In the upbringing of upbringing of children in the Catholic faith, the first place for catechesis is the home, the first catechists are parents and the privileged place for catechesis is the liturgy. The first, fundamental, and foremost catechetical textbook is the baptismal creed.

Preparing children for liturgical celebrations requires developing the human values present in those celebrations, especially in the Holy Sacrifice. These values include community activity, exchange of greetings, the capacity to listen and to seek and grant pardon, expression of gratitude, the experience of symbolic actions, a meal of friendship, and festive celebration.

However, children need to receive the proper formation. “Today the circumstances in which children grow up are not favourable to their spiritual progress. In addition parents sometimes scarcely fulfill the obligations they accepted at the Baptism of their children to bring them up as Christians. (Directory for Masses With Children, 1)”

So I listened with interest to the lecture Sofia Cavalletti by Dr. Timothy O’Malley of the University of Notre Dame. I was unfamiliar with Cavalletti’s life and work.

O’Malley listed the following implications for catechesis in Cavalletti’s approach to forming young children in the Catholic faith:

1. The way of knowing that we once had as children, the real desire for the love of God, never passes away from us. 

2. Catechesis should immerse students into the word of God through Scripture and liturgy.

3. The catechist becomes a creator of the pedagogy of signs, a way of teaching through signs, where not everything is explained but through signs, words, speech, and deeds.

I am writing this post on Good Shepard Sunday. O’Malley said that Cavalletti used the parable of the Good Shepherd with children because “It is a Paschal parable. The child hears in this parable the entirety of the Christian gospel.” 

I recall something I read in Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Christoph Schonborn. They wrote, “Catechesis on creation is the foundation of every further transmission of the faith.”

There appears a message in all of the above: Parents should recognize the catechizing power of biblical stories, starting with the creation story. “Christian communities discover, express, and deepen their identity by sharing the stories of our salvation that we read in the Scriptures. (Introduction to the Lectionary of Masses with Children, 3)”