Catechetical Sunday is celebrated annually in the United States on the third Sunday of September. This year's theme is taken from the Gospel of Mark for the 24th Sunday of the Church Year and calls us to focus on Jesus' question to his disciples: "Who do you say that I am?"

This question goes to the heart of the nature of catechesis. It is about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ who calls us to witness to the Good News of God's reign in our lives and in our world.

We have often heard it said --- and its truth is not lost in repetition --- the reason the Church exists is to evangelize! The reason the Church exists is to proclaim and give witness to the good news of Jesus Christ. Catechesis is the word we use to describe the manifold and varied ways in which we do this as a people of faith, and most particularly those ways which involve a verbal witness.

When we try to address Jesus' question to his disciples --- Who do you say that I am? --- we must be ready as baptized followers of Jesus to put intelligible words on our answer. How do we encounter the living God in our world? Where have I encountered the presence of God in my own life? Have there been, or are there moments in which the presence of God is palpable in my life? And how do I witness to God's presence in such a way as to bring others in touch with this presence in their own lives? This is a responsibility of all believers, and is particularly so for those involved in the ministry of catechesis.

The wisdom and experience of the Church though time has identified six particular aspects, or tasks of catechesis which are important for us as a people of faith. They are important because they are seen to be essential to the development of our relationship with Jesus Christ, which is the object of all catechesis.

The tasks of catechesis help us to come to deeper knowledge of Christ, invite us to celebrate the reality of Christ in our lives, and bring us to reflect and contemplate on the presence of Christ in our lives such that our lives are changed by that presence and our relationship.

Some tasks of catechesis are obvious, perhaps, but others might benefit from specific mention:

Knowledge of the faith: Reflection on and study of the Scriptures and the teaching tradition of the community of believers, the Church, feeds us spiritually as well as mentally, and helps us to articulate our faith more intelligibly to others. This is not about simply knowing the "facts" of our faith, but about appropriating the faith; that is to say, it is about making the faith my own.

Liturgical education: To encounter the presence of Jesus Christ is to be drawn deeper into his Body and to public celebration of Christ in our lives. As countless of our ancestors did, we do. We gather together with others to celebrate, to praise and to worship as a community of believers.

Moral Formation: To know Jesus is to love him, and to love him is to walk in his ways. To walk in the footsteps of Jesus requires a willingness to interior conversion of life, to letting go of ways of living that are irreconcilable to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to taking on behaviors and practices that express a deeper love of God and of neighbor.

Prayer: The context for the Christian life is one of prayer. Adoration, praise, thanksgiving, confidence and awe were hallmarks of Jesus' own prayer before the Father, and we enter into those attributes of prayer in order to live the faith we profess.

Education for Community Life: Catechesis assists us to learn to cooperate actively with fellow believers in service of building up the Reign of God. This is not the work of any one, but of all believers. Indeed, as we deepen our appreciation for community and the communal life among believers, we also grow in awareness of how to better serve God's will in a world in which people conceive of God differently.

Mission: All catechesis calls us to the interior life, but then draws us to move beyond ourselves to reach out to others in faith. Often feeling the inadequacy of those sent out without the proper tools or resources, we rely on Christ who sends us and who calls us to trust in the Father and to find our support in the power of the Holy Spirit.

In his book "The Holy Longing," Father Ron Rolheiser notes that the passage in the fourth Gospel, which we often translate "And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us…", can also be translated, "And the Word began to become flesh and lives among us." The implication conveyed is that Christ continues to be made flesh among us, and continues to be present to us. As followers of Christ, we are ourselves called to "put on Christ" as St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans. We are called to put flesh on - to enflesh - our faith and the sharing of our faith.

This task may seem a daunting challenge in a post-modern world in which values so antithetical to the Gospel are considered normative for our day. Violence is a common and accepted companion in our lives, and every day we are served up some new "enemy" toward which we must be vigilant and fear-full. Retribution is not only valued, but prized and seen as a sign of strength rather than as the ultimate betrayer of our fear and human weakness. The dehumanization of those who are different to us in thought, in language or in culture seems to be an increasingly accepted means of conducting public discourse as we grow less and less uneasy with the demonization of those who are "other" be they other creed, other nationality, or other strata of our society.

We struggle to discern the differences between wisdom and blindness as we are daily bombarded with spin. We recognize the popularity of the myth that Gospel values have no place in the "real world" but are nice ideas for dreamers, and we are confronted by our own doubts in the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ. We live in a world where good people claim to be spiritual but not religious, to be believers but not belongers, and we struggle to locate ourselves in this confusing world so Babel-like.

The catechetical mission of the Church, with its focus on six particular tasks, affords us a means to engage the person of Jesus Christ for ourselves, to find our anchor in Him who is always present to us and who calls us beyond the falsehoods of illusion offered so enticingly to us.

We recognize in Jesus Christ that God is both incarnate and ascended. God becomes flesh and ascends beyond the limitations of flesh. Our own human nature calls us to be a real presence in a real world, giving real witness to the reality of God's presence, while at the same time we lift our eyes beyond the now and continue to journey to that which is beyond, that which is more than what we are and have in the here and now.

As Jesus did, so we bring the mission of God down to earth. We seek to fulfill our task to make disciples and to bring the mission of Jesus into the hearts and minds of all we encounter such that the world can be transformed, little by little, and the reign of God is built up, each seed of our endeavor bearing fruit in the fulfillment of God's own time.

Father David Loftus is coordinator of Adult Formation in the archdiocesan Office of Religious Education.