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

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 case in the photo I took which is below.


We concluded class with words from this page as a closing prayer, with writings of the saints on Easter.

Let us rejoice in our Risen Savior Jesus Christ.

We are connected together as One Church by faith in the Death and Resurrection of Christ:
All my relations.

God's blessings,
With joy,
Paul

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