2023-24 Grade 8 Religious Education

Greetings everyone! During our most recent class, the vast majority of our time was spent viewing the documentary Enduring Faith .  It was produced by the Knights of Columbus and focuses on Native American Roman Catholics in North America, mostly in the USA. Our opening prayer was an extended quotation attributed to St. Teresa of Avila, " Christ has no body now but yours ". The closing prayer was from the 1st reading for All Saints' Day Mass, from Revelation 7:9-12.  As we learned about the practice of Roman Catholicism among Native Americans, we see that the Church has expanded to include people from many ethnicities, as this passage of Scripture describes. We are off from class on October 31.  However, we have the opportunity to attend Mass on November 1, which is a Holy Day of Obligation.  Masses at Ascension are at 8:15 AM and 7 PM.  We celebrate the many holy people who have lived lives of faith before us, and remind us of our call to holiness. The activity...

Greetings everyone! During our most recent class, we focused on the three initiation sacraments, Baptism, Eucharist, and Confirmation.  While in the early church, those who joined received all three at once, many Roman Catholics today receive them staggered over the course of several years in their young lives. I was glad to share the celebration of the 18th anniversary of my Confirmation with you in class, and it seems that you enjoyed the carrot/strawberry bread. For our opening prayer, I played the 2008 World Youth Day theme song, " Receive the Power ". In our class book, we reflected on the meaning of our baptismal promises and then we all dipped our fingers into a small jar of Holy Water to bless ourselves.  A similar reflection is available from Creighton University at this link . Confirmation includes an anointing by oil to seal us in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.  And it includes the laying on of hands, an ancient gesture that calls upon the Holy Spirit, as we see...

Greetings everyone! To start class, in the spirit of St. Francis, whose feast day is October 4, we listened to the song "All Creatures of Our God and King", with words inspired by the writings of St. Francis of Assisi. We welcomed Marissa Munoz as our class aide.  She has two sons in the RE program.  Thank you, Marrisa, for joining us. Then, we briefly reviewed Ordinary Time, the current liturgical season.  "Ordinary" comes from the word "Ordinal", referring to how the Sundays are counted in the time between the seasons for the major feasts of Christmas and Easter. During Ordinary Time, we reflect on how to live out our faith and proclaim the Gospel message. In our class book, we looked at examples of martyrs who gave their lives for their faith. The first disciple, Mary, also gives us a great example of how to live our faith and proclaim God.  We look at the words of the Magnificat.  Then, each person wrote a phrase from the Magnificat that stands out. T...