Welcome to the First Grade!

October 2017

Miranda and Shirley

Greetings parents, students and parishioners! Shirley and I are excited and blessed to be working with the first grade and the rest of the religious education team.  This year we are taking a different approach to our Parish School of Religion (PSR), and we are asking that the whole church family participate in the education and formation of our children.

As parents, we are our children's first teachers.  Lessons on faith should begin at home. Just as we teach our kids to tie their shoes and brush their teeth, we should also teach them how to pray and how to act in church.  As a mom the one thing I struggle with is getting my kids to accept the faith as their own.  I can show them how to genuflect, and I can teach the the words to the prayers, and I can take them to mass, but I can't make them accept Jesus and the Mass in their hearts. Deacon Lee once  told the story of being a cradle Catholic and always doing church as he was taught to do, but he never fully accepted the true meaning of the faith.  As a convert to the faith, I know exactly where Deacon Lee was in his life.  I had always done it because it was what you did on Sunday, but I never applied the faith to my personal life.  Once I was introduced to the Catholic faith and taught WHY it was done, I fully accepted on a personal level the Catholic faith, and it is important to me now in more ways than it has ever been.  

Hard at work learning the Faith

There is so much to learn about Catholicism. You seem to learn it your whole life and never know all of it.  Shirley and I plan to introduce our first graders (your children, our students, the youth of the parish, the future leaders of the church) to what Catholicism is.  We will open their eyes to the beauty of the mass and the church itself. We will introduce the children to their first saints. We will teach them the most powerful weapon there is, the Rosary.  Our first graders will be with Mary as she says yes to God's will and will walk with Jesus in His most sorrowful passion. We will rejoice with the whole Church on Easter to know that Jesus lives!

We need your help. Our children need your help.  Parents, we need you to be involved with what goes on in our classroom. We need you to help them with their homework and talk to them about what they learn.  We need you to point out the sacramentals in the church and encourage good listening postures in the mass.  Show them Father and the Deacons as they prepare the Eucharist...they will be receiving this Blessed Sacrament next year!  Parishioners, pray for the youth in our PSR classes.  Pray for our teachers. Pray for those seeking to take Holy Communion this year. Pray for those who will be confirmed.  Pray for the leaders in the church and for the PSR director. 

Our children are the future of our church. Show them now how they can do God's work, even though they are small.  There is a tree in the foyer for works of mercy.  There are soup drives the children can participate in. Children can be ushers and alter servers. Children can pray.  Blessed most are the prayers of the little ones.

We have learned to make the Sign of the Cross, and they have learned that Jesus is their friend.  They can go to Him and trust Him always. When they make the Sign of the Cross it reminds them that they are in God's family.  Join me this year in praying for them as they make this new journey.  

Ethan and Presley with the poster of what God made

We have been learning that God is the creator of heaven and earth, and that God made the earth and all things in it. We have also learned that God made people including the first people, Adam and Eve and us and even the angels. We learned that God made all things Holy, including the church and all things in it. We took a field trip to the church to look at these things up close. We will focus this week on learning that God made the Saints and Angels, including Saint Michael, which is in keeping with the Feast Day of the Archangels.  During the month of October, your children will beginning learning the prayers of the rosary.

Parents, remind your kids daily that they can trust Jesus. Show them in your daily life that you trust Jesus, too.

One final note:  we will release our children to their older siblings, but if you wish them to wait on you, please pick them up by 11:00. Shirley and I serve at the mass at times and we need to get over to the church.  We will walk any remaining students to the church, if they are not picked up 11:00. Thank you for your cooperation. :)

Come, Holy Spirit. Fill our hearts. Enkindle in us the fire of your love.

We use the candles when we talk of Holy things.

"Ordinary" Time

A perfect way to move from the Christmas Season into ordinary time is to celebrate the Baptism of Our Lord.  Jesus Himself started His ministry with the example of His baptism.  The fact that He did it publicly was His message to the world: If it is important enough that I should do it, it is important that you should do it also.

All four of the gospels speak of Jesus' baptism.  The book of Mark records that upon being baptized he saw "the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, 'You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.' "  All four gospels record the baptism in this manner. It must be extremely important. In fact, no one else in the river that day or any other received rays of light or voices or doves from the heavens. This was God's miraculous way of showing that Jesus' baptism was important indeed.

And so begins the life and works of Jesus...

Wedding at Cana

Very early on in the narrative that is the story of Jesus's life, John records that Mary and Jesus are guests at a wedding feast when the wine the family is serving runs out. Mary pleads to Jesus on behalf of the family, and Jesus turns all the water there at the feast into wine...thus beginning his public career as a miracle worker.

All the gospels record various stories of Jesus ministering to sick, blind, deaf, paralyzed, and even those who have just died.  He did not merely minister God's message to them...He healed them!  He brought them back to life when necessary. Perhaps my favorite of these is when Jesus heals the paralytic.  I love the idea that the man and his friends had such faith that Jesus would heal him, that they put him on the roof and lowered him down into the room where Jesus was speaking!  What effort!!!

May we all live our lives with the same effort to be in the room with Jesus. May we all trust him to heal us and lift our burdens when we are heavy.  May we never give up.

I use the term in the classroom "ordinary" lightly, because the life of Jesus is certainly no ordinary time.  Jordan and I use this break from seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter to focus on the miracles of Jesus, how we can apply these lessons to our lives today and to introduce students to the Luminous Mysteries of the rosary.

Join us for the next couple of weeks before Lent focusing on the miracles that Jesus performs.  Lean on Him when times are hard. Trust Him with the same effort as the faithful in these stories.

God Bless!