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Authentic Availability and Acceptance

We continue our series on developing a space for grace by focusing on authentic availability and acceptance. These two related spiritual practices can help us as catechists to fulfill our mission to share the Catholic faith joyfully with those around us. Authentic Availability Leo Tolstoy’s story of “The Three Questions” contains important lessons for us in terms of how to be authentically available to God and to each other. The story outlines three questions with […]

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Praying with the Trinity

Darcy Osby

The Trinity is a beautiful mystery that cannot be fully explained or understood through human language, which makes it a challenge to communicate to children when we rely on words in our catechesis. The early Christians came to know God as trinitarian through their lived experiences of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We can help children to identify their own experiences of the Persons of the Trinity and therefore come to a […]

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Helping Children to Cope with Violence and Tragedy—Again

Joe Paprocki

This year, we are marking the 15th anniversary of this blog, Catechist’s Journey. Sadly, within the first year of the blog’s creation, I found myself writing a post about helping children to cope with news about a mass shooting at Virginia Tech. A year later, I posted in the wake of a mass shooting at Northern Illinois University. Several years later, I posted again, as a result of the Newton mass shooting. Once again, within […]

GRACE: Release Regrets to Rest and Reset - text on green background next to cover of "Braving the Thin Places"

Releasing Regrets to Rest and Reset

Julianne Stanz

This article continues a series in which we are exploring practices that can help each of us and our students to develop a space for grace. My last article focused on growing in gratitude and listed some practices that can spiritually strengthen us. Today we will focus on releasing regrets so that we can rest and reset. Release Regrets Releasing regrets is one of the keys to interior freedom and peace. Making peace with ourselves […]

Doing Arts and Crafts Projects in Short Class Times

Joe Paprocki

Most catechists experience the crunch of time when teaching, knowing that they have a great deal of content to convey to their participants in a very short time. Sometimes, the notion of incorporating an arts and crafts project in a lesson just seems impossible given the time constraints! Thankfully, over the years, I’ve heard of a number of suggestions from catechists about how to accomplish this. Here are a few of their ideas: Provide children […]

Pop-Up Catechesis: Feasting More Than Fasting

Joe Paprocki

In the Church year, Easter, our season of feasting, is longer than Lent, our season of fasting! While the 40 days of Lent lay out a program of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we often don’t seem to have a game plan for how to celebrate the 50 days of Easter. I suggest that we focus on the concept of “feasting” during the 50 days of Easter. In this episode of Pop-Up Catechesis, we explore six […]

Pop-Up Catechesis: Blessing of Easter Foods

Joe Paprocki

One of my favorite traditions at Easter is the blessing of Easter foods and baskets on Holy Saturday. When I was a kid growing up in a predominantly Polish parish in Chicago, my siblings and I annually lugged several baskets full of the best-smelling Easter foods to the parish hall on Holy Saturday for the blessing of Easter foods known as the Święconka (shveeyen-TSON-kah). Many parishes continue this tradition on Holy Saturday; however, there is […]

GRACE: Grow in gratitude - text on green background next to cover of "Braving the Thin Places"

Growing in Gratitude

Julianne Stanz

In this series we will explore practices that can help us to develop a space for grace in our lives. As I explain in my book, Braving the Thin Places, the acronym GRACE can help us if we: G—Grow in gratitude R—Release regrets to rest and reset A—Authentic availability and acceptance C—Cultivate radical hospitality E—Embrace simplicity This article will focus on the first practice of GRACE, which is growing in gratitude. Encouraging our students to […]

Catechesis and the Paschal Mystery: Moving from Death to Life

Joe Paprocki

The new Directory for Catechesis has many thought-provoking and powerful lines, including the following: “Everything [in faith formation] is oriented toward the mystery of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection.” (64a) “Catechesis communicates the heart of the faith in an essential and existentially understandable way, bringing each person into contact with the Risen One and helping him to reinterpret and to live the most intense moments of his life as Paschal events.” (64a) I find it […]

Lent as a Thin Place: In Death You Will See New Life

Joe Paprocki

Without a doubt, births and deaths are some of the most profound moments of our lives. They are most certainly “thin places”—those moments or places where the veil that normally prevents us from recognizing God’s presence seems to be quite thin. As we approach Holy Week, we prepare to come face to face with death and new life; Good Friday and Easter are a continuum. In our catechetical settings, Holy Week provides us with an […]