40 DAYS

What are you going to do these 40 days of Lent?

As a child, Lent was the time when we had to give away are "fun food" (i.e. chocolate, cookies, steak) and eat "not so fun food", i.e. tuna fish sandwiches everyday. (I have nothing against tuna but having a tuna fish sandwich after its been sitting in your lunch bag in a warm classroom is not very tasty). In addition, Lent was also the time when all of my friends went on vacation during spring break but my family got to stay at home and go to mass every day (in my area spring break was always planned for the week going into Easter). I thought of Lent as the "not fun" time of the year and spent most of Lent counting down the days to Easter. 

As I grew with experience, wisdom and knowledge, so too did my faith. When I began to actually listen to what was being read and what was being said at mass, I began to understand what Lent was truly about. I saw the what an amazing gift God the Father gave us in his son Jesus and how this love is everlasting and continues on through the Holy Spirit. Lent turned from being this time of obligation and "not so much fun time" to being this time of learning, praying, and spending quality time with Jesus (aka "party with Jesus" time). I learned to love Lent and make it "fun" for me in the sense that I could use this time to let God recreate in me anew and help me figure out the things that I can do or give up to grow closer to him.

As you begin these next 40 days, I pray that you grow closer to God, grow abundantly in faith, and open yourself up to conversion and turning your lives to Christ so that he can recreate you anew too.

"Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness" (Joel 2:12-18)

"May every family and Christian community use well this time of Lent, therefore, in order to cast aside all that distracts the spirit and grow in whatever nourishes the soul, moving it to love of God and neightbor. " - Pope Benedict XVI

Find your Saint!

For those of you seeking the Sacraments of Initiation into the Church, it's time to pick your saint name. As a starting off point, pray first and then do some research. You can find out more info by reading www.americancatholic.org or picking up a book about the saints from the library. Team can help too so don't be afraid to ask! And if you can't pick a saint name, St. Polycarp - pictured above - is awesome and would be a great saint name. His total trust in God while facing a society that would not accept the faith of the Church are inspiring. in addition, his death and martyrdom was one of the first to be recorded in history.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

 

From today’s reading:

Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.Now this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts before him in whatever our hearts condemn, for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God. - 1 John 3

Yesterday was St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s feast day and if there was one person who truly had confidence in God’s power to provide, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was that person. She is the first American Saint and has such an interesting story that I posted a link below so that you can read more about her. When you have a moment, please take the time to check it out.  Happy Thursday!!

http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Jul2009/Feature2.asp

Holy Innocents

Did you know that today is the feast of the Holy Innocents?

As Wikipedia describes it, "The Massacre of the Innocents is an episode of infanticide by the king of Iudaea Province, Herod the Great. According to the Gospel of Matthew Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi. The incident, like others in Matthew, is described as the fulfillment of a passage in the Old Testament read as prophecy, in this case a reading of Jeremiah: "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children. The infants, known as the Holy Innocents, have been claimed as the first Christian martyrs."

As we remember the Holy Innocents from Bethlehem, let us pray for all of the Holy innocents today who will be killed by abortion. Mary, pray for us!

There's something about Mary and the Saints

Last night we talked about the Saints and Mary because it was All Saints day. We will continue to learn more about Mary as we talk about Jesus' humanity in next week's class: Who is Jesus? Part 3 - Work of our salvation. (And don't worry, I promise we will continue to learn more about the Saints too in future classes)

In case you missed it, our last post had some helpful links about Mary and the Saints. I've also included one more website that I found helpful in learning more about Mary.

http://www.ancient-future.net/praymary.html 

Many of the website's contributors are converts to the Catholic faith, and they do a good job explaining Catholicism to help Christians understand Catholic teaching, practice, spirituality and morality.