Cassie said yes to coordinating the catechumenate because her pastor begged her to. She had some experience with youth ministry but had never done anything like this before. The day she took on the role, her parish had two catechumens and three inquirers.

One of the catechumens was halfway through reading a college textbook on Catholicism. The other didn’t know that God is a Trinity and had difficulty describing Jesus’s role as part of the Trinity. And the three inquirers all had even more and differing needs for formation.

Cassie’s main worry was how she was going to teach all of them everything they needed to know about Catholicism. She wasn’t even sure she knew everything she needed to know about Catholicism.

She began to pray that God would send someone to her pastor who would be better suited for this ministry. And, if that didn’t happen, she prayed that the Holy Spirit would guide her. During her prayer, she remembered a youth ministry workshop she’d attended. The speaker had told the room that the youth leaders didn’t have to teach the kids everything all at once.

A missionary style

She found her notes from the workshop, and in there was a quote from Pope Francis: “Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed.”

He went on to write that if we are going to be pastoral in our approach, “the message has to concentrate on the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary.” (Joy of the Gospel, 35).

Feeling fired up by the Spirit, she Googled the pope’s writing to see if she could uncover “what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary.” And sure enough, it was right there. Pope Francis explained that the heart of the gospel “is the beauty of the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ” (Joy of the Gospel, 36).

The most necessary truth

This most beautiful, most grand, most appealing, most necessary truth — that God’s love is manifest in Jesus Christ — means that “in Catholic doctrine there exists an order or a ‘hierarchy’ of truths” (Second Vatican Council, Decree on Ecumenism, 11).

The moment she read that, she felt two weights. The weight of needing to teach the entire catechism was immediately lifted as she realized she first of all needed to focus on the “most necessary truth” of the saving love of God.

That was replaced with another, more profound weight that she would never be done teaching about God’s saving love. There would never be enough time to cover the eternal vastness of that mystery. But somehow, that weight felt light as a feather.

You probably understand the weight Cassie felt thinking she had to teach a multitude of doctrines. Most of us were brought up with a scientific worldview in which everything can be analyzed, explained, and taught in a logical, linear progression.

But the reign of God cannot be dissected and explained so neatly. If you imagine the person you love the most — your spouse, your child, your parent, your best friend — how could you even begin to explain that love in a way that was neat and tidy? Love stories are usually more complex.

What you would have to do to is start with some key stories. When did you first meet? How did you know you were in love? What is the biggest sacrifice you each made for each other? What tragedies have you overcome? What mountaintops have you reached together?

The reign of God cannot be dissected and explained so neatly. If you imagine the person you love the most — your spouse, your child, your parent, your best friend — how could you even begin to explain that love in a way that was neat and tidy? Love stories are usually more complex.

Your love story has a hierarchy

There are a million other details that are part of the truth of your love, but your love story has a “hierarchy” of stories. You have to tell the most important stories first. And even after you have told all the stories you can think of, you’re still not done. Because you and your beloved will be writing new stories every day.

Now multiply that love by a quadruple-quintillion-zillion. And that is a small fraction of God’s love story for us. The gentler weight is to begin telling God’s love story by telling the story of Jesus.

Starting with a person

Another pope, Pope John Paul II, said this about the essential, necessary step of starting with Jesus:

Sometimes even Catholics have lost or never had the chance to experience Christ personally: not Christ as a mere “paradigm” or “value” but as the living Lord, “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). (March 24, 1993).

The heavy weight is thinking we have to drone through all the doctrines about Jesus as though Jesus was some kind of model or value or system. But Jesus is a person, just like the person we most love in our lives. Cassie’s number one job, and ours, is to introduce seekers to Jesus and accompany them into a personal relationship with Jesus who is the manifestation of God’s love.

Where seekers encounter Jesus

The reason that weight feels light is because Jesus is helping us carry the load. Cassie doesn’t have to come up with five different lesson plans, one for each of her seekers. She can bring them to places where she knows they will encounter Christ:

• Sunday Mass every week of the year
• Mystagogical questions in place of lectures (“Where did you notice something miraculous this week?”)
• Seekers doing what Catholics do, especially serving the poor

Finding what’s most important

Cassie went back to her notes from the youth ministry workshop. She had written down the bit about not having to teach everything. But the speaker went on to say, “That doesn’t mean you teach nothing.”

He had said that doctrine is still important, but how do you know what is most important for the seekers? That answer comes from the seekers themselves. As they are immersed into the Catholic community — especially in the liturgy — Jesus will do the heavy lifting.

Through the power of his Spirit, he will stir up curiosity and wonder within your seekers. And their questions will be your teachable moment to explain the tradition of the Church and how those who have gone before us have struggled with and answered the same questions.

For example, the catechumen who couldn’t explain the Trinity asked his sponsor during Mass one Sunday why Catholics make the Sign of the Cross. The sponsor couldn’t give a textbook answer, but did pretty well in explaining what she believed about the Father, Son, and Spirit. And the question became the springboard for a longer conversation with Cassie.

When we place the doctrine before the experience, it becomes a lecture. When we follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit, it leads to questions and a deeper encounter with Jesus.

What weight are you carrying?

Are you feeling the need to cover all the doctrines? Or are you carrying the easier yoke of accompanying seekers to an encounter with Jesus? What is one thing you could do differently to shift some of the burden onto him?