Too often in our lives, we fail to consider the consequences of our actions. We act impulsively and then find ourselves overwhelmed by and even regretting the ramifications of what we have said or done. There’s no putting the toothpaste back into the tube after it’s been forced out! When we act impulsively—without thinking—our words and actions tend to come too quickly. They can be reckless, and the consequences can linger far too long. For […]
Welcome to Week 3 of Faith Refreshed, an online retreat to help us “hit the refresh button” in our spiritual lives. Throughout this retreat, I am drawing from my best-selling book, A Well-Built Faith: A Catholic’s Guide to Knowing and Sharing What We Believe, as we revisit the four pillars of our Catholic faith and invite the Holy Spirit to refresh our understanding of the basics of our faith and renew us in our efforts […]
Among the many things that parents teach their children is how to make decisions. Today, more than ever, young people have many options available to them when making decisions. While having options is a good thing, it also creates more stress and anxiety for young people: How do I choose what’s best for me? How do I know which choice is the right one? Recognizing that making important decisions is a crucial skill in life, […]
Help teens ask themselves how they make decisions, and lead them to practice discernment so that they can live a life of meaning and purpose. Loyola Press, in honor of the Ignatian Year, offers an introductory lesson on Discernment of Spirits and the Missioned Life. Download this free lesson for high school students, based on an excerpt from Living Against the Grain by Tim Muldoon. For more on the Ignatian Year, visit IgnatianSpirituality.com.
The “director” part of a DRE’s job description is a taxing challenge. “Director” means “manager,” and managing people and programs is never easy. It means achieving lofty goals with limited resources. It means dealing with people who often don’t behave the way you want them to behave. It means compromise, tough decisions, and juggling conflicting interests. Managing means meetings. Lots of meetings. To complicate matters, most DREs are teachers at heart who love students much more than budgets and […]
Editor’s note: This post is one in a series inspired by Joe Paprocki’s book 7 Keys to Spiritual Wellness. In the book, Joe introduces each key with a fun or thought-provoking question. Each Friday we’ll share an excerpt from 7 Keys to Spiritual Wellness that poses a question, followed by a response by a catechist or catechetical leader. Is that your final answer? That’s the question asked of every contestant on the television quiz show […]
During this week’s lesson, I asked my fourth-grade class if they had a choice to love God. Many confused faces stared back at me. Can a person decide for themselves to not love or follow God? Yes was their response. God created us because he loved us, but he didn’t force us to love him in return. He gave us a choice to love him back. “Why would he do that?” I asked. “If you […]
I love when someone answers a question with a wild guess or a funny remark, but then that answer proves right on target. Such was the case in a recent lesson on making moral choices and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I was explaining that we need to form our consciences to be able to make good moral choices. Since I learned long ago never to take for granted the students’ vocabulary knowledge, I backed up […]
Group games tend to be a hit with faith formation classes, but we cannot add a game to the lesson plan just to play a game—games should enhance the lesson in some way. That said, there are many great options for student games, many of which are inspired by television game shows. I recently decided to try a game inspired by Let’s Make a Deal with my seventh graders. As in the show, the students—the […]
As we approach the papal conclave, it is interesting to notice the coverage taking place. The media focuses on the political maneuvering taking place while Church spokespeople talk about prayer, discernment, and the movement of the Holy Spirit. Which is it? Both. We would be naive to think that there is no political maneuvering taking place among the cardinals at the conclave. At the same time, we would be just as naive to think that […]
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