2023-24 Grade 8 Religious Education

Greetings everyone! Our most recent class was on November 14, the day after St. Augustine's birthday. For our opening prayer, we viewed this video of " A Rightful Place ", by Steve Angrisano, and its refrain has words based on a St. Augustine quotation: "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." Then, we all created hand turkeys as a way to think about what we're grateful for as we approach Thanksgiving Day. In our textbook, we looked at Pope St. Gregory I.  He established many important doctrines and the format of liturgy, including the Mass, for how we worship God. Then, we listened to the following two songs and wrote words from them that stood out to us: " O God You Search me and You Know me ", based on Psalm 139, and also " In Christ Alone ". And then we learned more about St. Benedict, who established monastic communities and a Rule for them, a set of principles for how the members are to live in them. We finished class wit...

Greetings everyone! In our most recent class, we looked at ways that we can find our identity in faith and continue growing in it. For our opening prayer, we viewed this video of the song "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring", sung by Josh Groban, which is often played at weddings. The first part of our class focused on the Eucharist.  We watched this video on the Breaking in Habit YouTube Channel.  Father Casey has a conversation about the Eucharist with five people of different backgrounds and ages about what it means to them.  It was a great opportunity to not just hear someone talk at us about the Eucharist, but learn from a variety of perspectives. In the second part of class, we focused on the Creed, our statement of beliefs, which is a basis for our identity as they help us know Who God is, Who Jesus is, and Who the Holy Spirit is, along with some statements about the Church.  The statements in the creed, along with other important beliefs, resulted from various co...