The Neocatechumenal Way
The parish has again invited The Neocatechumenal Way to deliver a catechesis starting on the 20th April for around seven weeks every Monday and Thursday, why not come along and listen?
Maybe you are unsure about The Neocatechumenal Way, you may have questions to be answered; to help answer any questions we have made available a couple of authoritative statements, one from the Pope and one from the Official Website.
In the primitive church, when the world was pagan, those that wanted to become Christian had to begin a "catechumenate," an itinerary of formation in preparation for Baptism. Today the process of secularization had brought many people to abandon the faith and the Church: because of this there is a necessity for an itinerary of Christian formation.
The Neocatechumenal Way is not a movement or an association, but an instrument in the parishes at the service of the bishop to return to faith many of those who abandoned it.
The Way began in the early 60's in one of the slums of Madrid, by Kiko Argúello and Carmen Hernandez, and was endorsed by the then Archbishop of Madrid, Casimiro Morcillo, who noted in that first community a true rediscovery of the Word of God and the implementation of the liturgical renewal proposed in that time by the Council.
Having seen the positive experience in the church of Madrid, in 1974 the Congregation for Divine Worship chose the name Neocatechumenal Way for this experience.
It is a way of conversion through which the richness of the gospel can be rediscovered.
In these years the Way has diffused itself to over 900 Dioceses, in 105 Nations, with over 20 thousand communities in six thousand parishes.
In 1987 the first international missionary seminary "Redemptoris Mater" was opened in Rome. The seminary hosts youth that have discovered and matured their vocation in a Neocatechumenal Community and have answered the call to go and announce the Good News in the whole world. Many Bishops have successively followed the experience of Rome and today in the world there are over 70 diocesan missionary seminaries "Redemptoris Mater," where over two thousand seminarians are being formed.
Recently as an answer to the Pope's call for a New Evangelisation, many families that have lived this experience have offered themselves to help the mission of the church going to the most secularized and dechristianised places in the world, preparing for the birth of new missionary parishes.
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On Thursday afternoon I travelled to Rome along with the two families in mission in our parish from the Neocatechumenal way the Keatings and the Martins.
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The Street Mission continued this Sunday to promote the Adult Catechesis here at St. Clare’s. This week was not so much a Street Mission as a Park Mission.
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- Written by: Jonathan Day
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The adult catechesis began here at St. Clare’s last Monday and Thursday; around 35 attended each evening.
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The Origins of the Neocatechumenal Way
Is born among the poor as a fruit of the Second Vatican Council
Extract from Kiko's witness
... I had a painter's studio near the "Plaza de España" in Madrid, and it was customary to spend the Christmas season with my parents. One year I went home to celebrate Christmas, I went to the kitchen and I saw the cook crying. I asked her, "Bertha - that was her name - What's wrong?" She told me her husband was an alcoholic who wanted to kill their son and that in turn the son had rebelled against them. Bertha told me a story that left me horrified and I felt from God that I needed to help her.
I went to see where she lived: a horrible shack, among many others. The poor woman woke up early in the morning to go work. She had nine children and was married to a lame, cross-eyed, alcoholic man. He would beat his children with a stick, yelling at them "Defend your Father" and other times when he was extremely drunk he would pee on his daughters. This woman, quite pretty even though she was already older, told me these horrible things.
I took the man and I brought him to the "Curcillios in Christianity." He was impressed when he heard me speak, and for some months he stopped drinking, but after he began again and there were new problems. His wife would call me "Mr. Kiko, please come, because my husband wants to kill everyone. Call the police!" they wouldn't leave me alone. In the end I thought: "And if God is telling me to leave everything and go live there with them to help them?" I left everything and went to live with that family. I would sleep in their extremely small kitchen with the cats.
I lived there and was extremely impressed, to tell you the truth, by the whole environment. There were many people living in terrible situations. I don't know if you know the book of Camus, "The Plague," that tackles the problem of the suffering of the innocent. That woman, Bertha, told me that her late husband, to take revenge for all the humiliations he received, told everyone that he would marry her, the most beautiful girl in the neighbourhood. Everyone made fun of him. But do you know how he married her? He said to her "If you don't marry me, I'll cut your fathers throat" and he would have done it. Her father was a widow and she was extremely timid and afraid.
I asked myself: what sins has this poor woman committed to deserve a life like this? Why not I? She wasn't the only one. There was a woman next door that had Parkinsons, her husband left her and lived begging for alms and another, and another. In front of all this suffering there are only two answers. Are you familiar with the famous phrase of Nietzsche: "Or God is good and he cannot do anything to help these poor people, or God can help them and chooses not to, so he is evil." This is a poisonous phrase. Can God help this woman, or not? Why doesn't he?
Through this situation there was a great surprise. Do you know what I saw there?Not what Nietzsche says, if God can or can't, but I saw Christ crucified. I saw Christ in Bertha, that woman with Parkinsons, and that other one. I saw a mystery. The mystery of the cross of Christ. I was extremely surprised, I say it sincerely.
Later I was called for military service and they sent me to Africa. When I returned I told myself, "if Christ returns to the earth in his second coming tomorrow, I don't know what will happen in the world, but do you know where I would want Jesus Christ to find me?
At the foot of the cross." And where is Christ Crucified? In those that are carrying the greatest sufferings, the consequences of everyone's sins. Sarte says: "Woe to the man that God's finger crushes against the wall." I have seen people there crushed against the wall, many weak people crushed by the consequences of sin, weak and anonymous people.
When a person lives among the poor either they lose faith and becomes a guerilla warrior "Che Guevara" style, or they go quietly in front of Christ and is sanctified. I am grateful to the lord for the mercy he has had on me. There I saw Christ crucified and so when I returned from Africa I met Carmen's sister, and I thought it was necessary to go to the social ‘catacombs' and preach the gospel to these people, help them, give them a word of consolation. And so we formed a group that was dedicated to homosexuals, prostitutes and other undesirables.
Carmen's sister was part of an association, called "Villa Teresiata," which was dedicated to recovering prostitutes. They went to prostitutes' homes and offered them to those that wanted a job. This was very good work. In the end I realized that in that group they did everything more as a "hobby." I told Carmen's sister: "I am going to live with the poor."
Charles de Foucauld gave me the formula; to live in silence, as Jesus of Nazareth, at the foot of Jesus Christ in the midst of all those people. I met a Social Worker that showed me an area of Palomeras Altas with a wooden shack, a refuge for dogs. I was told, "Go there and don't worry." There everything sort of began. I wanted to live in the shack as Charles de Foucald. In contemplation as one in front of the Eucharist, at the foot of the only real presence of Christ. I wanted to be at the foot of Christ crucified, in the midst of the poorest and most miserable people.
The lord brought me there with this spirit: I was the last one. They were Christ. Maybe someone could have told me, "Kiko! Help them!" Here there is a very important point for those that like to get to the bottom of things. "But how? You put yourself in adoration, when these people are dying of hunger? Give them food to eat." I had nothing, I brought nothing but a bible and a guitar, I slept on a mattress placed on the ground, I had nothing else.
At the time of the Nazis, I had read in a book something that touched me. It recounted a historical fact that happened in a concentration camp in Auschwitz. A captain of the Gestapo realized the atrocities that were being committed in the genocide of the Jews. One day, during an inspection in a camp, he saw a column of men and women heading towards the gas chambers, all naked. He felt in his heart a great pain. He asked himself "what do I have to do now to help them, to have peace with myself?" Do you know the answer he received from within himself? (The fathers of the church speak of a talking Christ, inside of you. Something very deep). The book said that he felt he should strip himself and join them in line.
We can ask ourselves: where does this voice come from? Was it a suggestion? Was it True? Was it from God? Wasn't it better to stop them and free those people? Maybe he couldn't do it. Why was the truth to strip himself and join them in line? Here is a possible answer. A person that is in that line in front of the reality that maybe there is no God, that there is no love in the world and if there is no love in the world God does not exist. Life is a monstrosity, therefore we die in absurdity. But if someone comes with you, Christ himself is made man and puts himself in line with you for love. Now, love does exist. God exists. You can live. You can die. Truth and death have meaning.
What value does this have? The only thing you have to do is Social work? Maybe man lives only for food? Or does man need to know if God exists or if he doesn't, if love exists or not? I did not go to the shacks to feed the hungry, nor to teach them to read. (They were all illiterate, except for one or two: José Agudo, that was in jail and knew how to read, but his wife didn't. Gypsy's, "quinqui," kids that knew how to read, but just barely). I went there, and if you want to know did not think that I would preach. You know that the Little Brothers of Foucauld stay "in silence." I wanted to give witness living in the midst of these as Jesus of Nazareth.
And what happened? That which always happens. One day it was freezing, because it was winter and it was snowing - I warmed myself with stray dogs that lived with me- all of a sudden my neighbour entered and told me: "I brought you a brazier (a container for fire) because you are going to freeze to death!"
Slowly people came and began asking: "who is this guy who's here, with a beard and a guitar?" For some I was one who made a vow, others a protestant, because I always had a bible. The gypsy's came for the guitar... They didn't know who I was. José Agudo, who was in a fight with another clan of "quinqui," approached me to ask me what the bible said on fighting. I gave him the sermon of the Mount that said not to resist evil and he was in awe: "But how? If I don't defend myself they will kill me! What do I have to do?" I gave him the "Little Flowers" of St. Francis to read. That stuck him a lot and he never left me again.
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ADDRESS OF POPE FRANCIS
TO REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NEOCATECHUMENAL WAY
Paul VI Audience Hall
Saturday, 1 February 2014
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I thank the Lord for the joy of your faith and for the ardour of your Christian witness, thanks be to God! I greet you all warmly, beginning with the International Team of Directors of the Neocatechumenal Way, together with the priests, seminarians and catechists. I extend an affection greeting to the children, present here in such great numbers. My thoughts go in a special way to the families, who will be travelling to different parts of the world to proclaim and bear witness to the Gospel. The Church is grateful to you for your generosity! I thank you for all you do in the Church and the world.
And in the name of the Church, our Mother — our Holy Mother Church, the hierarchy as St Ignatius of Loyola liked to say — in the name of the Church I would like to give you a few simple recommendations. The first is to take the greatest care to build and preserve the communion within the particular Churches where you will go to work. The Way has its own charism, its own dynamic, a gift that like all gifts of the Holy Spirit has a profoundly ecclesial dimension; this means listening to the life of the Churches where your leaders send you, appreciating their riches, suffering through their weaknesses if necessary, and walking together as a single flock under the guidance of the Pastors of the local Churches. Communion is essential: at times it can be better to give up living out in detail what your itinerary would call for, in order to guarantee unity among the brethren who form one ecclesial community, which you must always feel a part of.
Another point: Wherever you may go, it will be good for you to think that the Spirit of God always goes before us. This is important: the Lord always goes before us! Think of Philip, when the Lord sends him by that road where he meets an administrator seated in his chariot (cf. Acts 8:27-28). The Spirit arrived before him: he was reading the prophet Isaiah and did not understand it, but his heart was fervent. Thus, when Philip approaches, he is ready to be catechized and baptized. The Spirit always arrives before us; God arrives there always before we do! Even in the furthest places, even in the most diverse cultures, God sows the seeds of his Word everywhere. Hence the need to pay special attention to the cultural context in which you families will go and work: it is often an environment very different than that from which you come. Many of you will take the trouble to learn the local language, at times difficult, and this effort is admirable. Much more important will be your commitment to “learning” the cultures you encounter, knowing how to recognize the need for the Gospel that is present everywhere, but also that action that the Holy Spirit has accomplished in the life and the history of every people.
And finally, I exhort you to take loving care of one another, especially the weakest among you. The Neocatechumenal Way, as way of discovering one’s own Baptism, is a necessary path, along which a brother or sister can find unforeseen challenges. In these cases, the exercise of patience and mercy by the community is a sign of maturity in the faith. The freedom of each one of you must not be forced, and it must be respected even if one chooses to seek, outside the Way, other forms of Christian life that may help him or her to grow in their answer to the Lord’s response.
Dear families, dear brothers and sisters, I encourage you to carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ everywhere, even to those most de-Christianized, especially in the margins of life. Evangelize with love; bring God’s love to all. Tell all those you meet on the streets of your mission that God loves man as he is, even with his limitations, with his mistakes, even with his sins. That is why he sent his Son, that he might take our sins onto himself. May you be messengers and witnesses of the infinite goodness and inexhaustible mercy of the Father.
I entrust you to our Mother, Mary, that she may always inspire and support your apostolate. In the school of this tender Mother, may you be zealous and joyful missionaries. Never lose the joy, go forward!