Prayer must saturate programs
Letter from Bishop DiNardo
Posted September 12, 2002

"While we live we are responsible to the Lord, and when we die we die as his servants." (Romans 14:8)

Dear Friends in Christ,

We will be gathering soon for Catechetical Sunday again this year. As we celebrate the liturgy for the Lord's day on Sept. 15, we will also be mindful of the catechetical dimension of our Catholic faith. We will commission our catechists from our religious education and school programs, our RCIA initiatives and Youth Ministries, our campus ministry catechists and prison workers and our catechists who work with adults in various kinds of faith formation.

In all this we will recognize anew that faith comes from hearing. We need members in our midst who take their baptism so seriously that they are emboldened to echo back Christ to others in formal teaching and systematic presentation of our faith. In all of this they help us realize that we live for the Lord.

As members of the local church of the Diocese of Sioux City, we must and will support the work of our catechists, assure their proper theological and spiritual formation, give them adequate resources for their ministry, and pray for the success of their efforts. The Holy Spirit, who is the very soul of the church, will not be lacking to our catechists if they and we are centered regularly in prayer.

I repeat that we must continuously invoke the Holy Spirit upon our catechists and upon their efforts to teach and hand on the faith of the church. The same Holy Spirit who "anointed" the Word with our humanity in the womb of the Virgin Mary and imprinted our nature upon him is written now in our hearts. By this sealing, the Holy Spirit works to now "anoint" us with the divine nature of the Word.

It is by the Holy Spirit that we are made "little Christs" in Christ Jesus. In the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans, Chapter 8, we are reminded that the Holy Spirit unites himself to our spirit in order to make us be the children of God. This work requires that we cooperate with the Holy Spirit, a cooperation in prayer that is deeper than words, a kind of groaning by us in our broken-ness that the Spirit may continue to transfigure us and make us glorious witnesses. This is true for all who are baptized; it is doubly true for those who respond to the Holy Spirit by echoing to others what they have received in faith, i.e., catechists.

Prayer must saturate the preparation periods for class, the class teaching and activities, and the post-class reflection and review. Such intimacy with the Lord through the Holy Spirit draws catechists closer to Jesus and where that occurs the Father will come and abide together with Jesus among catechists. Such poverty in richness and richness in poverty is a major rule of life for all catechists. They learn to pray well in the Holy Spirit.

To all catechists I express my deepest gratitude for their essential and irreplaceable ministry. I add thanks to all administrators of schools, Directors of Religious Education, leaders of RCIA and other moderators of catechesis for all their efforts in supporting our catechists.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

†Most Rev. Daniel N. DiNardo
Bishop of the Diocese of Sioux City