Kyrie has been taking First Communion classes on Wednesday nights at our parish this year. I started off by sitting in on all the classes with her. Several weeks into the program, one of the two teachers, who I will call A, fell and broke her shoulder.
After she had been seen off to the hospital by the emergency responders, I began wondering who would teach the class the next couple weeks. The other teacher, who I will call E, had not been there that night and was going to be out of town on business trips for the next two Wednesdays. Somewhere in the back of my head I knew that I could probably substitute, but I was hesitant to volunteer myself. Out in the parking lot as we were leaving that night, I ended up talking with Fr. D for a bit, and one or the other of us brought up the possibility of me substituting, although I can't remember now quite what was said.
The next Sunday, at coffee-and-doughnuts after Mass, I ran into E. I told her what had happened to A. When the question of who would teach the next two classes came up, E immediately asked me to do it.
So that's how I ended up teaching the class for two weeks. (Fr. D later laughed, promising me that he had kept his mouth closed and not volunteered me to do it.) And it went well. It was a bit stressful to be trying to plan things, but it was also surprisingly satisfying to talk to a bunch of kids about God and the sacraments and morality and such.
Somehow this whole sequence of events seemed very significant to me.
It was as if God was pulling all these strings to put me, in particular, into the position of teaching this class. I had been going to every class; I knew what the kids had been doing and how they went about their classes. E just happened to be out of town for those particular two weeks. Both E and Fr. D thought of me as someone in a position to do the job.
It felt, in the end, as if it was more significant than just those two weeks. It felt like God was giving me a taste of something he has planned for me in the future. So now I keep thinking... will I be teaching this class full-time some upcoming year?
How great that you are doing some Catechesis! I get a lot out of my volunteering in that capacity, too, though I've found I can't do it every week or I get too burned out. We have a once a month program and this year I helped out with the 5th grade. I hope you do continue next year!
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