November 7, 2023, Class Update: Our Identity in Faith

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 councils in the early centuries of the church, including the Nicene Creed.  These councils decided on important matters, such as Who Christ is.

For our closing prayer, we reflected on the different sections of the Nicene Creed and what they mean to us, according to a page in our class book.

Everyone wrote a phrase from the Nicene Creed on an index card.  The activity at home this week is to keep that card in a spot where you'll see it often.  There is no required submission.

Looking ahead, the tentative plan for class is to learn about what it means to be part of the Church.

As usual, please feel free to contact me with questions, etc.

We remain connected as One Church and One Faith in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:
All my relations.

God's blessings,
Paul

We experience the presence of God in the Eucharist.

Through the Creed, we profess Who God is, Who Jesus is, and Who the Holy Spirit is, and all three are in the Trinity icon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

April 23, 2024, Class Update: Our Call to Holiness

Image
Greetings everyone! During this class, we started with the song " God's Not Dead " as our opening prayer.  One phrase in the song says, God is "roaring like a lion".  That image connects to St. Mark, whose feast is April 25, and his symbol is a lion. Then we considered the idea of our universal call to holiness.  In our books, we looked at two important Church councils, Vatican I in the 19th Century, and Vatican II in the 1960's.  The later council made a number of significant changes in the church, including the role of laypeople. The council emphasized that holiness is not just for priests and religious.  All people who are baptized are called to exhibit God's character, and to live like saints. There is a great piece of artwork in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception that illustrates the "Universal Call to Holiness", and you can read more about it here , and see a picture of it when not being worked on, as is the ...
Read more

October 24, 2023, Class Update: Native Americans and the Roman Catholic Church

Image
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...
Read more

April 16, 2024, Class Update: The Paschal Candle

Image
Easter Greetings once again! At the 1964 Oscars ceremony, 60 years ago this month, Sidney Poitier became the first African-American to win an Oscar, which was for his role in the movie Lilies of the Field.  During that movie, he played the character Homer Smith, who sang a song about Christ's life. That song, " Amen ", was our opening prayer for class. Pope Benedict XVI was born on April 16, 1927, in Germany.  The end of the first episode of the Catholicism series, hosted by Bishop Barron and Word on Fire, tells a story about Cardinal George at Pope Benedict's election. You can watch it here and go to the 40:00 mark. We are part of a Church that has stood the test of time because God has made us to be His Holy people, and His Holy Spirit continues to guide us in upholding the Truth as we answer the call to live faithfully as His people. Mrs. Monaco stopped by class to encourage everyone to keep practicing their faith as part of Bishop Casey's challenge at Mass to...
Read more