This week was different because we had a guest speaker, Father Jason! But I'm getting ahead of myself. I can sometimes be too excited when writing about our class.
As usual we started the evening celebrating mass. The gospel reading this evening was from Luke 9:1-6, where Jesus sends his disciples off on a journey, "proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere." Jesus told his followers they were to take NOTHING with them! They took NO suitcase, money,or food, just the clothes on their back and the shoes on their feet. Father Jason taught us that the reason Jesus had the disciples do this was to teach them not to be dependent on things of this world. They were to have faith in God and work toward their ultimate goal, heaven.
After mass, class began with a prayer to the Holy Spirit. Then like last week, we had a Quiz over Session 2 of our teen timeline bible study. The students did an excellent job!
Father Jason gave a talk to our high school class about Adoration of the Eucharist. He began his talk assigning passages from John's gospel to our student to read aloud, each describing Jesus in some way. For instance, Jesus was the "gate", or the "Good Shepherd", or the "way, truth, life," or the "True vine", or the "light". After discussing with the students that these were all metaphors for Jesus, he then gave them another passage from John's gospel, chapter 6. There Jesus says he is the bread of life. "whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him", verse 56. Therefore, when we pray in the presence of the consecrated host we are praying to Jesus, present in the bread. And why do we believe that it is truly Jesus? Because Jesus himself told us so in the gospel. WHAT GREAT LEARNING EXPERIENCE!
We ended class talking about prayer. When we go to Adoration, we have to know how to spend our time. We discussed and sent home examples. One was from Our Blessed Virgin Mary's words, teaching us to pray with humility. Another was from an acronym commonly used to help people pray, ACTS. This stands for A, adoration or begin you prayer with praising God. This can be as simple as the sign of the cross followed by the Glory Be. C then stands for contrition, where we examine our day for our failings and ask God to forgive us stating that we promise to work to do better in our daily life. T then stands for thanksgiving, where we thank God for all that is good and that he gives us daily in our life. And lastly we have S or Supplication. This is where we ask the Holy Spirit for things that we need. It is here where we pray for anything in our life or that of others. The students were given prayer books and rosary rings to help them in their prayer life. The most important thing however is to JUST PRAY. That means to get in the habit of talking with God daily. Only then can a true relationship begin to grow which will help guide our students throughout their life. Well, we had a lot more to discuss but as usual, ran out of time.
Next week we will walk to dairy queen for ice cream! Wear your walking shoes.
See you next week!
God bless you all,
Joyce
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