April 30, 2024, Class Update: New Evanglization

Greetings everyone!

Because of the Resurrection of Christ, we are now bound for the glory of Heaven, which is sung of so wonderfully in the song "Glory Bound", and this song was our opening prayer in class.

I also shared treats to celebrate the anniversaries of my baptism and my First Holy Communion.

As we reached the end of the Religious Education year, we considered how we grow in faith and how we put it into action.

Pope St. John Paul II promoted the idea of the New Evangelization, as have the two Popes, Benedict and Francis, after him.  We have experienced the Good News that Christ, once dead, is now alive forever and ever.  We are called to be people of this Good News and proclaim it by the way we live our lives, sharing joyfully our hope with others.

Living the Good News is a way that we display how the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives.  And there are 12 fruits of the Holy Spirit.

We concluded class with the Easter hymn "Jesus is Risen".

Together with the Mass on May 7, we brought our RE year to a conclusion.

Throughout this year, we learned about what we believe and how we practice our beliefs, guided by our new curriculum, Finding God.  We looked at our faith in the lens of the liturgical seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Ordinary Time, and even special feast days, like Our Lady of Guadalupe.  We looked at how the saints sought to grow in relationship with God, and also stories of those in our own time, like Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza.  We watched two documentaries, Enduring Faith, about the practice of Roman Catholicism in Native American culture, and God is Alive, profiling stories of faith in central Illinois.  In light of these stories, we explored how we can live out our faith.

I pray that all the students will continue pondering what they have learned, and, inspired by the Holy Spirit, keep seeking to grow in relationship with God and putting their faith into action.

Although our time together has concluded, I, along with the rest of the Church are still here to support you, so please feel free to reach out.

We remain connected as One Church, brought alive by the Death and Resurrection of Christ:
All my relations.

God's blessings,
Paul

My Mom photographed me by the statue of Pope St. John Paul II at the National Shrine of St. John Paul II in Washington, D.C., near Catholic University of America.  I highly recommend a visit.

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