Faith, Justice, and Culture: Exploring Love, Truth, and Social Justice

Faith, Justice, and Culture: Exploring Love, Truth, and Social Justice is an adult formation study using Pope Benedict’s encyclical, Charity in Truth to discover a nuanced approach to the social teaching of the church. Four sessions are used to uncover Benedict’s careful development of what it means that the love of God is only reflected well in light of his truth and his call to understand the nature of justice as the free response to God’s love that poses a challenge to fallen systems and cultures in order to advance his kingdom in redemptive ways in the world.

Sessions five-eight use the framework of charity in truth to explore specific cultural issues based on input from study participants and on contemporary events that highlight pressing issues both national and global:

  • Session five: Systemic racism
  • Session six: Issues of life and human dignity (abortion, euthanasia)
  • Session seven: Prioritizing justice—social issues, economy, foreign policy/security, migration,
    poverty/hunger…
  • Session eight: Cultural grab bag—individual and social identity (gender, sexuality), pandemic,
    freedom of speech, cancel culture…

The complete study guide below includes a model for considering cultural issues in light of Benedict’s teaching and the gospel as well as a glossary and links to other important materials that inform the church’s social teaching.

Charity in Truth, by Pope Benedict XVI

Simple Wisdom: Biblical Guidance for Practical Living

Simple Wisdom: Biblical Guidance for Practical Living is a series of three sessions designed to keep adult formation active in the church during the summer months. Vacations and other changes in routine do result in lower participation, but I have found keeping a simplified, practical study offering in place a rewarding thing to do. The effort is helpful to those who partake, and the smaller groups make for more intimate, fruitful discussion (and I have always resisted the notion that large numbers are a measure of the value of what we do in the life of the body of Christ).

This small series on simple wisdom is comprised of three sessions I like to use sometime in mid-July to easily August. Each are structured on a straightforward process of drawing on our shared experience to explore the difficulties and success in each area of life, exploring things we can find in scripture that might help, and then applying that biblical wisdom to the challenges we face.

RCIA/OCIA Kerygma Retreat

The heart of the Christian faith, and the rites of Christian initiation, is the kerygma (the gospel). The RCIA Kerygma Retreat includes the proclamation of God’s great creative and redemptive purpose and activity and an invitation to become a part of it.

Part of my duties as Director of Faith Formation included running the RCIA (Rite for Christian Initiation of Adults). The attached Kerygma Retreat was one of several extended sessions (3-4 hour “retreats”) I required for both candidates (Christians from other traditions who were becoming Catholic) and catechumens (new Christians preparing for their baptism). The retreat covers the full range of the gospel message, from creation, fall, and redemption to the new creation, already begun in Jesus Christ and yet to be fully consummated. The RCIA/OCIA Kerygma Retreat contextualizes the call to every person to know and submit to Jesus in this greater, cosmic redemptive purpose to make all things new. Using an insightful song from Christian artist Michael Card and his album The Hidden Face of God (“To a Broken God”), I included a video presentation intended to draw each participant to face the gospel message and its demands with a decisive commitment to follow Christ and become a part of his church.

The RCIA/OCIA Kerygma Retreat is included as an Apple Keynote presentation with PDF of landing images and a PDF study guide. A full resolution video is available (which can be used on any platform and paused for instruction). Please contact Dr. Chris (drchris@themystagogue.org) for the video version.

Holy Week devotion

The following is a guide for individual and family devotion during Holy Week. A PDF of the guide can also be downloaded from this link: Holy Week devotional guide.

Daily prayer

Suggested for use with the readings for each day in Holy Week for individual or family prayer. Adapted from the Greek Orthodox prayer book for Holy Week.

Blessed is our God, always, now and forever. Glory to you, Lord!

O heavenly king, comforter, the Spirit of truth, ever-present and filling all things, the treasure of all blessings and giver of life, come and dwell within us; cleanse us from every blemish, and save us, O blessed one.

Holy God, holy mighty, holy immortal, have mercy on us. (3X)

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning is now, and shall be forever. Amen.

Read the psalm

All-holy Trinity, have mercy on us. Lord, pardon our sins; Master, forgive our iniquities; O holy one, visit and heal our infirmities, for your name’s sake. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.

Read the Old Testament and epistle readings

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever. Amen.

Read the gospel

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! Glory to you, O God. Our hope, our Lord, Glory to you.

Prayer—seek God bringing praise, petitions, and gratitude to him.

Help us, save us, have mercy upon us, and protect us, O God, by your grace. Amen.

Glory to you, O God, our hope, Glory to you!

May Christ, our true God, the Lord, who willingly came to his passion for our salvation, through the intercessions of his all-pure and holy mother; the power of the precious and life-giving cross; the protection of the honored powers of heaven; the supplications of the honored, glorious prophet and forerunner John the Baptist; the holy, glorious, and all-laudable apostles; the holy, glorious, and victorious martyrs; our saintly and god-bearing Fathers; the holy and righteous divine ancestors Joachim and Anna; of the blessed Clement of Rome, our beloved patron, and of all the saints, have mercy on us and save us, as a good, loving, and merciful God. Amen.

Monday

The mission and anointing of the servant upon whom the Spirit of God rests and who has come to establish justice.

Psalm 36.5-11; Isaiah 42.1-9; Hebrews 9.11-15; John 12.1-11

Tuesday

The commission of the Messiah, the light to the nations, and the scandal of unbelief.

Psalm 71.1-14; Isaiah 49.1-7; 1 Corinthians 1.18-31; John 12.20-36

Wednesday

The passion of our Lord and his betrayal.

Psalm 70; Isaiah 50.4-9a; Hebrews 12.1-3; John 13.21-32

Three special days—a time to die to sin

Adapted from Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Time, pages 123-134

Our spiritual journey is rooted in the great mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, which is remembered especially on the three great days in Holy Week, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday (called the paschal Triduum).

We have the opportunity to observe these three days with the humility and focus befitting the redeemed who owe our lives to Jesus Christ and what he suffered on our behalf. Therefore, these three days should not to be taken lightly or frittered away in casual conversation, the search for pleasure, or the pursuit of business. In these days we experience and encounter our own reality in the reality of Christ’s horrible death and burial and in his triumphant resurrection from the dead. If we miss these days, we have missed the heart of our spiritual pilgrimage.

Therefore we ought to organize our time and commitments in such a way that we can center entirely on our own participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus and do our best to set aside anything that might interfere with the deep spiritual focus these days bring to us and the unique ways the Holy Spirit can speak to us through their observance.

Maundy Thursday

We pass with Jesus into the darkness of his last night in which his determination to go to the cross is set in vivid contrast to the powers against which he must struggle. We walk that path with him.

Psalm 116.1-2, 12-19; Exodus 12.1-4, (5-10), 11-14;1 Cor. 11.23-26; John 13.1-17, 31b-35

Good Friday

We worship with both the sorrow we bring through our identification with Jesus in his death and the joy we experience knowing that his death was the death of death, the ruination of the powers of evil.

Psalm 22; Isaiah 52.13-53.12; Hebrews 10.16-25 or 4.14-16; 5.7-9; John 18.1-19.42

Holy Saturday

A day of rest and preparation for the great service of resurrection (the vigil).

Psalm 31.1-4, 15-16; Job 14.1-14 or Lamentations 3.1-9, 19-24; 1 Peter 4.1-8; Matthew 27.57-66 or John 19.38-42

Suggestions for reflection and discipline during Holy Week

Take time each day

  • To remember God’s mighty acts of salvation and consider what they mean to your spiritual journey and to Falcon Ekklesia as the body of Christ in our community.
  • Reflect on the past year:
    • How have you entered into his death this year? What sins in your life need to be brought to death?
    • How have you been raised to new life in his resurrection this year? What in your life still needs renewal?

Consider reorganizing your time leading up to Easter and make it a point to be participate in all the celebrations of the church. Demonstrate the importance of your faith, your submission to Christ as Lord, and your grateful love for his sacrifice by refraining from anything that would interfere with the worship of the body of Christ and your own focus on Christ’s death and resurrection.

Extend the fast through the week, perhaps through simplfied meals each day, continuing to limit your diet, or abstaining from a meal or two each day.