Rodrigo MartinezReligious education in schools has the challenge of strengthening its identity".Alfonso Carrasco: "It is important to be aware of the educational task carried out by the Church."The congress Alberto Lorenzetti, one of the Auxiliary Bishops of Santiago, who encouraged those present to "know how to adapt to their audience when announcing their faith in Jesus. He pointed out that today this dialogue is not easy because, rather than speaking to the world of an unknown God as Paul did in Athens, it is necessary to speak of a forgotten God and we are faced with the challenge of reaching the hearts of children and young people.
Presenting Christ
Father Lucas Buch, of the University of Navarra, emphasized the idea of maintaining a cordial, personal relationship with the students, speaking to them heart to heart.
He explained that the task of a religion teacher is not to demonstrate Christ, but to present him. The first thing is to pray for their students - since it is Christ who must be presented -, to try to live what they teach, because to a great extent what the children believe about Christ will depend on what they see in their teachers, and, finally, to propose Christ in such a way that the children will be able to recognize him.
We know if a person is a Christian not because he or she is able to expound the Christian faith very well, but because he or she walks in that truth. The main way in which a teacher of religion transmits Christ is by living him. As Pope Paul VI said: "Contemporary man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, or, if he listens to teachers, it is because they are witnesses".
Transmitting faith with hope
Throughout the congress, the need to educate with hope was emphasized several times. Klaus Dröste, dean of the Faculty of Psychology and Humanities of the Universidad San Sebastián, pointed out that hope often does not abound in young people because they do not see their life as something great, something worth living. It is convenient to open in them perspectives of eternity. This hope will allow them to anchor their hearts in God and to order their lives, in spite of all the problems they have at present.
If a young person discovers this, he will be able to reread his history, his calamities, his frustrations, his successes, his failures, his qualities in a new light. He will learn that good can come out of everything.
Lucas defined the mission of the religion teacher with two verbs: to awaken and to transmit. On the one hand, to awaken the students, to accompany them in the discovery of the talent that God has given them, to wait with them for their vocation to awaken, and, on the other hand, to transmit the faith with hope, especially to this postmillennial generation. As is well known, many young people have the feeling that what happens does not depend on them, but on external factors, perhaps because the world in which we live is too complex and they think they cannot change anything that happens. All this has somehow crystallized into a generalized pessimism, which also has its expressions in mental health problems.
In a society like ours, where everyone is encouraged to be self-sufficient, Christianity has such a revolutionary message: from the moment of our conception, we depend on others. Saying to a student: you are made to love and to be loved, because God is love, communion of persons, can open great horizons for him.
Lights for classrooms
Religion teachers are called to keep the Word of God alive, namely the Gospel, and to ensure that it continues to resonate in the hearts of young people. However, there is the challenge of making it understood, because it is a very concise text. Don Lucas suggested reading the Scripture together and resolving any doubts that may arise.
Charity is also an unquestionable way of Christ's presence, and religion class is an environment that can offer the opportunity to experience mercy, that is, to get close to someone in need, to a sick person, to an elderly person, to someone to help.
Telling the story of the saints, whose lives can be understood only in the light of God, also allows us to draw closer to Christ, because the Lord shines in them. Each student can find in a saint his or her inspiration, that which touches him or her deeply.
The way of beauty
Andrea Torres, a philosopher, explained that beauty should accompany the teaching of religion because it is God who manifests himself in it. Moreover, God has created the whole world in order for human beings to know and enjoy Him. This idea can instill hope in young people.
Don Lucas Buch insisted that beauty also speaks to us of a reality that transcends the purely mundane, the purely useful, and for this reason it is also a channel for Christ. Perhaps the religion class itself can be an opportunity for students to have an experience of beauty, to learn to enjoy a work of art, which can help Christ to be present in their lives. By showing beauty, sensitivity and a taste for great beauty can be educated. In this sense, the use of images, poetry or music offers a way.
Talking about eternity
At the congress, it was suggested that death and eternal truths can be spoken of with delicacy. It is necessary to do so, because that is where hope is anchored. As Don Lucas pointed out, in a multicultural context it is important to speak clearly about what the Christian proposal is, avoiding simplistic visions of eternal life. It is important to show that these truths have a meaning and help us to live in a certain way.
In the light of judgment, for example, the teacher can teach how to cultivate memory, to ask questions that allow us to build a meaningful life.
Hell can be understood, as Dostoyevsky says, as the suffering of not being able to love. It can be brought to the present life by talking to the students about resentment, about not wanting to forgive, not wanting to love someone. It must be clearly distinguished from purgatory, where there is hope and a desire for love. To understand this, it can be useful to comment that it is possible to pray for the deceased and to seek communion with those who are in this state.
Finally, in order to refer to Heaven, the teacher needs great creativity to see how he can offer his students experiences of communion, sometimes simply by deepening those they already have, in order to assimilate them to Heaven, where there is no room for isolation.
The Christian proposal
Finally, Don Lucas proposed that, in the face of the great longings that reside in the hearts of men (to be loved, to maintain deep relationships, to be someone, to help others) - desires that are supported by environmental assumptions (individualism and the need to show performance, self-sufficiency and hypersexuality, emotivism as a criterion for evaluating whether something is good or bad, overprotection) - there is a Christian proposal to make to young people: the awareness that God loved us first, the design of communion, the invitation to be part of a love story that is interwoven with our stories and the conviction that there is more joy in giving than in receiving. In short, it is about showing the beauty of our faith.
