Jesus the Christ, Our Sacrament of Encounter with God

“In the Beginning was the Word”:

Jesus the Christ, Our Sacrament of Encounter with God

By Leota Roesch

“The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the truths of faith’. The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men "and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin".[1]

Purpose

In this session, participants reflect on the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity by looking at Christ’s relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John. This session is designed for high school youth and may be done with groups from 10-60 participants.

Component: Catechesis

Session at a Glance

7:00 p.m.Welcome and Prayer

7:10 p.m.Introduction, Overview

7:20 p.m.Jesus Reveals God the Father

7:45 p.m.Jesus and God the Holy Spirit

Extend the Session: Icon of the Theophany(add 20-30 minutes)

8:05 p.m.Conclusion

8:10 p.m.Prayer

8:20 p.m.Announcements and Refreshments

8:30 p.m.Good Night!

Extend the Session: Icon of the Theophany (20-30 minutes)

Consider exploring the Icon of the Theophany further with your group. This session will not work directly with the icon. Provide a large copy of the icon for participants. Using Leader’s Resource 2 and/or any other research of your own, lead the participants to reflect specifically on the icon.

Ask participants to work together in small groups to reflect upon and break open the meaning of the icon on their own. Lead them through the experience by helping them focus on one depiction/section in the icon at a time.
Give the participants 7–10 minutes to share among themselves:
invite them to share their responses
share with them the Church’s interpretation of the icon

Extend the Session: Church Visit

Arrange a visit/field trip to an Eastern Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church and have someone give you a tour of the church and an explanation of the iconostasis in the church along with an explanation of the importance of icons to faith and worship, especially any icons in the church that are icons of Jesus’ Theophany (the physical manifestation of the divine to humanity).

Materials Needed

Newsprint and markers for the leader
Newsprint and markers, one sheet and one or two markers per group of 4 participants

Nametags

Materials for prayer setting
Small table covered with a nice cloth
Framed Icon of the Theophany(or another representation of the Trinity from Western religious art)

Note to Leader: You can find copies of this icon in many places.God With Us Publications from the Eastern Churches Catechetical Directors publishes an icon packet that includes this icon and many others. You may purchase the packet at The Icon of Theophany brings us visually and symbolically to the presence of the manifestation of God, the revelation of the Trinity.

If you use the Theophany Icon for your prayer focus, recall that an icon is usually displayed by draping a soft material over the top edge of the frame.[2]
Purchase a reprint of the icon (from God With Us, for example. [see fn. 1 above]). You may also download an image from the Internet.

Note to Leader:The image, itself, is not copyrighted due to age, but the work of a modern day artist is; recycle the image after the class.

If there is an Eastern Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox church in your town, they may have a religious goods store which has reprints of icons.

Large vigil light (pillar candle) set before the Icon of the Theophany or other depiction of the Trinity
Bible, in excellent condition, opened to John’s Gospel

Bible for each participant

Note to Leader: Use the NAB or NSRV translations (or another translation of your choosing) rather than a paraphrase of the Scriptures.

Handout 1, Closing Prayer, one for each participant

Prepare in Advance

Set up the gathering space so it is conducive to dialogue and sharing. The cluster style is good for presentations with breakout groups. Clusters easily return to being a single group. Tables can be either round or rectangles.

Set up tables for refreshments and sign-in. Have one or two people at the sign-in table with a check-in sheet and name tags. Hospitality is important:As the leader, do not use the gathering time before the session begins to take care of last minute preparations. Spend the time moving among the participants, greeting and speaking with them.

Prepare a prayer focus using the materials mentioned above.

Invite two people to lead prayer—one as the prayer leader (if not you) and another as a reader.

Session Outline

Welcome and Prayer (10 minutes)

Note to Leader: Welcome the participants; if this is a new group for you or if they do not know each other well, spend a few minutes doing a community builder or warm-up activity.

I want to welcome you here tonight as we (continue) to explore the mystery of the Holy Trinity. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “It is the central mystery of our faith and of our life, because it is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them.”

Tonight we will focus on the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. During the first part of our time together, we are going to reflect on how Jesus reveals the Father to us in his life and ministry. During the second half of the evening, we will reflect on Jesus’ promise of the Spirit and his continued action among the faithful through that Holy Spirit. In all of this, we will see that Jesus is THE sacrament of our encounter with the Triune God.

Invite the participants to gather around (or focus on) the prayer set-up. Whether they gather at the prayer focus or stay in their seats, solemnly light the vigil light, and ask them to focus on the prayer space. If participants remain in their seats, say:

Please clear the space in front of you; place all of your materials on the floor by you. Sitting up straight and breathing deeply prepares us to pray. Please place your feet flat on the floor and place your hands on your lap. Right now you may be thinking of something that happened at school or home today; you may be distracted by homework or other things. You may hear sounds that distract you. For the moment, we are going to put that all aside and get ready for prayer. Let us take a few cleansing breaths to help get us ready for prayer.

Invite the participants to take several deep cleansing breaths. Continue until there is silence in the space and breathing becomes more relaxed.

We are now going to offer a prayer that expands the ancient Jesus Prayer of our tradition to include all three persons of the Blessed Trinity. As I speak the first line of each mantra, each invocation, breathe in; as I speak the second line, breathe out. I will continue to do this for several minutes. If, at any time, you feel like you would like to join me in speaking the words out loud, please feel free to do so, while breathing in for the first line and breathing out for the second. I invite you to focus on the picture placed on the prayer table, and I ask that you keep that focus all through our prayer together, not looking anywhere else, just at the icon.

(Breathe in)Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth:
(Breathe out)Set up your kingdom in our midst.

(Breathe in)Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God:
(Breathe out)Have mercy on me, a sinner.

(Breathe in)Holy Spirit, breath of the living God:
(Breathe out)Renew me and all the world.(Thomas Wright)

Continue the prayer until you get a “feeling” that the participants are “in the zone,” one with the prayer. This may take several/many repetitions. Your breathing in and out as you offer the prayer is modeling for the participants; you do not have to tell them to breathe in and out. After this portion of the prayer is completed, continue:

Let us pray to the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spiritthat our lives may bear witness to our faith. (Sign of the Cross)

Father, you sent your Wordto bring us truthand your Spirit to make us holy.
Through them we come to knowthe mystery of your life.
Help us to worship you,one God in three Persons,
by proclaiming and living our faith in you.
We ask you this, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
one God, true and living, for ever and ever.

Amen!

(Adapted from the Roman Missal’s opening prayer for Trinity Sunday.)

Invite the participants to return to their places or to re-focus their attention on the evening’s session. Leave the vigil lamp burning, if it is safe to do so.

Introduction and Overview (10 minutes)

This evening, before we begin our reflection on Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, I want us to consider how the Church uses some important words in her theology, her teaching. These words are mystery and sacrament. If we want to consider how Jesus is the Sacrament of our Encounter with God, we need to understand these words of our faith.

Before you begin the catechesis on these words, invite participants to share (either in small groups, reporting to the large group, or in the large group) what they think, what they have learned the words, mystery and sacrament, mean. Record their thoughts on newsprint. (You may also wish to draw out what they think the word, encounter, means in this context.)

Mystery: The Church began in the east among Greek-speaking Jews, and so the language of the ancient church was Greek. The rites of the Church, such as baptism and Eucharist, were called mysteries of the church, and they still are in the Eastern Church. Mystery is a Greek word that was often used in philosophical and religious discussions to refer to knowledge that was once unclear, but is now revealed. The mystery of a triune (three in one) God could not be imagined by our Hebrew ancestors in the faith; Jesus’ revelation of his Father and his sending of the Holy Spirit deepens our understanding of the God who created, redeemed, and loves us.

[The actual Greek word is μυστηριον (mysterion) in the singular, μυστηρια (mysteria) in the plural.]

We read in 2 Corinthians 3:18 that in the Spirit revealed by Christ, “We are being transformed into his [the Lord’s] likeness, with ever-increasing glory…”We are transformed by the way we conform ourselves to the Gospel preached by Christ and through the mysteries we celebrate in our Catholic tradition. All of the sacraments reveal truth to us that was once obscure, so they were called mysteries in the early Church.

Sacrament: Early in our history as Church, Latin overtook Greek as the language of common people in the western half of the Roman Empire. Western clergy preached in Latin, western theologians wrote in Latin, and western scholars translated the Bible into Latin. Western Christians heard the sermons, read the writings, and studied the Bible in Latin. The word mysterion (mystery) was a problem. There was no Latin word that corresponded to it. They could have directly translated the Greek word into Latin as mysterium, and they often did that, but most Latin-speaking people still had no idea what it meant. So western Christian scholars used the word sacramentum, borrowed from Roman military language, to translate mysterion.

Sacramentum came to be the best Latin equivalent of the Greek word mystery when it referred to a church rite, because the church rite is simultaneously spiritual and physical, and because the person who undergoes the sacrament simultaneously receives new responsibilities and a new spiritual status before God—s/he is made holy, sacred. Therefore, Baptism, Christmation (East)/Confirmation (West), Eucharist, and the other sacred rites are called mysteries because they introduce us to the world of the holy which is incarnated in our visible world. They enable us with the eyes of faith to realize that "God is with us" and that His Spirit is available to us. Because they transform and conform us more closely to Christ, because they make us holy, we also call them sacraments.

Emmanuel, God-with-us, Jesus, introduces us to the Holy, Almighty One who is God, so he is truly the sacrament that enables us to be drawn into the mystery of the Triune God; Christ is the first and greatest sacrament. We encounter, meet, and come into contact with God through Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity; he mediates and reveals our God to us.

Note to Leader: No. 774in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The Greek word mysterion was translated into Latin by two terms: mysterium and sacramentum. In later usage the term sacramentum emphasizes the visible sign of the hidden reality of salvation which was indicated by the term mysterium. In this sense, Christ himself is the mystery of salvation: ‘For there is no other mystery of God, except Christ.’ The saving work of his holy and sanctifying humanity is the sacrament of salvation, which is revealed and active in the Church's sacraments (which the Eastern Churches also call ‘the holy mysteries’).”

Jesus and God the Father(25 minutes)

Step 1: (7-10 minutes) How did Jesus speak of and to God the Father?

Divide the participants into small groups of four. Give each group a marker and sheet of newsprint. Ask them to appoint a recorder and reporter. Instruct them to spend a few minutes thinking about how they remember Jesus talking about or to his Father in the Gospels. Ask them to write down words and/or phrases as they occur to them.

When participants are finished, invite reporters to come forward and post their pages. When all the pages are posted, read through them and note similarities and differences.

Some things they may come up with are (exact quotes are not required—just a sense of how Jesus spoke of the Father):

“In the Beginning was the Word”: Jesus the Christ, Our Sacrament of Encounter with God

Page 1

Abba/Father

The One who sent me

I go to the Father

Father’s only son/only Son of God

The Father gives the Son everything

Jesus speaks with confidence about how and where people will worship the Father

I come to do my Father’s will

My meat is to do the will of the Father who sent me

The Father has sent me

I come in the Father’s name

If you know me you know the Father

He who sees me sees the Father

The Father speaks at Jesus’ baptism by John

The father in heaven

“In the Beginning was the Word”: Jesus the Christ, Our Sacrament of Encounter with God

Page 1

One of the things that we notice from all you have said and what we see when we read the Gospel accounts closely is that Jesus speaks with familiarity about God as “Father”; this, in the end, is one of the reasons he is brought to trial and death because it is seen as blasphemy. The injunction of the Old Testament remains—God’s name is not spoken, and no one can claim such intimacy with the God of Israel.

Let us go back to what we said at the beginning of our time together: Jesus is the Sacrament of our Encounter with God. We come into contact; we “meet” God in and through Jesus. Without Jesus, we would know nothing of the mystery of God. We are going to take some time now and look at one of the Gospel accounts, John’s gospel, that most clearly shows Jesus revealing God to us.

Step 2: (13-15 minutes) Prologue to John’s Gospel (John 1: 1-18)

Introduce the passage with chapter and verse. Ask participants to simply listen to your proclamation of the passage of Scripture. If you feel they may be distracted by what is in front of them, ask them to put it all on the floor next to them (except the Bible should not be placed on the floor out of respect for the Word of God). Proclaim the textclearly, asking them to listen for how John describes Jesus and his relationship with God; his “role”, you could say.

Get ready to proclaim the text again; this time, invite the participants to follow along in their own Scriptures. (Give them time to find the passage; if they are not familiar enough with the Bible yet, you may want to “pre-mark” the passages with paper slips/bookmarks before the evening begins.) Re-read the passage. Ask participants to note, again, how John describes Jesus in relationship to God.