Recent research, such as that presented in Jonathan Haidt’s 2024 book, “The Anxious Generation,” suggests that the digital age we are living in is “rewiring” childhood. In this age of constant distraction, the University of Notre Dame’s Contours of Wonder initiative asks an important question: How can the Church help children to recover a sense of wonder? “Children are natural contemplatives. They’re natural wonderers. Yet the world wants nothing more than to snuff those dispositions out of them. Our digital devices do that handily,” Lesley Kirzeder, the Contours of Wonder Program Director, told Today’s Catholic. When she says this, Kirzeder speaks both from personal experience as a mother of three sons as well as from well-researched insights gleaned through her previous work as the program director for the Church Communications Ecology program, which, like Contours, was an initiative of the university’s McGrath Institute for Church Life. Through that program, she worked alongside parish communications specialists, pastors and ministers to explore how people are being formed by the use of technology and how the Church should respond. Reimagining Formation for Children Recognizing that a sense of wonder is required for liturgical living — for seeing everyday life as oriented toward God — the Contours of Wonder initiative, which is funded through a grant from Lilly Endowment, has embarked on a three-year journey of academic research and ministerial formation. Unfolding in three phases, the initiative kicked off during the 2023-24 academic year and will culminate this year. As part of its third phase, members of a 20-person cohort, which first convened last fall, were scheduled to present their capstone projects this month. These capstones showcase various ways of reimagining catechesis that form children for dispositions of lifelong liturgical living. Such dispositions require the ability to see the world as a gift and to be moved to make a return gift of praise to God, the giver. Jeannie Callaway, a ministry leader from the Archdiocese of New Orleans, is crafting a plan to change the retreat offered to first communicants and their families by dividing it into two parts based on the signs and symbols of the liturgy of the Easter Vigil. Kirzeder noted that, in reimagining the retreat, Callaway is “deep-diving into sacred signs and retrieving an idea of how we engage the senses, which goes back to the idea of liturgy as play.” Angela Mapuranga, a faith formation volunteer at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Raleigh, North Carolina, was inspired by her native country of Kenya when creating a project on “walking together through the renewal of the domestic church.” Inspired by Kenyan village and church life, her capstone focuses on the use of family pastoral groups to create parent-led faith formation. Another capstone presentation will focus on “Wonder Journals,” a construct of Diana Von Plinsky, director of ministries and youth ministry at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Columbia, South Carolina. “She’s getting her kids into contemplative dispositions, having them encounter certain things — whether that’s art or nature or music or their church building — and journaling to try to unwind some of the busyness and fast pace that they’re very much used to. Pretty astonishing,” Kirzeder said. Kirzeder continued, saying: “The capstone project is an opportunity for them to look at their specific ministry in their parish, school or diocese and to somehow reimagine the formation that they’re offering to the children and families there based on the themes we studied and the needs of childhood today. As we kept moving through the coursework, so much was revealed to them that the project idea that they submitted with their application had changed quite a bit.” Provided by the McGrath Institute for Church LifeMembers of the Contours of Wonder cohort pose for a photo at a retreat center outside of Atlanta. The Theology Behind the Program Leading up to the capstone projects, the cohort engaged with a series of instructional units beginning with an examination of the realities of childhood today. “We needed to get them familiar with what children are facing,” Kirzeder said of the first unit’s content. “So, we looked at things like ‘The Anxious Generation,’ we read Laudato Si’, and we looked at the realities of things like organized sports and travel sports, which are a $30-$40 billion industry.” Other units explored the work of Sophia Cavalletti and Maria Montessori — advocates of the child’s capacity to worship — and the writing of Catholic priest and theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar in order to understand the Church’s vision of childhood. Further topics included working with children with disabilities, the importance of unstructured play and its connection to liturgy, liturgical formation and pastoral leadership and formation. The cohort experience and the program itself was inspired by 20th-century theologian Romano Guardini, whose 1923 work, “Liturgy and Liturgical Formation,” was translated into English around the time the Lilly Endowment approached Tim O’Malley, director of education at the McGrath Institute, about their grant focused on nurturing children through worship. “Liturgy and Liturgical Formation” is widely seen as surprisingly pertinent to present times, so much so that Pope Francis cited it in Desiderio Desideravi, his 2022 apostolic letter on “the liturgical formation of the People of God.” Guardini’s theology advocated for the recovery of four core principles essential to liturgy: embodiment, symbol, community and mystery. In his embrace of embodiment, Guardini held that the spiritual is not something that exists out of reach in another realm but is something we encounter through our embodied natures. “We have to be able to look at bread and wine and see the fullness and reality behind them,” Kirzeder explained. “We have to be able to look at a candle and see transfiguration. And without the eyes of a child, without the ability to gaze, we can’t do that.” Art, Nature and Learning to See Again Embracing these key principles of embodiment, symbol, community and mystery, the cohort’s coursework was undertaken through a combination of readings, presentations from experts, experiential activities and engagement with a “contemplative artifact.” The contemplative artifact — typically a painting, printed image, poem, video or musical piece — was incorporated not only to help participants regain their own ability to ponder and wonder, but also to inspire them to think of creative ways of cultivating those same skills in children. “[As a cohort] we started [considering]: How does engaging with art help us recover some of these sensibilities and dispositions that the world is sort of stamping out?” Kirzeder said. “When we pick up our phones and we scroll through thousands of images an hour, we’re being taught how to look at things. How do we undo that? How does engaging in art, engaging with nature and the world around us help us learn to see again, to smell, to engage our senses, to wonder and not have the answers right away?” The cohort was able to put some of these practices into action while gathering in person (a change from their typical weekly Zoom meetings) for a retreat in early February at the Heritage retreat center in Atlanta — a remote location that offered woods for exploring and pristine night skies for stargazing. The retreat setting also served as a space for them to create game plans for the research and development required for their individual capstone presentations. Beyond the Cohort The capstones — and the way they’ll be lived out in dioceses — aren’t the only fruit of this initiative. Work is being done to publish three research volumes based on material that was presented at three academic symposia focused on liturgical formation and a theology of childhood that Contours held during the 2023-24 academic year. Two of the symposia were hosted at Notre Dame and one was hosted by Villanova University — a partner of the Contours of Wonder program. Additionally, O’Malley recently concluded teaching an undergraduate class at Notre Dame called “The Theological Child: Personhood, Vocation, and the Technocratic Age,” which served as an opportunity not only to present theory and a historical survey to students but also to invite them to consider whether they might be personally called to teach children. Working further to support those who minister to children, Contours also hosts free monthly online meetups that provide a peer community and professional development (through occasional invited speakers). These gatherings are directed toward “people who minister to children in any way, shape or form,” Kirzeder said. “They could be catechists, teachers, principals, diocesan leaders, pastors, they could be DREs, they could be choir directors, liturgical directors. …” Reflecting on the many ways the Contours of Wonder initiative is reaching members of the Church, Kirzeder said, “I love that our program offers both a specialized experience while at the same time really aiming to support the Church across the United States in these ways that don’t require such a deep dive and commitment.” This initiative has also been personally meaningful to Kirzeder, whose oldest son recently graduated high school. She told Today’s Catholic, “As a mother who constantly wrestles with the way the world is seeking to form my children, to have the privilege of learning from this incredible cohort of people, learning from [O’Malley], learning from our scholars and helping the Church move the needle a little bit on this — to really reimagine initiating children into the liturgical life of the Church — is the privilege of a lifetime.” Learn More For more information on the Contours of Wonder program, and to watch a short video of Tim O’Malley of the McGrath Institute for Church Life visit here.             The post Restoring Wonder Is Key to Living a Sacramental Life appeared first on Today's Catholic. ...read more read less