November 28, 2023, Class Update: The Eucharist and our Life

Greetings everyone!

The end of November and the beginning of December bring so many important occasions.

The final Sunday of November was the last Sunday of the liturgical year, when we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.

Christ the King Parish in Las Vegas, NV

There is a rose window in the back of Ascension Church depicting Christ the King.


While many assert earthly power, Christ possesses the true Kingly power because He came to Earth and is our Savior, Whose Kingdom will be fully established at the End of Time.

The End of Time is an important theme of Advent, which begins on Sunday, December 3, 2023.  Here's a link to the Busted Halo video that summarized Advent in 2 minutes.

The Eucharist comes from a Greek word that means Thanksgiving, and it was only appropriate just days after our Thanksgiving Day holiday to focus on the Eucharist in class.

We watched this video narrated by Bishop Olmsted of the Diocese of Phoenix, AZ.

Presidents Washington and Lincoln both issued Thanksgiving Day proclamations, which called citizens to seek God's mercy and thank Him for all the blessings in our land.  It's similar to what we do at Mass.

For us as Roman Catholics, the Eucharist is the Source and Summit of the Christian Life, as defined by a document from the Vatican II Council.

We yearn to encounter God and have a taste of Heaven, which draws us to the Eucharist, and then the Eucharist sends us forth to live out our encounter with God.  We spent time in class exploring Bible passages that talk about how to live our faith.

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

We remain connected as Once Church:
All my relations.
God's blessings,
Paul

P.S. At the start of class, we watched this music video of the song "I'm Not Lucky, I'm Blessed".

We finished class praying Psalm 100 with our hands, since it has 5 verses.

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