Year A
Twenty-first Sunday
in Ordinary Time
Images
The Pope and the structure
of the Church
Points to note
There is a board inside the Westminster Catholic
Cathedral in London, which lists down the names of all the Popes and next to
them, the list of the leading bishops in England at that time. There are two ideas here which are important. Each bishop is consecrated a bishop by
another bishop, who has been consecrated by another bishop, who has been
consecrated by another bishop, and so on, who has been consecrated by another
bishop, who has been consecrated by one of the Apostles. This is known as the Apostolic Succession,
the principle that every Catholic bishop traces his lineage back to the
Apostles and we have the list of bishops to prove it. Every diocese in the world keeps such a list
of its own line of bishops. This list
that traces back to the Apostles is our proof that what our bishops teach is
the same as what the Apostles, and Jesus, taught.
The other is one of communion. Every Catholic owes allegiance to his or her
local bishop. We are said to be in
communion with our bishop. Each bishop
is in turn in communion with the Pope. Therefore,
each Catholic is communion with each other through his or her communion with
the local bishop who is in communion with other bishops through his communion
with the Pope.
In Year A, we discuss the structure of the Church
while, in Year B, we explain how the Pope is elected and, in Year C, we discuss
the Apostolic Succession. In this leaflet you may need to do a bit of research to get some of the details to share with the children. You can normally get the statistics about your diocese in your diocesan directory, a copy of which should be in your parish office. The historical details is normally available in Wikipedia. Doing the research is quite interesting and often it leads you to other little nuggets of interesting information you may not be aware of. Have fun.
Liturgy
Acclamation before the Gospel
Alleluia!
Alleluia!
You are Peter and on this rock I will build my
Church.
And the gates of the underworld can never hold out
against it.
Alleluia!
Gospel
Jesus has just been debating
with some Jews and Pharisees.
The Lord be with you.
All: And also with you.
A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St Matthew
All: Glory to you O Lord
(Mt 16:13-20)
When Jesus came to the region of Ceasarea Philippi he
put this question to his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” And
they said, “Some say he is John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah
or one of the prophets.” “But you,” he
said, “who do you say I am?” Then Simon
Peter spoke up, “You are the Christ,” he said, “the Son of the living
God.” Jesus replied, “Simon son of
Jonah, you are a happy man! Because it
was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. So I now say to you: You are Peter and on
this rock I will build my Church. And
the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of
heaven; whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven;
whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.” Then he gave the disciples strict orders not
to tell anyone that he was the Christ.
This is the Word of the Lord
Dialogue
Who is the head of the Church? Jesus. Explain that Jesus does not take care of the
entire Church by himself and he has a lot of people to help him. He has the Pope to help him. The Pope helps Jesus to take care of all
Catholics throughout the world, all one billion of us. The Pope wears white and lives in Rome. He has a huge church called St Peter’s
Basilica. This is because the first Pope
was St Peter.
The Pope could not possibly
take care of all Catholics, too. So he has over 5,000 bishops to help
him. Most of these bishops take care of
an area called a diocese. Some dioceses
are larger than others and are called archdioceses. We are in the Diocese/Archdiocese of [name of diocese/archdiocese],
which includes [list the areas covered by your diocese]. There are more than [number of diocese] Catholics in our diocese/archdiocese. The bishop who is appointed
to help the Pope take care of all Catholics in our diocese is Bishop/Archbishop [name of your bishop],
who wears purple and lives in [principal city of your diocese]. His church is called [name of cathedral] Cathedral.
Even Bishop/Archbishop [name of bishop] needs
help to take care of so many Catholics. So, there are over [number of priests] priests to help
them. There are 400,000 priests helping
bishops throughout the world. Many of
these priests help take care of a parish.
We are in the parish of [name of your parish] and there are [number of weekly attendance] people in
our parish who come to our church for mass.
Priests normally wear black except in hot countries.
Sometimes, priests may have
brothers and sisters to help them do God’s work. These brothers and sisters run schools, orphanages
and hospitals or they may do other work like praying for us in
monasteries. There are more than 700,000
of them throughout the world.
Bishops are important
people. They teach us the same things
that the Apostles have been teaching.
So, when the Pope picks someone to succeed him, he will choose the next
bishop very carefully and ensure that they are well trained. The new bishop will be consecrated a bishop
by several bishops, who themselves have been consecrated a bishop by several
other bishops, laying their hands on the new bishop. Having these other bishops there is the
guarantee that the new bishop is a genuine Catholic bishop, who can trace his
lineage back to the Apostles. You can
explain the Apostolic Succession in these simple terms and that the Apostles
were the only bishops who were consecrated bishops by Jesus himself.
Someone once said that it is
a bit like knowing who your father is.
This is quite true: every diocese in the world has a secret archive,
which must include, among other things, the list of all the bishops in that
diocese from the very beginning and the Pope in communion for each bishop. While our diocese was started in [year of establishment of your diocese], we can
also trace the line back to the first bishop of [first diocese in your country] in [year first diocese was set up].
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