Catholic Faith Formation Resources

When Jesus was asked what commandment in the law is the greatest, he replied, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37-39; cf. Leviticus 19:18). Like most of the great world religions, including those that preceded Christianity, Jesus also taught what is commonly called the "Golden Rule": "Do to others whatever you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12; cf. Luke 6:31); or its variant, the "Silver Rule," “Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.” Both are derived from the principle of "love your neighbor as yourself" (cf. Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39). 1 Before his death and resurrection, Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment: "love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another" (John 13:34...

God "calls" each of us throughout the day to trust and surrender to God's will, grounded in God's love for us and for all of creation. Each thought you attach to, what you choose to see or hear, each word you speak, and each action you take is your response to God's call. It is difficult to hear God's call in the noise and distractions that repeatedly surround us and seek our attention throughout the day. Many times it requires us to search and listen for God in the "sound of sheer silence" (1 Kings 19:12 NRSV). The proof that we are on the right path leading towards God is our experience of love, peace, joy, and hope in our relationships with God, ourselves, others, and with all of creation. When we depart from this path, we may experience anxiety, fear, anger, guilt, hopelessness, and aloneness. At those times we may seek to attach ourselves to people and things as a substitute for God, but to no avail. Instead, let us begin anew in the faith...

Who or what captures your attention during the day? Who or what do you routinely think or obsess about? We are shaped by who or what captures our attention and occupies our thoughts. We create and form preconceptions of reality, where we constantly compare, evaluate, and judge what we experience through our senses and thoughts. Our thoughts are influenced and framed by how we perceive our experiences with our cultures, our family, peers, and significant others, relationships, groups we associate with, and our other life experiences. What we assume about someone or something may be erroneous and based on our faulty misconceptions and judgments, as well as our subconscious, negative images of ourselves that we project onto others. We can get caught by and become attached to thoughts arising in our mind about regrets of past events that we can't change, and apprehension about a perceived future that has not yet occurred. As a result, we can miss being consciously aware and e...