2024 Catechesis Supplement
‘I’m living for God’: A response to a challenge defines the life of archdiocese’s new director of catechesis
Ute and Joe Eble are joined with their children in this family photo, with Annika, and Michael behind their parents and Katja and Joshua next to them. (Submitted photo)
By John Shaughnessy
When the ultimate challenge came, Ute Eble knew it could change her life forever.
By the time it came in 2018, Eble was already steeped in a life touched by emotional and physical challenges that she had willingly embraced:
Leaving her family and her homeland in Germany after she married her husband Joe, who was stationed there in the U.S. Army.
Striving to be the best mother she could be to their four children.
And adapting to all the moves as a military spouse, in a path that led first to Alabama, then to Hawaii, then to Germany, back to Alabama and again to Hawaii—all before Joe eventually retired from the Army and the family moved to his hometown of Indianapolis.
Still, this challenge was different—a spiritual, life-changing one that came as Eble was pursuing a master’s degree in theology.
“During my studies, I had a really great professor for my spirituality class,” recalls Eble, a member of Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Indianapolis who became the archdiocese’s new director of catechesis in early July. “We talked about discipleship a lot—that discipleship requires that at some point you make a conscious decision to give your life over to Jesus. She challenged us to write about the moment when you made that conscious decision.
“I realized I had never consciously said I want to give my life over to Jesus. I think that’s an experience a lot of Catholics have. You grow up Catholic, you do what a good Catholic does, but have you really decided consciously, ‘I’m going to follow Jesus, I’m going to be a disciple’? That was a big moment for me. I knew that Jesus is real, and he’s still present to us. I wanted to respond to that. If I really believe all of this, then I need to make that jump and put that trust in him. So, I did.”
Three years later, Eble would especially need Christ’s presence during one of the most heartbreaking times of her life.
‘I felt God was looking out for me’
When she looks back on her life, the 46-year-old Eble regards her mother as one of the people who influenced her Catholic faith the most. And her mother continued to display the depth of her faith as she dealt with cancer.
By November of 2021, her mother knew the chemotherapy wasn’t working and she started talking about hospice.
In the midst of her mother’s struggle with cancer, Eble decided to fly from Indianapolis to the Black Forest community in Germany where her mother lived. She arrived on Nov. 12, surprising her mom on her 71st birthday.
“No one in Germany knew I was coming,” Eble recalls. “At that time, we knew she wouldn’t live that much longer, but we didn’t think it was imminent. I stayed a week with her. We said goodbye to each other just in case.
“Five days after I returned to Indianapolis, she passed away. People told me she was hanging on because ‘she wanted to say goodbye to you, and it must have meant a lot to her that she had the chance.’ ”
As emotion fills Eble, she says, “That was one of the moments where I felt God was looking out for me. To see her suffer and not be angry about it and to be able to give her hope in the midst of all of that, I couldn’t have done that without his friendship. It was still hard, but it helped me.”
She then shares another emotional moment involving her mother that connects to her four years—2020-24—as the director of religious education at Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish.
“I always tell the second graders I prepare for first Communion that when Jesus comes to you in the Eucharist, it’s like he’s hugging you from the inside,” Eble says.
“After my mom died, one time I went to Mass, and I received the Eucharist. I went back to my pew and kneeled down, and I just had this image of Jesus hugging me with one arm and hugging my mom with the other arm. It’s just meant so much to me going forward.”
‘It was such a witness to the faith’
That’s the hope that Eble has for everyone in the archdiocese; that’s the motivation that drives her as the archdiocese’s director of catechesis—that people turn their lives over to Christ, embracing that he is still present for them.
While describing her relationship with Christ as “a friendship,” she adds, “I try to be a better friend because I know he’s a great friend. I love going to Mass. I pray every day and still feel it’s not enough. The realization that God is interested in me personally and he watches over me personally is sinking in a lot more.”
So is the inspiration she received by participating in the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis in July, when more than 50,000 Catholics from across the country gathered together for five days to celebrate their belief of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist.
“It was so great seeing exactly what the congress was meant to be,” she says. “Walking to the car after the first night, I saw people on the street ask people from the congress, ‘What’s this all about?’ It was such a witness to the faith in our city that it touched people who would have never been in contact with Catholics. And it touched people who fell away from the Catholic faith.
“If we take this seriously, we should expect that a lot more people will want to become Catholic. We should prepare our parish catechetical leaders that more people will want to become Catholic. I’m just confident the graces God gave us will work in that way.”
‘I’m living for God’
She has seen God’s graces unfold in her own life.
She recalls how she grew up Catholic yet faded from her faith in college until she met her husband Joe, who led her back to the Church, the Mass and the Eucharist.
She recalls how their pre-Cana marriage preparation classes made her embrace her Catholic faith on an adult level, leading her to want to learn more about it.
She also talks about how she helped and guided people when she was a religious education coordinator at military chapels, offering pastoral care as the families dealt with frequent moves and the challenges of separation when someone was deployed.
And she mentions how her role as the mother of their four children—ranging in age from 10 to 17—has also led her to grow in her faith.
“Sometimes that’s a challenge because at the end of the day you want to go home and be done with work,” she says. “But you have your own four kids to teach them about God. They keep me humble, and they make me understand what life is like for other families.
“For example, we hear a lot about the mental health of young people, that there’s a growing anxiety. I wouldn’t have understood what that means until seeing my own kids going through school and seeing what their experiences are. It helps me to be more empathetic—and that sometimes we need a different approach to teaching the faith because of what the kids are going through. Having to ‘walk the walk’ helps me a lot.”
The walk of her faith journey always leads back to that point when she had to respond to the challenge of turning her life over to Jesus.
“God exists, so why wouldn’t we worship God and follow Jesus, the Son of God, the way he wants us to follow him?” she asks. “For me, it gave me purpose and confidence, and it just makes life better. I’m living for God. He’s not going to let me go wrong.
“I want to put that challenge out to other people. I want everybody to be a disciple. I want everybody to follow Jesus. And that’s what I’m striving for.” †
