Catholic Faith Formation Resources

With the availability of mass communication, people can usually find an in-person or online community of people who agree with their subjective values, whatever these values are. But this isn't necessarily an authentic catholic Christian community. An authentic catholic Christian community is a home to people whose very being and lives are centered and surrendered to an unconditionally loving God, experienced through God's creation and through the presence, teachings and examples of Jesus Christ as reflected in Scripture, discerned through the wisdom of tradition, and guided by the promptings of the indwelling Holy Spirit. It’s a community where people exemplify mutual love, faith, hope, openness, trust, a shared purpose and mission. Authenticity invites authenticity. When we are present to others with integrity and openness, we create space for others to do the same. In this community, we encounter God not only through attending and actively participating in Mass, li...

The Mass is bracketed by two important rites: the Rite of Gathering and the Rite of Dismissal. The Rite of Gathering begins with God's call to gather together in communion, united as the Body of Christ—the "People of God"— to worship, glorify, and give thanksgiving to our God, to celebrate Christ's saving presence among us, inviting us to ackowledge our sins, to listen to God's Word, to profess our faith, offer prayers, and to share and be nourished by Christ's body and blood. 1 After the Priest gives the final blessing "May almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit," the Rite of Dismissal ends the Mass with the Priest or Deacon exhorting those present to "Go forth, the Mass is ended," taken from the Latin words Ite Missa est," (literally, "Go, it is the dismissal"). The word "Mass" is from the Latin Missa , which means "to be sent," as if on a mission. Hence, the forms u...

[Jesus Christ said], " Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5, NRSVCE). Our own experience shows that when the branches separate from a grapevine, they wither and die and no longer produce fruit because they are no longer connected to the source of the nourishment that sustains them. Those branches that no longer produce fruit are pruned from the grapevine. God is the source and sustainer of all life in which "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Separated from our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustaining God, we can bear no spiritual fruit. To "abide" in Christ means you maintain a deep, close, and personal relationship and connection with God through Christ and the Holy Spirit, just as when t...