February 6, 2024, Class Update: Our Relationship with God

Greetings everyone!

In our most recent class, we started with the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing" as our opening prayer.  It's the Black national anthem, written by James Weldon Johnson.

Then we took time to consider what it means to be in a relationship with God, which is a significant part of what Lent is about.  We focus on growing in our relationship with God by turning from things that keep us away from Him and taking up practices that lead us closer, most especially prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

At the start of class, everyone had the chance to fill out a sheet to start thinking about how to observe Lent.  It will not be collected, but please keep it in a spot where you'll see it frequently and remind yourself of your plan.  You can make adjustments as needed.

Ultimately, when we get to Easter Sunday, we celebrate the New Life of Christ, and the Life we have in Him through baptism, and we will renew our baptismal promises.

In baptism, we receive an anointing from God.  To illustrate this idea, I played a video from the coronation of King Charles III when he is anointed and the choir sings the song "Zadok the Priest".  This song has been sung at all British coronations since King George II in 1727, and is inspired by the scene in 1 King 1 when Solomon is anointed King of Israel.

On the note of thinking about Lent, we then went to join the other RE classes in the Pine Room for a prayer service.  We prayed, heard from Scripture, and then heard more about the work of Opportunity Knocks, which is the focus of this year's Lenten Project.  The two Scripture passages were Proverbs 3:1-10 and Hebrews 13:1-3, 5-8.  Good job to the students in our class for taking on roles at the prayer service.

On February 13, instead of class, we are going to be in the Pine Room for a Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday celebration.  It will start as early as 5 PM.  I encourage all the students in class to arrive no later than  6:45 to be ready for the start of the palm-burning prayer rite.  The palms from previous years will be burned and used as ashes for Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent.  The students are welcome to come earlier than 6:45 to enjoy the food and festivities.

We meet again for class on February 27. Our tentative plan is to watch a documentary called "God is Alive".  It will take most of class time, so I ask that all students arrive on time at 6:45 so that we can finish before our class ends at 8 PM.

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

We remain connected as One Church, called by God to be holy, to live as saints:
All my relations.

God's blessings,
Paul

Baptismal font at the Guardian Angel Cathedral in Las Vegas, NV

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