Tonight, we will be taking our sixth graders to the church for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We begin with a prayer service that includes Scripture and an examination of conscience and then the children are invited to private confession (face to face) with one of the priests (usually four or five are on hand). When all are done, we have a closing prayer and song. I don’t anticipate having any more than 10 or 15 […]
If Dorothy Day stood for anything, it was the centrality of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy in the life of Catholics. She once said that everything a baptized person does should be, directly or indirectly, related to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Unlike some who reduce Christianity to a philosophy, Dorothy Day knew that Christianity was an embodied set of practices: things that we DO for others. In his book, The […]
We had a very nice session last evening on the topic of David, shepherd and king. I hadn’t seen “my kids” for 3 weeks due to traveling and a holiday so it was great to see them again. I had 3 absences so the room seemed a little emptier and, for the most part, the kids were very cooperative and in good spirits. Here’s a summary of some of the high and low points: The […]
Here is my lesson plan for this evening’s session focusing on David…ambitious as usual! Session 10: David – Shepherd and King BIG IDEA David: shepherd and king, points the way to Jesus: the Good Shepherd and Christ the King PRELIMINARIES (15 mins) Students fill out prayer intention slips upon arrival Opening procession to set up prayer table Opening prayer ritual ENGAGE (20 mins) Give Ten Commandments Quiz and review (answer key). Invite volunteer to come […]
I was honored to write a new course for the University of Dayton Virtual Learning Community for Faith Formation (VLCFF). It is called Bible Basics and the required text for the course is my book, The Bible Blueprint: A Catholic’s Guide to Understanding and Embracing God’s Word. Thanks to Richard Drabick, the Assistant Director of the Institute for Pastoral Initiatives for inviting me to write the course and to Sr. Angela Ann Zukowski, MHSH, the Director […]
This coming Monday, my sixth-grade religious education class will move forward in our Old Testament exploration to encounter da man: Moses! The story of the Exodus/Passover event is the centerpiece of the Old Testament and Moses is the “standard of excellence” when it comes to OT characters! With that in mind, we are going to begin by showing a good chunk (50 minutes) of The Prince of Egypt, beginning with the scene where Moses encounters […]
Here’s the final installment of a summary of this past Monday’s session on Abraham and God’s plan for salvation. After completing the Bible activity on Abraham, we still had time to pray a decade of the Rosary in order to mark October as the Month of the Holy Rosary and most of the kids had brought one in as requested…I had extras for the few that didn’t. We dedicated our prayer to the people in […]
Here’s the third installment of a summary of this past Monday’s session on Abraham and God’s plan for salvation. About a half-hour into the session, after prayer and reviewing the previous session (and a ton of Q & A!), I then arranged the kids in pairs and assigned them a passage about Abraham that they were to read in their Bibles and report on (using this worksheet). As I suspected, they were loathe to move […]
Here’s the next installment of a summary of this past Monday’s session on Abraham and God’s plan for salvation. After we finished reviewing the stories from the previous week and answering gobs of questions, we then talked about how all of these stories describe how God created us to live with him but then human kind sinned and distanced ourselves from God. I said that, “Today, we’re going to see how God revealed a plan […]
Since I have lots to share about my session last evening, I decided to break it up into smaller, bite-size pieces for you this week. Here’s the first installment. Last evening’s session was characterized by questions, questions, questions! It seems that you can’t talk about creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac without a million questions! That’s good, of course, however, as I’ve mentioned before on this blog, catechists have […]
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