What does it mean to be Catholic?

In the Gospel, Jesus is asked by those who studied the law about the most important commandment. His response, to first love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. What a great way to open our discussion this week, what does it mean to be Catholic? Simply stated, faith in action!

Our faith, given to us by God, roots our beliefs. Loving God and learning his law challenges us. We had the opportunity to analyze our Catholic basic beliefs, recognizing all those as our core. But what good would is it to just believe in these? How can we put this faith into action? Our beliefs are augmented by putting these into practice. We had the opportunity to recognize and match our catholic beliefs into specific practices as a way to express this faith given to us by God.

Practicing our faith, leads us to change. Helps us to express ourselves within the context of how God wants us to be, in essence changing our core being, changing our attitude. Expressing the love taught to us by Christ is ultimately faith in action. We are given the choice, to follow Christ, make him part of our daily lives. Living our faith gives us the opportunity to change our surroundings, fulfilling the great commandment.

The kids engaged in a game where we reviewed this basic principal, faith, practice leading to a change in attitude and with that put our faith into action! They randomly selected phrases and had to recognize and place these into 3 categories. They discerned with each other and did amazingly good. Those phrases that posed greater challenges were discussed as a group for proper placement. At the end, during our closing prayer, they had the opportunity to express in one word what it meant to be Catholic to them. All did a great job in expressing what it means to be Catholic as deep feeling, love, hope, chance, believing, trust and life.

~Herbeck & Cors Small Group