Bishop teaches course on Parables

BEACON PHOTO | MICHAEL WOJCIK

BACK IN THE CLASSROOM  Bishop Serratelli writes on a white board in a classroom of St. Paul Inside the Walls, Madison, during a recent session of a course that he has been teaching about the Parables of Jesus. Last month the Bishop, a former seminary professor and rector, returned to teaching in the Diocesan Certificate in Catholic Evangelization program, which he devised and helped develop. The program seeks to form participating Catholics’ spirituality and inspire them to spread the Gospel in their own lives, vocations and parishes.

MADISON  Students sit captivated as Bishop Serratelli explains how, in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, Jesus alters a story well known to the Jewish people of his time to make a point about both God’s judgment and his limitless mercy. It feels familiar for this former seminary professor to lead a class about the Parables of Jesus, as he tells his students that, in his version of the story, Jesus reverses the fates of the two men: the Rich Man, who fails to help Lazarus, a beggar, is carried to Hades, while Lazarus is carried to Heaven.

“In the time of Jesus, people like the Rich Man were respected in society. Jews then would have considered Lazarus a sinner, because he was covered in sores. Even dogs licked the sores,” Bishop Serratelli told 12 students on a recent Tuesday evening in the course at St. Paul Inside the Walls: the Diocesan Evangelization at Bayley-Ellard here. Last month, he returned to teaching in the Diocesan Certificate in Catholic Evan­gelization (CCE) program, which he devised and help develop. Later, the Bishop told the Beacon that he aims to help students see that the Parables of Jesus, like the Rich Man and Lazarus, encourage “Christians to accept the love and mercy of God, which is the kingdom of God,” including to the lowly among us.

In his 14 years as the Shepherd of Paterson, Bishop Serratelli has carried out his duty as preacher and teacher of his flock in the Diocese with every homily at Mass, pastoral letter and column in The Beacon. But in January, he began to experience once again the joy of returning to his natural habitat: teaching the truth and beauty of God’s Word at the college level in a small classroom setting. From 1977 until 2002, the Bishop taught Sacred Scripture and biblical languages at Immaculate Conception and served as rector of St. Andrew’s College Seminary at Seton Hall University from 1997 to 2000. During the CCE course, he has been exploring the “familiar” and “disarmingly simple yet penetrating narratives that Jesus used to articulate and proclaim the Kingdom of God during his ministry,” according to course materials.

In January, Bishop Serratelli started teaching a course on the Parables of Jesus — from the Prodigal Son to the Good Samaritan — for the innovative CCE — the first program of its kind in the Diocese and the U.S. The program seeks to form participating Catholics spirituality and inspire them to spread the Gospel in their own lives, vocations and parishes. In 2014 the first class was graduated from CCE, which the Bishop developed with Msgr. Geno Sylva, now the rector of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Paterson, back when he served as St. Paul’s executive director and diocesan vicar for evangelization. Today, the program, which offers both certificate and master’s degree studies, is affiliated with Immaculate Conception Seminary in South Orange.

“This is my first course for the Certificate in Catholic Evangelization recently. I’m happy to get back to teaching, when I immerse students in the study of the Word, which strengthens them to do what God wants them to do. I feel like a fish back in water. I’m back in my natural environment. The students are very receptive and curious, which makes it easier to teach them and for them to learn about the Bible and our Lord,” said Bishop Serratelli, who earned a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Gregorian University in Rome in 1977. “The Certificate in Catholic Evangelization program has far exceeded my expectations. I give credit to the staff at St. Paul’s,” he said.

CCE students have been meeting in a classroom at St. Paul’s on Tuesday evening and the occasional Saturday for the eight-week Parables course. There, Bishop Serratelli teaches students how to interpret the Parables through various lenses, including Church teaching and scholarship that looks at theological, Scriptural, historical and literary contexts. The Bishop teaches the first third of the course, which seeks to enable students to “synthesize the message of the parables with the mission of evangelization and identify practical evangelization techniques in the parables and explore how they may be utilized in the 21st century context,” as well as familiarize them with “the methods of biblical exegesis [critical interpretation of the text] and to equip them to present Sacred Scripture to others,” according to course handouts.

To fulfill course requirements, students also need to complete research papers and exams, including an oral exam with the Bishop, said Brian Honsberger, St. Paul’s director of programs and operations, who coordinates CCE and teaches a few of its courses, including the final two-thirds of the Parables course.

“Jesus first tells his audience things that it agrees with in his Parables — a very Jewish way of telling a story — but then, in the second half, he gets innovative by giving it a ‘twist’ to show the people their own hypocrisy [like people similar to the Rich Man]. Jesus takes the Parable to new levels,” said Honsberger, whose part of the course explores the process of actually interpreting the Parables. “Bishop Serratelli is helping students understand what Jesus was saying to his audience in the First Century. He is very well educated, very informative, very well read and very nuanced. The Bishop doesn’t overly simplify anything and delves into the details of why we think the way we think about the Parables. He is faithful to Church teaching but also brings it together with biblical scholarship,” he said.

Returning to the classroom for the Parables course has given Bishop Serratelli a taste of how he would like to spend part of his time during his retirement: teaching more college-level courses and continuing to conduct retreats to priests and religious, diocesan convocations and lectures throughout the U.S. He also has taught at the Redemptorist Seminary in Esopus, N.Y.; St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, N.Y.; the Institute of Religious Studies, Archdiocese of New York; and the lay ministry program of the Educational Program Service of Trinity College, Washington, D.C.

“I find it extremely fulfilling to teach, because to teach, you have to learn again and anew and then to share with others what you yourself are learning,” Bishop Serratelli told The Beacon years ago in a previous story about his teaching CCE courses. “Jesus’ last words in Matthew’s Gospel are ‘Go teach.’ As bishop, I take that as a directive and a mandate from the Lord,” he said.

After a recent class, Palma Anton of St. Michael Parish in Cranford expressed her enthusiasm for Bishop Serratelli’s “easy-going” teaching style. She has signed up to be a spiritual director at the Trinitarian-run Shrine of St. Joseph in Stirling. There, Anton hopes to conduct retreats and workshops to help “stir people’s hearts in their faith journeys.”

“I sense that the Bishop has a joy for teaching. He is brilliant but also very real and approachable. His teaching style is very conversational. He makes the study of interpreting the Parables fascinating,” said Anton, who is pursing a master’s degree through CCE.