TOPICS from A to Z: 2025

Friday, December 5, 2025

Why do churches require formation or preparation classes before we can receive the various sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church?

On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.

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There are 2 dimensions: social & personal

The Roman Catholic Church as "institution" requires preparation classes or formation on the part of those who seek or ask for sacraments. This is because the churches see here a challenge or contradiction in the "social dimension" of the faith, such as in the case of people who ask for sacraments but are not themselves practicing their faith; that is, they are not going to church much or at all.

Churches are under obligation to not treat the sacraments trivially, or with contempt, and to avoid making it easy for the people to also treat the sacraments - and therefore God - with contempt. In other words, proper care and attention must be given to people seeking sacraments to assure that they have the proper dispositions and motivations.

It is a contradiction to give the impression sacraments are important by asking for them, but then demonstrating that the sacraments are of no significance by ignoring them in actual practice of daily life, family life, family and work. This is how some parents give scandal to their children and harm their innocence by getting them excited about sacraments, but then rarely or never bringing them to church in order to grow in the experience of the sacraments and of God.

So, formation is an attempt, sometimes a feeble attempt, by churches - often with limited resources of finances and personnel - to accompany people seeking sacraments. In the early church, it was forbidden to say anything about the sacraments before they were received and experienced. They didn't want to give "spoilers" in advance; to leave people free to experience the sacraments with no advance indications. This was because those about to be baptized were adults, or at the very least youth, and it was very important for them to first experience the sacraments in a way that was "fresh". This heightened their attentiveness and allowed them to be more "sensitive" to the subtle ways in which God moves and works.

Only then, afterwards, were they given catecheses to help them reflect on what they had experienced. The Holy Spirit would help them recall what was happening within them during the celebration of the sacraments; as well as during the period of preparation leading up to the sacraments. These catecheses were called, in Greek, "mystagogia", which means "words about the mysteries" or about the "mysterious experience of God". This is because God always reveals something of himself, the Holy Trinity, through the sacraments. Every single time we receive sacraments, it is fresh, it is different, because we are different; who we were yesterday is gone, and who we are today is fresh and new. What we carry within us accumulates, making us different day by day. God's ultimate purpose is to bring us into an intimate personal relationship with the Most Holy Trinity, which introduces us into the eternal life which begins now and becomes fully experienced in heaven, in the permanent communion of saints in God.

That brings us to the second dimension, the "spiritual" or "mystical" dimension of the sacraments. We can be certain that God always does "his part" in the sacraments. New birth by water and the Holy Spirit is always given by God in Baptism; just as Jesus really communicates Himself to us in Holy Communion, as we participate in Holy Mass and receive his "transfusion of divine life and love" in Holy Communion.

What happens in Holy Communion is much like what happens when a baby nurses at its mother's breast: she gives of the "substance" of her life to her baby, but is not diminished by that. On the contrary, she becomes "more fully" mother in giving of herself to her baby in this way. So too does Jesus give of Himself to us in Holy Communion; it is really and truly a "transfusion of the divine life He has with the Father in the Holy Spirit". In this life, we cannot yet "retain" completely and fully his divine life in us; not as we will be able to do so in eternity.

So, for churches, the personal dimension raises such questions as: Are these people who are seeking sacraments also desiring a personal connection with God, or wanting to grow in their relationship with God, or else are they really not interested, but only wanting to go through the motions of cultural or family traditions; such as to please the grandparents, or for the pictures of milestone events?

So, the baptizing church wants to make sure parents and godparents are well disposed and personally motivated to participate in the sacraments; that they understand what they are seeking and that they intend to act in accordance with God's will.

Secondly, when the one being baptized is a baby or child, churches want to make sure parents and godparents are capable and fully intend to mentor their child into the future. We know God does his part, but a baby or child needs help to discover that God is real, God is present, God loves them, and they can have a personal connection with God in various ways. We all need to be mentored at every age and stage of life.

We can perceive God's majesty and power in the beauty and complexity of nature....

We can experience God's love through our parents, godparents, other family, friends, neighbours, and even strangers; such as in the church faith community.

We can open ourselves to God's love, beauty, goodness, and truth through contemplation of nature, in silence, going for a walk, at family meals, and in endless ways....

We can discover God's abiding presence, love, and help through the trials and difficulties of life: illness, weakness, disappointments, challenges, loneliness, misunderstandings, losses, tragedies, successes and failures, griefs and joys, etc.

We can open ourselves to God through prayer, personal private prayer - saying prayers, but also speaking and listening from our heart - and also communal prayer: at table with the family, together before bed, in church at Holy Mass Sundays and special seasons, and with others in other places and at other times....

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© 2006-2025 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2006-2025 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC

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Saturday, July 19, 2025

I want to get closer to God and keep doing all I can, but nothing is happening. I feel far away... it's as if God is silent. What can I do?

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Dear Reader, two millennia of disciples of Jesus have preceded us on this journey of faith, and they came to know God personally through his love and mercy. The riches of their lives, writings, sayings, teachings, and example are accessible to us; they are not kept hidden, and we only have to seek them, ask for them, and we will find.

Our Roman Catholic Tradition accumulates, proclaims, and shares with all who would receive them, the teachings and example of Jesus, and especially his saving Passion, Death, and Resurrection. As well, Tradition stores for us the teaching and example of the shepherds the Lord gives us and also of the saints. For this and many other reasons, we do well to immerse ourselves daily in this life of the Lord's Church, his Assembly of the Saints... in the Prayer of the Church - the Liturgy of the Hours (American version - International version) - Holy Mass on Sunday and daily whenever possible, the duty of the moment in accord with our specific vocation in God, generously doing the works of mercy, attending to our duties in life, being hospitable to others, forgiving, and merciful to enemies, and so on... as Jesus taught and did.

It is as if Jesus, the Son of God, were a child saying to us children, "Won't you come out and play with me?" To put it differently, Jesus is the Bridegroom saying to us - each of us individually, personally, and to all of us collectively - "I love you. Won't you dance with me?" Jesus, with the Most Holy Trinity - He, the Son, with his Father and the Holy Spirit - constantly offer us to share in their divine life. It is always up to us to respond as God our Creator asks us to do: "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:8. We are to do the right thing in our own life and in relation to others, even enemies, Jesus said, we are to be kind to all and to be open, honest, and humble before God, worshipping Him.

It is also advisable for whoever wants to come closer to God to seek and find a good spiritual director; who is holy and disciplined, in good standing with our Church, who understands your soul, and is not afraid to challenge you. Of course, you do well to follow your spiritual director's guidance, and I want not to interfere with that, but only to reflect with you here around the subject expressed in the title of this blog post, namely:

What is one to do when one wants to get closer to God, when even though one takes responsibility for one's life, one strives to love God and one's neighbour as oneself; with all the appropriate Christian disciplines and practices, and yet nothing seems to be happening... on the contrary, God seems farther away than ever, and oh so silent? What then? What is one to do then?

A good place to start, and as good as any, would be with an excerpt from St. Augustine's "Tractates on the first letter of John" under the subtitle "Our heart longs for God." It is to be found in the Liturgy of the Hours, Volume III, Friday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time, on pages 219-221. One could sum up his reflection simply by saying that it is God Himself who places in our soul holy desires, or more specifically, a holy desire; which is meant to draw us to Him. The Holy Spirit draws us on in that direction, but there is also a fair amount of waiting, because that desire is generally not immediately fulfilled or accomplished.

To quote St. Augustine here: "The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied."

He goes on to use an image, that of a sack. It is as if our soul can be likened to a sack into which is to be deposited that for which we long and which God wants to give us. Our problem or challenge is that our sack is not large enough; it's capacity is too small to receive the magnitude of what it is that God wants to give us. However, we are not to despair; on the contrary, we are to hope, because the action of God, the Holy Spirit within us, is to use that holy desire to stretch and expand our sack, our soul. While we wait and experience a kind of suffering by exercising this holy desire while it is not yet being fulfilled; the capacity of our sack, our soul, is being stretched by God until the day when our capacity to receive becomes great enough to accommodate God's gift. We know that the Most Holy Trinity want to give us themselves, their own divine life and love; so, we do very well to accept to endure the waiting and the longing.

The Office of Readings for Tuesday in the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time offers us another insight on this topic, and in 1 Kings 19:1-9a, 11-21, it is with Elijah's trek into the desert to Mt. Horeb to meet God. Elijah had shown powerful faith in God when he confronted the 450 false prophets of Baal and challenged them to a duel. They were to set up a sacrificial offering, but make no fire, and call on their gods to demonstrate their divinity by sending down fire from heaven to accept and consume their sacrifice. They failed and in answer to Elijah's prayer, Almighty God sent down fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice, the wood, the stones of the altar, and the water all around it. The people cried out: "The Lord is God! The Lord is God!" Then, Elijah had the 450 false prophets brought down to the brook and slit their throats. The pagan Queen Jezebel then threatened to do the same to Elijah, and he ran for his life.

As he journeyed into the desert towards Horeb, God's mountain, Elijah slept and twice was awakened by an angel who told him to eat and drink; that he might have strength for the journey. Finally, he arrives at Mt. Horeb and takes shelter in a cave. God tells him to go outside because He was about to pass by. First, there was a mighty wind rending rocks, followed by an earthquake, and a fire. Elijah knows that God is not in the mighty wind rending rocks (which evokes for us our body strength*), nor was God in the earthquake (which evokes our emotions*), nor in the fire (which is like our intellectual acuity*). Finally, Elijah heard "a tiny whispering sound", like a gentle breeze or whisper of wind (which suggests the Holy Spirit, and in us, that would be the dimension of our soul or spirit*). "When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave." Elijah knew that he was in the Presence of Almighty God, his Creator and our Creator and Lord.

*It was while on an Ignatian Directed Retreat, while praying with this text of Sacred Scripture, and under the guidance of a spiritual director; that it occurred to me that the powerful wind images our body, our physical strength - rending rocks - that an earthquake images our emotions - which shake us up and can overwhelm us - that the fire images the "spotlight" of our mind as it seeks to penetrate reality in seeking the truth - and that the whisper of wind images the Presence and action of the Holy Spirit entering into our soul, our own spirit; as we open ourselves up to God. Jesus himself, in talking with Nicodemus, spoke of the wind as imaging the motion of the Holy Spirit in human beings born again in God, in the Most Holy Trinity; as recorded in his Gospel by John 3:5-8.

One of the truths which this passage of Sacred Scripture teaches us is that body, psyche / emotions, and mind are gifts from God, not to be neglected or abused, and God fills these dimensions with his life and love, but God comes personally to dwell within us in our soul. When God comes to us, into us, He inhabits our whole self, including our body, heart, mind, and soul, but it is in the "seat" of our soul that God comes to dwell. God has created our immortal soul with an emptiness, a capacity for receiving Him, his indwelling Presence; for which the Temple was but an image.

In the July 15th memorial of St. Bonaventure, we find an excerpt from "The Journey of the Mind to God" with the subtitle "Mystical wisdom is revealed by the Holy Spirit". Here, he writes about the ascent of the mind to God and similarly tells how we are to let go of all our varied expectations in order to be brought by the Most Holy Trinity into the communion they enjoy together in their unity. For this to happen, we need to experience a "passover" from everything of this world into the domain of God.

He writes: "For this passover to be perfect, we must suspend all the operations of the mind and we must transform the peak of our affections, directing them to God alone. This is a sacred mystical experience. It cannot be comprehended by anyone unless he surrenders himself to it; nor can he surrender himself to it unless he longs for it; nor can he long for it unless the Holy Spirit, whom Christ sent into the world, should come and inflame his innermost soul. Hence the Apostle says that this mystical wisdom is revealed by the Holy Spirit."

Catherine Doherty, Foundress of the Madonna House Apostolate, often spoke and wrote of having to fold the wings of our mind or intellect in order to advance further into this divine communion or to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It is good for us to employ all of our God-given faculties mentioned above in order to seek and approach God, but then, we need to let go, to relax our efforts, and allow God to lift us up beyond the reach of our faculties.

It is like the woman in the Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon. She hears the footsteps of her beloved, a hint of his voice, she smells the fragrance of his garments, and turns around to see and seize him, but he is gone. Although this book never mentions God directly or indirectly, the Jews kept it in their Sacred Scriptures precisely because it speaks so eloquently of our soul's search for God who remains elusive; who plays "hide and seek" as it were with our souls.

We would not be able to bear the full intensity of the divine love, which is why we need rather to be gradually prepared for it. Our most practical daily opportunities to grow in love of God is to love all our neighbours, and especially our enemies; that is, those whom we find difficult to love.

What you may feel, Dear Reader, perhaps drawing you to the title of this post, is not unlike how a married woman may feel about her husband. Without realizing it, she develops expectations about how she would like it to be between them or how she would like to feel, but it doesn't happen. This could also happen to a married man in his expectations of how he would like his wife to be.

It really is like this; I have seen it time and again in couples. We are hidden in the mystery of how God our Creator has designed us, with an infinite desire for love that only He, our Creator, can satisfy. This is why He patiently leaves us free to experience this restlessness and dissatisfaction; until like St. Augustine we realize that our hearts are restless until they rest in Him. This is how God grows our desire for Him, and enables us to freely accept to let go of all tangible expectations and let our lives go, surrendering entirely to Him. This is how the anonymous author of "The Cloud of Unknowing" around the 13th or 14th century reflected on our searching for God. Here is a good overview of this spiritual text, its content and meaning, and its history - on Wikipedia.

At the time of the Counter Reformation, the Spanish mystic of the late 16th century, Saint John of the Cross, in his spiritual work "Ascent of Mount Carmel", likens this mystical faith journey to ascending Mount Carmel; which is an image for Christ Himself. There are many paths up the mountain, each pursuing some good grace or virtue, and these appear good, but because they are indirect ends and not Jesus Himself; they end up leading us away from Christ, or at the very least they distract our attention away from Jesus Himself, or they lead us on a longer, more circuitous path. We may, by his grace, eventually find Him, but the road will be more laborious and risky.

The most direct way, he teaches, is to renounce everything, all good things, all pleasures, and even all graces and spiritual ends; in order to desire nothing at all except Jesus Christ Himself, his Person, and all that pleases Him. The most direct route into communion in the Most Holy Trinity is to seek Jesus rather than graces and gifts; to prefer Jesus Himself rather than "our experience of Him". In other words, we are to prefer Jesus in Person to our own feelings about Him. When we do all that He asks of us, even when we feel nothing at all; we can be comforted and encouraged that He has us and that we have Him.

So, in light of this, getting back to our original question, and our feeling that we are not getting any closer to God, or that nothing is happening; we are simply to accept to endure this current condition, to set aside all those expectations, and ever strive to refocus the "peak of our affections", the focus of our holy desire, on Jesus, and Him alone. We set aside our feelings, our thoughts, our sensations in the body, the gifts and graces that God gives... everything... so as to set aside the gifts and desire only the Giver of the gifts. We let Him do as He wills with us in accord with his own Heart.

Our faith journey provokes many questions and even doubts. We do well to find, join, and remain rooted in a lively, faithful, and well directed community of faith. Within that living community of faith, we can also do some research and study of the Word of God and our faith tradition. One good Catholic Christian source where we can be assured that the reflections are faithful to the Word of God and the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church, is from our American brothers and sisters: Catholic Answers.

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