Tag: questions

If We Understood the Mass

If We Understood the Mass

“I don’t think God would send someone who loves Him and follows Him to Hell.”

A conversation about exorcisms somehow veered into a free-for-all rapid fire of questions.  As I’ve said before, though, if my students ask questions about the faith and they are interested, I have a difficult time telling them no.

“I don’t believe the Church teaches that,” I told the student.

“But if I don’t go to church on Sunday, the Church says that is a mortal sin.  I don’t believe that if I love God and He loves me that He would send me to Hell for missing one Mass on Sunday.”

Understandably, this is a question I hear quite often.  My students find it difficult to accept that missing Mass is a grave sin.  They aren’t skipping it maliciously, I believe, and so I get where they are coming from with their confusion.  Usually, it is out of laziness or boredom or busyness.

So I did what I generally do–I tried my best to explain why the Church teaches what she does.

“I think if we understood what the Mass was, then we wouldn’t ask this question.  God is asking us to go to Mass to encounter Him and receive Him.  He is offering His very self to us out of love.  And if we love Him, I don’t think we would say that we aren’t able to come for one hour once a week.  The bare minimum in having a relationship with the Lord is this one hour.  We couldn’t say no to encountering the Lord and letting Him live in us if we truly loved Him.”

The answer seemed to touch a chord and we moved on to other questions.

Students are prone to question why we have to go to Mass and adults are more prone to critique the Mass itself.   Continue reading “If We Understood the Mass” →

Teaching: To Pursue The Truth Together

Teaching: To Pursue The Truth Together

I’ve spent a great deal of the summer considering how this next school year will unfurl.  Each fall, I start with the hopes that this will be the best year ever.  And, in many ways, that has largely proven to be true.  The more I teach, the more confident I feel teaching.  The longer I am there and the more experiences I have, the more prepared I feel to handle future problems and situations.  Yet despite all of my preparations and extra reading I do during the summer, one thing is certain: I will never be perfectly prepared for every question they ask me.

Honestly, I think I am able to answer most of the questions that arise in the classroom.  If I have never considered the question or even heard the answer, I am surprised how often I am able to give an answer anyway.  I’m not lying to them or just trying to look smart.  I’ve come to realize that the longer one knows the Lord and studies His Church, the better one is able to think with the mind of the Church.  So even if that question has never been posed to me before, I can often give a pretty confident answer because I have come to know and understand the Church to a degree.

There is, however, a lingering concern that I will be unable to answer a question.  Or, worse yet, that my lack of knowledge will appear to mean that the Church has never considered that question or that her theology is found wanting.  Regarding those fears, I think back to the summer before my first year of teaching.  I was presenting these concerns to a trusted priest and he asked if I thought that a student could ask a question that the Church couldn’t answer or that would prove her wrong.  I told him that I was certain the Church had answers and that I trusted her to be true in all things she affirmed as true.  For him, that was the end of it.  So what if I didn’t know the answer?  I knew the Church had an answer and I was fairly confident I could find it if needed.

For the last five years, that is what I have sought to do.  To a generation that I struggle to understand, I have striven to present truths they struggle to find relevant or accurate.  I ask them to consider the truths of the Church and they echo Pilate by saying, “What is truth?”  They question if it matters to know the truth.  They ask if everything could be true.  And I try to use logic and personal examples to show them the beauty of knowing and pursuing the truth.   Continue reading “Teaching: To Pursue The Truth Together” →

The Importance of Truth

The Importance of Truth

“At the end of the day, does it matter if we believe or not?  Does it matter what we believe?”

The other day, one of my students spoke these words with great sincerity.  We were in the midst of discussing arguments for God’s existence and he delved directly to the heart of the matter: does what we believe matter?

I knew this question was going to divert us from the lesson plan I had for the day.  We were supposed to go through a few of the arguments, discuss them, and then share what we thought about those particular arguments.  But I find it difficult to pass up opportunities to discuss aspects of the faith they are genuinely interested in discussing.

So I took the bait.

I posed a question to them: Does truth matter?

They thought for a moment and then began to offer their responses.

“Yes, truth matters.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“It is simply a matter of opinion.”

This is the heart of many debates in religion, politics, science, and simply life in general: what is true?  And, perhaps a question posed more in today’s world than in previous centuries, does truth matter?

I talked to my students about how some truths are opinion based.  It is true that I think blue is the best color.  People have differing opinions on this matter and I don’t worry about people who prefer red or yellow or green.  These are truths that vary based on the person.

Yet there are truths that are objective.  These remain true regardless of my personal opinion, knowledge, or awareness of that truth.  Gravity did not become true when it was discovered or defined.  It is because it is true that it was able to be discovered and defined.

Naturally, I would argue the same thing about God.  Either God exists or He does not.  He doesn’t exist for some and then not exist for others.  He either is or is not and my opinion doesn’t change this reality.

“But couldn’t we all be wrong?” one student asks.

“Sure,” I tell them, “that is why we rely on faith in addition to reason.  We choose to believe even though we may be wrong.”

“Wow.”  At least one student seemed surprised by my admission that we could be wrong.

“What we need to do is to honestly pursue the truth.  I believe that if we honestly do that, we will find it.  Of course, you know what I think is true.  I think God is real and He exists.  But knowing and seeking the truth is important.  Because if God is not real, I want to know now.” Continue reading “The Importance of Truth” →