I was going to read the catechism in 1996, but then a friend of mine -- a big theology buff -- said, "I'm never going to read the catechism cover to cover." "Oh," I thought to myself, "maybe it's a bad idea." It is actually a really excellent idea. Who knew?
My pastor reads a chunk of the catechism every morning, and this is an excerpt from an email I wrote to him in April:
When I first heard you mention that you read the catechism daily, I thought to myself, "Blech! Sounds about as pleasant as reading the phone book every morning!" We've had a catechism on our shelf since it was published early in our marriage, but I've only used it for addressing occasional queries. It didn't strike me as a joyous read at all.
In December I resolved to read the Bible and the catechism cover to cover in 2016. As a former evangelical, I knew what I was getting into with the Bible, but reading the catechism has been a succession of lovely surprises. Some days it's a little like a long-distance book club, in which the person across the circle says, "I LOVED that part!" and I say, "I KNOW! Me too! It's the best!!" Other days it's like being in a really excellent English class, where the professor points out a connection I had never noticed before even though I thought I'd read the book carefully.
Sometimes, reading the words of the church fathers, it's like being at a family reunion where you see that your great-grandfather and your brother have exactly the same nose and chin -- I love those moments of seeing how thoughtfully, and for how long, the saints have reckoned with hard questions. Some mornings I have to go and wake up my husband, so I can get some help in wrangling with questions like how the paschal sacrifice is distinct from the sacrifice of the New Covenant. (For this reason I am not 100% sure that he is a fan of the habit. :-) He might prefer to talk about sacrifice subtypes at a more civilized hour.)
I knew the Catechism would be full of truth, but I didn't understand that it would be written lovingly and compellingly, and organized so sensibly. And I didn't expect it to feed my soul along with my mind -- at my last confession the words "has sent the Holy Spirit" hit me in a completely new way because I had just been reading about the person and the work of the Holy Spirit.
This is not a practice I would have undertaken without some encouragement, so many thanks to you for the suggestion.
So if you have ever thought to yourself, "Hm, perhaps I should read the catechism," or even if you have not-- I'm a fan of the idea. I might not start it again in January 2017, but at some point in the near-ish future I'll definitely do it again.
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