Learning to Love

For the five years we homeschooled our children, we were enrolled with a Catholic homeschooling curriculum, Mother of Divine Grace School. I decided from the very beginning that, if I was to have peace about this home education venture, I would choose a curriculum and follow it without significant deviation. I would do just what the curriculum said to do.

This is how I found myself buying and studying multiple books in the Baltimore Catechism series. Before then, I only knew of the Baltimore Catechism from passing snide remarks by other Catholics.

One parishioner who volunteered in faith formation said, “Well, any program you choose is better than the Baltimore Catechism.”

Then there was the priest who joked in his homily, “Those of you who’ve never had to memorize the Baltimore Catechism have never actually been in pain for the Faith.”

But our homeschool curriculum suggested that all three of my big kids should spend five minutes a day memorizing the answers to certain questions in the Baltimore Catechism written for their age group. If it hadn’t been for that syllabus, I wouldn’t have known that the Baltimore Catechism was a series with different volumes meant for different age groups. I bought the recommended books, made flashcards, and didn’t think much about it. I had decided I would try whatever Mother of Divine Grace School recommended, they recommended this approach, so we were going to do it.

That year, while I helped three of my children go through three different books in the Baltimore Catechism series, I experienced the basic, fundamental teachings of our Faith in simple, clearly defined terms. I won’t say I learned much that was new to me. I had gone through a fairly rigorous RCIA program when Chris and I came into the Church. I had completed a master’s degree in Pastoral Studies. In between, I had soaked up as much as I could about the Church and the practice of Catholic spirituality.

But that year, when we started homeschooling in the midst of a pandemic and a cross-country move, I found the format of the Baltimore Catechism soothing and reassuring. The simple truth and its incisive presentation held a new kind of beauty for me as the world around me spun with chaos.

I saw the splendor of the doctrine, a hinting at the grandeur of the Holy Trinity who is Word and Truth, in the pages of the Baltimore Catechism as I read them out loud and discussed them with my children.

It wasn’t what I expected at all. It even made me emotional at times.

The truth of the Catholic Faith has changed my life. It’s completely reordering who I am in the light of a God infinitely more knowable and unknown than I had realized during my upbringing. The Truth tugs at my heart and sharing that Truth in such clear, unequivocal language with my children touched me deeply. Of all the education we participated in that year together, it’s what I remember with the most joy. I knew what we studied in the catechism mattered – really, truly, completely mattered.

One day, as my son and I read through his assigned lesson on the Eucharist and talked through the discussion questions, Tim looked at me and said, “So, actually, Jesus gave us two miracles.”

“Two miracles?” I responded, puzzled.

“Yes, two,” Tim continued, ticking off the miracles on his fingers. “One. It’s a miracle that He comes to us in the Eucharist. Two. It’s a miracle that all of that – the body, blood, soul, divinity – is hidden from us. Otherwise, we wouldn’t eat it because we’d think it was gross.”

Although I’d never thought about it that way before, the straightforward and unadorned explanation of the Eucharist found in the Baltimore Catechism helped my son to understand what we can only accept through belief: Christ submits to appearing as bread and wine because we couldn’t bear to see Him in His fullness.

The Eucharist presents Christ to us in a doubly miraculous way. St. Thomas Aquinas states in the Summa Theologiae, “[I]f man were offered spiritual things without a veil, his mind being taken up with the material world would be unable to apply itself to them.”¹ The veil allows us to accept the divinity and humanity of Jesus hidden within it.

Jesus is so much more than who I realize He is. And it’s not because He’s failed to show me that. Or even because I’ve failed to notice all that He is. It’s that Jesus comes to me, to all of us, in the hidden way that best reveals Himself to us. But at the same time, I need to recognize the veil so that I can distinguish the One wrapped in it.

The beauty of the Eucharist reaches new heights as I understand the truth that Jesus gives Himself to us completely in the Eucharist and He allows us to see the appearances of bread and wine. The appearances of bread and wine aren’t “accidents” in the sense that Jesus made a mistake, they’re “accidents” in the sense that they aren’t necessary to Truth. We need accidents, not Jesus.

And yet, the closer I get to the truth, the more I experience the beauty as well. The more that I understand, the more that my previous illusions fall away and I can see the glory of the Savior. Maybe I don’t need the accidents as much as I once did because I long more faithfully for Jesus.

I don’t think that I needed the Baltimore Catechism to teach me that. I didn’t need St. Thomas Aquinas either. There’s nothing specifically about the Baltimore Catechism or the Summa that makes either the necessary path to a proper understanding of and love for our Lord in the Eucharist. But they’re both in opposition to the vice of smugness, of the failing within us that says, “I’ve learned all I need to know. I understand. I see Jesus clearly enough.”

Jesus is never outdone in generosity. He reveals more and more of Himself, in knowledge of Him, in His Eucharistic Body, in Love. He breaks bread and at the end there’s more than at the beginning. Following crumbs of Truth leads to unending Beauty.

Readings for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi (Year C) on the USCCB Website

1. ST III q.61 a.1 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4061.htm