Prayer/Guided Reflections Archives - Page 13 of 14

Leading Spontaneous Prayer – You, Who, Do, Through

During our Webinar – Leading Prayer as a Catechist – we explored a formula to help us lead spontaneous prayer: remembering the words YOU, WHO, DO, THROUGH. Liturgical/Eucharistic prayer includes these 4 elements: YOU (we address God and praise him using divine titles), WHO (we describe the great things that God has done), DO (we pray for God to do something for us now), THROUGH (we pray to the Father, through his Son, Jesus, with […]

Leading Prayer Webinar

Joe Paprocki

My next Webinar – Leading Prayer as a Catechist – is one week from today! Here’s the scoop: Leading Prayer as a Catechist Facilitator: Joe Paprocki, DMin Tuesday, October 5, 2010 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. (CST) Becoming a catechist is exciting and, let’s face it, somewhat intimidating! New catechists are eager to learn some basic teaching skills to help them gain confidence as they begin their service in this vocation. This Webinar will provide catechists, […]

The 4 Pillars of Our Faith: Prayer

Joe Paprocki

This week, I’m featuring short excerpts from my book, A Well-Built Faith, focusing on the 4 pillars of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here’s a brief look at the fourth pillar: Prayer. A survey conducted years ago asked people in successful marriages to identify the top ten qualities of a healthy marriage. One might think that sex, given all the attention it is given in our culture, would have been the number one quality. […]

Who Taught You to Pray?

Joe Paprocki

One of the best discussions we had at the Being, Knowing, and Doing seminar in Seattle, WA, last week and Rockville Centre, NY, this week centered around the questions of “who taught you to pray? and what are your earliest memories of prayer?” These are good questions to spark a discussion with catechists to get them thinking about how they pray as an adult (so that they in turn are more conscious of how they […]

Does God Decide Who Wins Based on Our Prayers?

Joe Paprocki

I’ve written about this before, but every year the issue comes up again when teams are playing for championships. The matter touches very close to home this year with the Chicago Blackhawks battling the Philadelphia Flyers for the Stanley Cup. A friend of mine who grew up in Chicago, is a big Hawks fan, but now lives in Princeton, NJ, not far from Philly, sent me the following, which is about a nun and priest […]

Post-Confirmation Reflection

Joe Paprocki

Congratulations to all of the 8th graders who were Confirmed yesterday, including my class of 10 students! I pray that they will feel the abundant graces of the Holy Spirit and the Gifts of the Spirit, flowing in and through them all the days of their lives! As promised, I put together a guided reflection that I’m going to use tonight to help the young people reflect on yesterday’s experience. I think this will give […]

And a Child Shall Lead Them…

Joe Paprocki

This phrase, of course, is from Isaiah 11:6, and is used from time to time in catechesis with regards to children taking leadership roles. I experimented with this concept on Monday evening by having one of my students lead the guided reflection! This was a big risk for me and I have to admit that I have a very hard time of letting go of things like this because I know how it should be […]

How to Pray a Living Rosary

Joe Paprocki

October, of course, is the month of the Holy Rosary, a great opportunity to introduce young people to the devotion of praying the Rosary. Many parish schools and religious education programs have a “living Rosary” during October and the question often comes up, “How do you pray the living Rosary?” Here are sites that offer explanations and descriptions of praying a Living Rosary: The Living Rosary: Bring the Rosary to life for your Students Find […]

My First Session – Part 3

Joe Paprocki

So far, I’ve summarized the first 45-50 minutes of my first session with my 8th graders this past Monday evening, detailing the Engage and Explore steps of my lesson. Today, I’ll detail the REFLECT step which is designed to lead the young people to pray from within the truths they are learning. Here are the details: Before class began, I had set up on my prayer center, a circle of battery operated tea light candles (I […]

A Sample Guided Reflection

Joe Paprocki

In tonight’s Webinar presentation, I offered tips for leading guided reflections. I promised to post a sample on my blog for your convenience. This is taken from the Finding God program which includes scripts for guided reflections in each unit. Another good resource for guided reflections is Guided Reflections for Children, Volumes 1 and 2 (Loyola Press). Called to Holiness – (Time: approximately 10 minutes) We all have imagination. Imagination allows us to go places […]