Marian Devotions Poster and Handouts - text next to image of Mary
Mary and the Saints

Marian Devotions Poster

Our Lady. Blessed Virgin. Queen of Heaven. Madonna. Maria. Mary. The mother of Jesus and the Church is known by many names, which reflect just how revered she is all over the world. The importance of Mary as Mother of God lies not only in that Mary was the woman who gave birth to Jesus, but in that she was the one who had faith in God and freely said yes to participate in God’s […]

praying at Marian grotto
High School/Youth Ministry

Beyond Memorizing Words to Meditating with Traditional Prayers

This past year I was a substitute catechist for my parish’s faith-formation program. When a young man in one of the classes learned that I had written a book of meditations based on the lives of the saints, he said, “Of course it’s a book of meditations. It’s Bob.” Even though we didn’t spend much time together, he knew that prayer and contemplation are the source of all that I am and all that I […]

No Picture
Intermediate Grades

Ave Maria – A Little Lesson in Latin

To begin yesterday’s session, we did a little review of the Rosary and then I introduced them to the Ave Maria and did a little activity with them to translate the Latin into English (check out my previous post with details on this Ave Maria activity). Here are a couple of pics of the kids matching English lines with the Latin lines while we are watching/listening to a performance of the Ave Maria by The […]

Intermediate Grades

Reviewing the Rosary – Ave Maria

At the beginning of class tomorrow, I’ll ask for a volunteer to step forward and to demonstrate how to pray the Rosary based on our experience from last week. I’m also going to do the following activity with them to introduce them to Schubert’s beautiful version of the Ave Maria and to expose them to a little bit of Latin, which is part of our heritage as Catholics. I will have the words of the […]