Maureen Powers, of St. Mary’s, Blacksburg, says her journey as a religious education teacher started in New Jersey and was renewed by a poignant question from one of her sons.
A nun at her Catholic high school asked her to teach a kindergarten class. “I knew it was something I wanted to do,” she said. “I loved children and I needed this as an outlet to help keep me grounded.”
As a student at Radford University, she continued to explore her faith. By the spring of 2022, she was married with two boys, but she and her family had become “holiday churchgoers.” Then, one of her sons wanted to know why he wasn’t in the Christmas pageant.
The next day, Maureen said, she reached out to a parishioner, someone she had first met during college. “Since then, we haven’t missed a Sunday Mass,” she said.
That led to an invitation to get back into religious instruction. “I told her I needed to pray about this,” Maureen said. “My days are filled with being a wife, a mom, an administrator of a large high school, and I was afraid I couldn’t take on much more.”
But she did, once again teaching the Catholic faith to a kindergarten class.
Maureen was one of four catechists who shared their religious education experiences at the fourth annual Heralds of Faith conference, sponsored by the diocesan Office of Christian Formation on Sept. 14 at St. Mary’s.
“It is day of celebrating those who pass on the faith to our children, youth, and adults in a joyful way,” said Teresa Lee, the office’s director. The bilingual event rotates among the diocese’s three vicariates; this was the second time in the Western Vicariate. More than 100 people, mostly from the New River and Roanoke valleys, came for the testimonials, talks on becoming better catechists and time with Bishop Barry C. Knestout.
Great day to gather
The Mass, celebrated by the bishop and concelebrated by priests from neighboring parishes, marked the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. “The very heart of our faith and the source of our new life is the sacrifice of Christ in his Paschal Mystery, his passage through suffering and death to resurrection,” the bishop said in the homily.
The heart of the catechists’ task, the bishop said, “is to lift up the Paschal Mystery, to elevate it before our eyes and hearts, to explain the mysteries of the faith in which we encounter this mystery, to teach the Scriptures, to instruct about the sacraments when we encounter the Paschal Mystery – and receive its grace.”
The leader of one of the breakout sessions was Father Anthony Ferguson, administrator of Holy Spirit, Christiansburg, and Holy Family, Pearisburg. Focusing on adult faith formation, Father Ferguson started by telling the group that God is a great storyteller, “a story of hope, of salvation, of victory.”
People involved in adult formation, he said, should be willing to share the story of their own faithful lives. “So, we need to be first repentant and converted ourselves, contrite of heart and truly have that intimate, personal, loving relationship with the Lord,” he said. “That’s ultimately what is going to revive our adult faith formation.”
He recalled a program at his previous assignment, St. Bede in Williamsburg, called The Upper Room. The series of five sessions helping people prepare for Pentecost drew hundreds of people – young and old, parents with children, and people from other parishes.
He warned against being too concerned about how successful faith formation is in some other parish, but to seek “how the Lord is moving here and now at this parish.”
The two other sessions focused on children’s catechesis. One was led by author and longtime faith formation leader, Amy Spessard, and the other, in Spanish, featured a youth ministry leader and bilingual editor for Pflaum Publishing, Erika De Urguidi.
Following the witness talks, Bishop Knestout asked the Lord’s blessing on all the participants. “In your goodness, bless our brothers and sisters who have offered themselves as catechists for your Church,” the bishop prayed. “Strengthen them with your gifts that they may teach by word and by example the truth that comes from you.”
Showing ‘real love’
Bishop Knestout said later that he felt blessed to be among so many faithful people. “What inspires me is just the beautiful faith expressed in practical ways, to the witness talks and with the time and attention here, and then just the day-to-day attentiveness to their own parishes as catechists teaching young people,” he said.
“You have to have a real love, for not only the word of God, but for those young people, to spend the time and try to encourage them to have that spark of faith enlivened within them as well,” the bishop added.
Ana Soto, of Holy Spirit, helps prepare couples for marriage. She said she was inspired by the bishop’s reminder that “we have to follow the cross, but we shouldn’t forget about the Resurrection. And I interpreted Resurrection to also mean peace that the Lord can give us when we are in difficulties.”
Olmer Pineda Hernandez, of Blessed Sacrament in Harrisonburg, said he appreciated hearing the personal testimonies from the four catechists, to hear how their ministry very often comes together piece by piece, through study, prayer and encounters with other believers.
“And you know at the end God gives you all these pieces and they’re all put together and this is where I’m supposed to be,” he said.
Reflecting on her work in religious instruction, Ginny Garza, from the Basilica of St. Andrew in Roanoke, recalled the way the Holy Spirit had “planted a seed in my soul.” She was attracted to stories of missionary nuns in high school in the Philippines. In her junior year, she took part in a group led by Jesuits and found her voice. “I could speak to a crowd of my peers without fear,” she said. “And I could speak to them about God.”
Several years later, she was living in America, with a fulfilling job, a loving husband, six kids, and an invitation to teach confirmation classes. “Not now, I told myself,” she said. “I didn’t realize then that I was running away from a path that God had already set me on many years ago.”
With all but two of her youngest children graduated from high school, she gave in and joined the confirmation team. The Holy Spirit keeps prompting me to do more, she said. “He may never let me go,” Ginny noted. “I look forward to a day when he tells me ‘Well done, my child.’”
“Before that time comes, I hope and pray that, with his help,” she said, “I will have done his will as best I can and so be worthy.”