The fees for adults and students are $20 and $10 respectively.

With the kind of world we are in these days, planting the seed of life is like cultivating arid grounds: it takes a lot of hard work. To me, joining the March for Life is akin to promoting Church teachings on sex and marriage year in and year out: both are very difficult and unpopular undertakings, but undertakings that must be carried out with perseverance nonetheless if we truly believe that the Gospel that we preach is not a Gospel of death but a Gospel of life; and that the God who oversees this world is not a God for the dead but a God for those who are fully human and fully alive!

Hope some of you would join Jeannie, me, and many others on Thursday, May 10. We'll have plenty of time to chat and catch up with one another on the bus and during the trip. Please contact Jeannie Wu at jwu7@rogers.com directly if you are interested.

Praising and proclaiming the Risen Lord on this Easter Saturday!

Youth Station of the Cross on Good Friday at CMCC

The following is an announcement from Agnes Au of the Chinese Martyrs Catholic Church:

Dear friends,

There would be a Youth Stations of the Cross on Good Friday (April 6^th) at the Chinese Martyrs Catholic Church (2755 Denison St.) which is presented by the young people in English. They need about 8 people to carry the cross and 2 to hold the candles at each station ( x 15 stations) and then pass to another group of people at the next station who feels that they want to be like Simon of Cyrene, ready to help Jesus to carry His cross or ready to pass on the Light of Christ.  All songs accompanying each station are chosen by a group of young musician. Participants can choose to just pray, or sing, or carry the cross or hold the candles. After the Stations, there would be the Divine Mercy Chaplet followed by about 30 minutes of Veneration of the Cross with Taize prayer music. So this is an excellent opportunity for the young people to appreciate Christ’s passion in whatever way or form they feel related to or comfortable with.

The Youth Stations of the Cross would start at 7:00 pm sharp and expected to end around 8:45 pm.

This is the first Youth Stations of the Cross dedicated to our young people – children, teens, students, university members, young adults etc. Please pass the invitation on to all the young members of the church and invite them to come and experience this unique Station of the Youth where they can express their gratefulness for Christ’s suffering in their own ways.

Jesus said “Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these” (Mt. 19:14).  Let all young people come forward or parents bring their children to keep Christ company on this special day when He died for us.  That’s the least we can do for Him.

In Christ,
Agnes Au

The Tenderness of Richard Nixon

Every day and every night I want to see you and be with you. Yet I have no feeling of selfish ownership or jealousy. In fact I should always want you to live just as you wanted — because if you didn’t then you would change and wouldn’t be you. Let’s go for a long ride Sundays; let’s go to the mountains weekends; let’s read books in front of fires; most of all let’s really grow together and find the happiness we know is ours.

With these words, Richard Nixon, a young lawyer and future president of the United States, won over the heart of Patricia Ryan, a typing and stenography teacher from Ely, Nevada. What strikes me the most about this letter that the young and love-sick Nixon wrote is not its sincerity, which belied the deceitfulness of an aspiring politician who would go on to create one of the ugliest political scandals in American history – the Watergate; nor its simmering affections, which almost boiled over from every single utterance; nor its tenacity, which perhaps was indicative of the dogged and unyielding political fighter that Nixon eventually turned into in the waning days of his presidency. What really impresses me about this letter is how Nixon, like many of us from the “older generation”, expressed his love for Patricia with some degree of reserve and taciturnity. It’s an art of expression that is literary and poetic; it’s a noble sentiment no longer entertained by modern day courtship which sees subtlety as a nuisance, has no patience for the mastery of spirit over carnal desires, and seeks sex long before the dating couple even meets.

Living In A Contraceptive World

In today's National Post, Fr. Raymond de Souza discusses today's contraceptive culture after several decades of "sexual revolution" (http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/02/16/father-raymond-j-de-souza-what-contraception-has-wrought/). It is, in Fr. Raymond's words, a culture that has "plenty of sex, but less enduring love, a demographic collapse, more fragile marriages, more fatherless families, the emergence of a 'rape culture' on campus, more sexually transmitted diseases, an infertility epidemic and rampant degradation of both women and men in advertising and ubiquitous porn".

Humanity is indeed in a state of ruin. Four decades ago, no one but the prophetic mind of Pope Paul VI could have seen this coming. In Humanae Vitae (released in 1968), the Holy Father predicted accurately that contraception would lead to conjugal infidelity, a lowering of morality especially among young people, loss of respect for women, and immoral intervention into the most personal and most reserved sector of conjugal intimacy by public authorities.

It is hard to believe but today the contraceptive culture is embraced not only by our society at large but also by many clerics, scholars, and worshippers representing the mainstream religious voice (understood in the Judaic-Islamic-Christian context), which as recent as in the early 20th century was still solidly opposed to contraception. It wasn't until 1930 when the Anglican Church broke rank with the Christian world to give qualified approval to contraception at the Lambeth Conference that the historic consesus of Christianity on the immorality of contraception began to show signs of falling apart. Since then the pro-contraception force of the secular world continued to gain dominance with each passing day. Today the use of contraception is generally accepted without question. This is true even among many Catholic worshippers, although the teaching Magisterium of the Catholic Church remains firm in opposing it. Depending on which side of the issue you are on, the Catholic Church is seen by the general public either as "public enemy number 1" or as "the lone voice in the wilderness" that still carries the weight of moral persuasion.

In my view, there is only one issue that determines whether a married couple will accept or reject the contraceptive culture. If husband and wife are able to understand and accept that their one-flesh union actually transcends the temporal and physical sphere of biological desires and serves as a sign pointing them to the greater and everlasting good of the one-flesh union of Christ and the Church, they will never allow contraception to desecrate the holiness of their conjugal intimacy. For a married couple who takes their marriage as a vocation and understands the sacramental nature of the marital embrace, their bedroom is a sacred place of worship and their bed an altar where their wedding vows are regularly renewed. This is the key point I wish to drive home to the participants of this year's Catechism Revisited Program (www.crp.cmccbsp.org) in sharing with them Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body.

The Heavens Declare The Glory of God (Psalm 19:2)

It’s Saturday again. We woke up to a rather heavy snowfall and decided that we would brave the snow to eat breakfast at a nearby restaurant. The food was energizing, giving me strength to deal with the aftermath of the snowfall. I shovelled the driveway, cleared the snow bank left behind by the snowplough of the city, and cleaned up the front porch of the house.

Sad to say, my snow blower that was as old as the house went dead for the first time after almost 20 winters of loyal services. Having made several attempts to revive its engine, which responded with not even the faintest splutter, I pushed the rusty and wonky machine back into the garage which suddenly seemed more like a junkyard for ridding old, dysfunctional appliances.

Is winter always about dying and inactivity? Does living in Canada mean having to accept a long stretch of the year where one can do no better than finding shelter in a heated and insulated house in order to ward off freezing temperatures and howling winds? I couldn’t help but wonder.

I had to pick up Josephine in about 45 minutes, who was shopping at Loblaws. Usually she would drive, but with a heavy snow driving automatically became my responsibility. Instead of idling around, I decided to take a quick walk around the Toogood Pond which was only a few minutes from home.

The naturalized Toogood Pond, fresh after a heavy snowfall, was a magnificent and scenic winter wonderland; it looked like a page taken right out of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. On a Saturday, it was busier than usual in spite of the snow and the freezing temperature. The pond was flying a red flag to indicate danger, but the warning meant little to some youngsters who, with shovels in hands, worked hard to push away the snow on the pond to create a skating rink. Elsewhere tobogganing and squeaking cheerfully in the hilly areas of the park were several small kids accompanied by their parents.

I got off my car; stepped on the snow that was fresh, nicely compact and squashy; and found my way to a meandering wooden bridge that stretched over a creek. I had lost count of how many times this stream had frozen up and then melted again in this winter due to unseasonably warm weathers. But on this day rustling through the bushes of the marsh were bitterly cold winds from the north; patches of white snow, left behind by the blizzard, lay glistening on the trees that lined up orderly along the two shores of the frozen creek. The afternoon sun streamed in through the trees to give the finishing touch to a natural painting that showcased the austere and majestic beauty of winter. Standing in the middle of it all – a world of silence that spoke a thousand words - I felt small and out of place, and my heart recited prayerfully the words of Psalm 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky proclaims its builder's craft. One day to the next conveys that message; one night to the next imparts that knowledge. There is no word or sound; no voice is heard; yet their report goes forth through all the earth, their message, to the ends of the world.

A tourist holding a cup of Tim Hortons coffee approached me just as I completed the walk with the last decade of the Joyful Mystery. With a camera in hand, he asked, “Would you mind taking a picture for us?” Behind him stood his wife who flashed a friendly smile and nodded thankfully. “Sure!” I said. I was about to push the camera button when they gestured me to kneel down for a better angle. I readily obliged, finished the picture, handed the camera back, and said goodbye. “Enjoy the snow!” they shouted as I walked away. “Sure!” I said. Just another do-nothing Canadian winter day.