By Ryan LeBlanc

As you might imagine, while teaching high school students about Catholicism, I find myself faced with many questions most days. Somehow, though, they save the doozies for special moments.

For example, when the principal was in the classroom observing my teaching, an otherwise disengaged student asked eagerly, “Will there be pot in heaven?”

The joy of my job, of course, is that I spend my time immersed in authentic questions young people have about faith, as they begin to piece together what it might mean for them.

What questions do you have about faith?

What is it about Catholicism that you find most difficult to understand or explain?

Take a moment, if you want, to pause and collect a question or two in your mind or even write it down.

Those are your questions. We’ve all got them. We’re thinking creatures, and the experience and the tradition of faith is something we naturally think about, unless we are distracted or discouraged in some way.

Those questions of yours, they are a good start.

A start of what? I’d call it something like a quest, or maybe more like a song, something that you could discover one moment after another.

As in each step of a journey, or in each note of a song, each question we bring to faith opens us up to a new moment to experience, while also connecting us to the whole.

In your favourite part of your favourite song, the whole meaning of the music resounds through you.

In your question about faith, you have an opportunity to let your entire relationship with God and his creation resound through you, as you open your heart to the questions of your mind. Into the seeking heart, God pours his presence and knowledge of himself, because he waits for our permission before entering us.

A question about faith, formed in your mind and expressed with your language, might be how you let God in a little bit more – even if forming the question is only permission to consider the thought of letting God in a little more.

I use the word “resound” to describe how a question affords the chance to “strike a chord” or “harmonize” with the symphony of God’s plan for you, me and the universe.

“Resound” is also the closest I’ve come to identifying the root of the word catechesis. Catechesis is religious instruction, from a Greek word katēkhéō which means to give instruction orally. But the roots of that word are kata- (down, into, against) and –ekheo (sound, like “echo”). The sound goes down, into, up against the hearer.

These root words give me the image, not just of the catechist (teacher) speaking the words of faith as they have echoed through the ages, but of the very person of the catechumen (the student) being struck by the truth of Christ’s love for them, and vibrating once more to hear the words of life penetrate their soul. A bell ringing in harmonic resonance.

I’m offering a very poetic reflection on the word, perhaps to introduce or re-introduce you to catechesis as a beautiful experience wherein we find our whole selves attuned to the truth of God’s love.

But I think the truth of catechesis is that it is very simple:

Humans have questions, and …

…. God wants to be known by humans.

I see catechesis as the chance for us to ask questions and have them taken seriously in a community that is still learning, yet has sought these answers for centuries and has received guidance from the Holy Spirit for our encouragement and assurance.

I see that God has given us all the capacity to question, and he has given us all some part of the answers – like a jigsaw puzzle we all can work on together, but none can complete alone. (Your question is part of an answer I didn’t know I needed!)

That is, all those things we don’t understand so well, or have difficulty expressing, can be the start of a community of believers offering and sharing those best gifts, the gifts of God’s self-revelation, with each other in a way that looks like heaven.

Maybe, though, we might notice that our culture does not speak about faith in this sort of open and curious way. Maybe we would be surprised to imagine bringing up questions – difficult, challenging questions – in our place of worship, or to imagine those questions received graciously and engaged with.

And it is likely that, in some of us, the words ‘catechesis’ and ‘catechism’ may evoke memories and associations of repressed curiosity and conversations closed angrily.

It’s true there are obstacles to bringing our questions about faith to light. Often, we ourselves can be our most difficult obstacle in this.

But it is also true that our questions persist, and that God is a patient teacher.

God did say that if we seek, we will find. If we knock, the door will open.

If you’re open to it, I would suggest you hold your questions in your heart going forward this week. Let yourself ponder them as you pray, rest, work, live.  I don’t know, but I would guess that both the words for the question, and the response to it, will appear to you when the time comes.

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Ryan LeBlanc is a teacher at Bethlehem Catholic High School in Saskatoon and a parishioner at the Cathedral of the Holy Family. His writing is available on his blog at ryanleblanc.podia.com