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.
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.
Here’s my plan for tonight, the 2nd session of the year. I was away for a few days, so I didn’t get to plan for this session as early as I usually hope to. But don’t we all face this from time to time? Anyway, here’s the plan:
The theme (BIG idea) is “God Reveals Himself to us through his Son, Jesus Christ.” I will emphasize the notion that Jesus reveals to us who God is.
First, we meet in church for an opening prayer service which will last about 30 minutes. All told, I’ll probably have about 35-40 minutes left by the time we get back to class.
As they enter, I’ll be handing them a “quiz” about week one: 6 questions that review things like how to correctly spell my name, how to repond to “this is the day the Lord has made,” what we said about God last week (we can trust him)….all very simple and meant to be fun…no grading involved.
We’ll quickly review the quiz questions and answers.
Next, I’ll invite anyone who brought a personal symbol for the prayer center to show us what they brought and to say a few words about it.
We’ll then stand for prayer: “This is the day the Lord has made,” followed by signing our foreheads, lips, and hearts, followed by passing the candle for prayers of thanksgiving or petitions.
We’ll play a brief game called “Revealing Moments.” Basically, I found a small poster of a popular teen celebrity. I’ll cover the identity of the celebrity with index cards on which I’ve printed numbers (1-20) on the side facing up and words from the 1st part of the Nicene Creed (that I asked them to memorize) on the side facing down. It’s basically a memory game: each student will take a turn choosing 2 numbers and I’ll turn them over to reveal the words. If they “match” (the words go together in the Creed) then I will remove those 2 cards, revealing some of the face of the celebrity and that student can attempt to guess the correct identity. You can only take a guess if you make a match of cards. I will have a copy of the 1st part of the Creed on display to help them along (I have my doubts that they will have memorized it!)
When we’re done, I’ll explain that last week we talked about how we can trust God the Father but that the question is, “why? Who is he that I should trust him?”
We’ll listen to Joan Osborne’s song “One of Us” in which she cynically sings about what it would be like if God were one of us. I use this to explain that God IS one of us: he revealed himself to us in Jesus who became one of us!
We’ll read from the text book about how God reveals himself to us in and through Jesus. I’ll use the ball toss for this once again.
One of the side bars in the text we’re reading is about the famous verse, Jn3:16 “God so loved the world…” For our reflective prayer, I’m going to sendthem to their sacred space for some quiet time (some instrumental music in the background) to take to heart (memorize) this short verse that I’ll provide for them on a small slip of paper.
To end, I’ll see if anyone has already memorized the passage and then emphasize that since God loves us so much that he became one of us and lived among us in Jesus, we should imitate him and spend some quality time with someone who needs love this week. This will be their assignment for the coming week: to spend some quality time with someone who needs love.
Best wishes to you all with your classes this week. Please pray for me as I will pray for you!
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!
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.
The theme (BIG idea) is “God Reveals Himself to us through his Son, Jesus Christ.” I will emphasize the notion that Jesus reveals to us who God is.
