Formative
Faith formation isn’t about education. Faith formation isn’t about learning as many facts as possible about the Catholic religion. No, as the term implies, faith formation is not about information but formation. It is about forming us in our loving relationship with God. If you have someone in your life you love deeply—a spouse, a child, a parent—you want to spend your life with that person. But a lifelong relationship will become stagnant unless it continues to grow deeper, unless you continue to learn about the continual complexity of your loved one. If you assume that your loved one can be simplified into a predictable pattern, you will find your love growing stale. It is only by being open to another that you can truly come to know him or her in all his or her dazzling and surprising uniqueness and truly love him or her. Now God is the ultimate beloved; infinite in his mystery, God’s puzzlement can never be exhausted. We can grow bored of our relationship with God if we imagine that we know everything that there is to know about God. But if we are truly open to all that God is, we will always be astounded at the overwhelming wonder that God is. One way that we grow in our relationship with God is by developing and celebrating our faith at home in study and ritual. Through Sacred Heart’s faith formation program, we invite you to open yourself to learning more about our wonderful creator and his relationship with all of us.
Engaging
Faith formation should incorporate one into the life and mission of the Church. Faith formation is not extraneous. It is not the case that we go to mass and maybe a few parish events as good Catholics and then add faith formation to that mixture as a little extra garnish. Faith formation is an integral part of living out our Catholic faith from baptism to burial. Faith formation should lead us into living a richer life as Catholics. It should help us better understand what happens in the liturgy and the richness of its deep symbolism. It should guide our reading of scripture, illuminating its message and spiritual relevance. It should awaken us to principles of justice expounded in the Church’s social teaching. It should introduce us to manners of praying and approaches to spirituality that can center us in God and energize our lives. It should aid our knowledge of Catholicism and its relation to both other Christian traditions and other religions practiced in our local community, in our nation, and throughout our world. It should give us the confidence in our faith to allow us, through word or action, to evangelize to those around us, sharing the Good News of how Christ is working in our lives. At Sacred Heart, we are centering faith formation on active participation in the liturgical, spiritual, social, and service-oriented events of our parish and diocese.
Ongoing
Faith formation should be an ongoing process for all ages. You may have heard the maxim: you never stop learning. This point is true not just about facts of the world but about our faith. One never can know everything about the Catholic faith, so one can never consider one’s own formation complete, even when one has gone through all of the minimum preparatory requirements for participating in various sacraments: baptism, reconciliation, communion, confirmation, marriage. It is a mistake to think that faith formation is simply Sunday school for small children. Instead, it is a way of life for all of us, a process of growing in our relationship with God through a deeper understanding of the divine mystery working through history and our own lives. There is always more to that mystery to unravel, and we are always at new stages in our lives, so there is always something new to learn that will help us grow in a life of holiness. As our faith is formed, we should as ourselves what are the results? One can never know everything about the Catholic faith, so one can never consider one’s own faith formation complete. Curiosity and continued experience help us gain awareness, understanding and personal growth, shaping us as faithful followers of God.
