School Of Faith

One of the areas we are focusing on for staff development at St. Columbkille Catholic School is called School of Faith. This is composed of 10 half-day sessions, the most recent was Monday. This is the first year of a three year commitment to the program. Our instructor this year (and hopefully the next two years) is Omar Gutierrez whose day job is Manager of the Office of Missions and Justice for the Omaha Archdiocese.

The intent is deeper religious formation of our staff. The idea behind the program is that the deeper and stronger our teacher's faith is, the easier it will be to pass on. All the instruction is based on the Bible or the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Sessions include large group discussions, small group discussions, meditation, prayer and some journaling.

Principal Makey said, "Most of our topics have been very basic, but they are very fundamental and important for us as Christians to understand and to be able to explain. For example, in the first lesson we learned about Jesus as God and Lord. This is a very simple, yet powerful concept. We reviewed how Jesus was prefigured and foreshadowed in the Old Testament. We studied His miracles and how they manifest His divine identity and give us confidence in His power to save us from sin. We also learned how Jesus’ claim to divinity is very different from what founders of other world religions claimed. And, of course, His life and death make no sense apart from His claim to divinity.

"In another lesson we studied how to pray and how to meditate. Most of us like to speak a lot when we pray, but we don’t like to listen. We learned how to speak with God instead of just speaking to God. So, we learned some different methods of praying and meditating, or reflecting on God’s word, with the help of the Holy Spirit. Too often we teach our children their prayers, i.e., what to say to God, but we neglect to teach them how to talk with God. This is something we want to teach and model to our students.

"In the most recent lesson we studied the Trinity. It is obviously impossible to completely understand the Trinity. It seems to me that every different explanation and analogy about the Trinity is lacking in something. I personally don’t understand the Trinity. I believe in three Persons in one God and I can read the catechism and get some kind of idea about the Trinity, but it really doesn’t fit perfectly into any kind of analogy that I’ve been told about. The same is true of the Incarnation. There are things in our religion that are beyond human understanding. I once heard someone say that there is no way that everything taught by the Catholic Church can be proven true, but that there are good logical reasons for everything taught by the Church. We are not blind fools following a charlatan. Therefore, as St. Peter said, 'Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the
hope that is in you.'”

So on days like Monday when our students were out of school, our teachers were busy deepening their faith and their relationship with Christ.