Catechist’s Journey is a blog where I reflect on the joys and challenges of my 30 years in ministry, including my current work as an eighth-grade catechist. It is also a place for you to share what’s working–or not working–in your ministry. Learning together, we can more effectively proclaim the Catholic faith to others.
I’ve decided that, since we’ll have no class next Monday (Columbus Day) and that when we return, we jump right into a unit on Jesus Christ, tonight will be a good night to do an overview of the Bible with my 8th graders, taking them through the story of salvation history that culminates with Jesus Christ.
Click here for an outline of passages that tell the narrative of the story of salvation history in a chronological sequence and in a nutshell (very brief passages that I will elaborate on and connect one to another to tell the story). The young people will have Bibles and we’re going to get them leafing through its pages by using this outline. I plan to also use a couple of posters (from the Finding God program) that show a Bible timeline and a map of the Holy Land.
Time will be of the essence since we are supposed to have a fire drill tonight. If it looks like things are going to be too tight, I’ll limit our exploration to the Old Testament, and begin the Jesus unit by taking them through the New Testament.
This past Monday evening, Chicago lived up to its name as the “windy city” (although that name originated not as a description of the climate in Chicago but of the politics!) with wind gusts reaching 40-50 mph. A good night to be teaching about the Holy Spirit!
Sure enough, just as I told the young people that we would be learning about the Holy Spirit, a huge gust of wind blew through an open window, blew papers off of the tables in the room and blew open the door to the room! I couldn’t have asked for a more dramatic introduction!
The evening had other highlights as well:
We reviewed Jn 3:16 with a short quiz and then I introduced the term INCARNATION: Jesus becoming flesh and asked what holiday we celebrate this on. After a brief moment, one young man correctly responded, “Christmas.”
I then played Joan Osborne’s song “One of Us” in which she asks the question, “what if God was one of us?” After the song, I asked the young people how they would respond to her as a Christian. Interestingly enough, 4 or 5 of them responded with statements about what it would be like if God were one of us. I said, “that’s nice, but you’re all speaking in the future tense as though this is something that may happen. As Christians, we believe this already happened!” I pointed to the word INCARNATION on the board and explained that this is what we beleive about Jesus: he (God) became “one of us.” Several of them looked genuinely pleased to know this!
I said “we’ve talked about the Father and the Son so far, any guess as to who we’ll talk about next?” One young person answered without hesitation, “the Holy Spirit.”
After the “mighty wind” experience that I described above we did a short activity in which they made their own “sail boats” out of a piece of styrofoam, a toothpick, and a piece of construction paper (for the sail). Using straws, they blew their boats across a baking pan filled with water. I talked about how a sail boat can do nothing on its own but relies on the wind and compared that to how we cooperate with the power of the Holy Spirit: we can do nothing on our own, but with the Spirit of God, we can do many wonderful things.
We read from the Finding God text book about the Holy Spirit, with an emphasis on the Spirit as the breath of God (I used this to explain why we always start our sacred space prayer by taking deep breaths…so that we are reminded of the life of the Spirit within us).
I introduced the word ADVOCATE and said this is another way of understanding the Holy Spirit. I then had my aide, Lucy, talk about how, as a nurse, she advocates for patients. (I’ll go in to detail about this tomorrow…it was really special).
The young people then took their vigil candles and went off to sacred space. After they took some deep breaths and quieted down, I played a Mariah Carey song “Anytime You Need a Friend” that expresses what it means to be a steadfast advocate for someone and encouraged them to listen as if the Spirit were speaking these words to them. Following the song, I guided them to talk to the Spirit, asking for guidance, help, strength, and courage.
Following sacred space (about 10 minutes), we wrapped up by talking about the Trinity. I did my little demonstration of water, ice, and steam to help understand how, in the Trinity, we have 3 distinct Persons and yet One God. We ended by having them bless themselves with Holy Water in the name of the Trinity.
OK, I finally successfully uploaded a short video I made earlier today that demonstrates a couple of activities for teaching young people about the Holy Spirit and the Trinity. Here tis…
I’ve had just enough time to prepare my lesson for tonight and have not left enough time to tell you about it in detail! Suffice to say that we will be learning about the Holy Spirit and how we are never alone because of the Spirit’s presence. We’ll focus on the word ADVOCATE to talk about how the Spirit helps us (my aide is a nurse and I’ve asked her to talk about how as a nurse she advocates for patients).
I filmed a short video to demonstrate the activities I’m doing to focus on the Spirit and the Trinity but I’m having trouble uploading it to YouTube in order to link it through my blog. (That’s what took up so much of my time today! Ugh!).
I’ll try to upload it again tomorrow and I will update you on how this evening’s class goes.
This coming Monday, my lesson will be on the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, and I plan to also talk about the mystery of the Trinity.
I’ve been observing a thread on Catholic Catechist dealing with how to teach the Trinity. One suggestion caught my eye. It is from a catechist named Cheri and I think it is a good approach:
Use ice, water, and steam as a visual aid. Show your students how they are all the same substance (H2O) but have different appearance and manner of being. So it is with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
I’ve decided that, since we’ll have no class next Monday (Columbus Day) and that when we return, we jump right into a unit on Jesus Christ, tonight will be a good night to do an overview of the Bible with my 8th graders, taking them through the story of salvation history that culminates with Jesus Christ.
This past Monday evening, Chicago lived up to its name as the “
we did a short activity in which they made their own “sail boats” out of a piece of styrofoam, a toothpick, and a piece of construction paper (for the sail). Using straws, they blew their boats across a baking pan filled with water. I talked about how a sail boat can do nothing on its own but relies on the wind and compared that to how we cooperate with the power of the Holy Spirit: we can do nothing on our own, but with the Spirit of God, we can do many wonderful things.
