Follow these directions for a short lesson and activity on Blesed Carlo Acutis, a Catholic teenager with a great deication to the Eucharist who is expected to be canonized in the near future.
Explain a little bit about Bl. Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager who died of leukemia in 2006. Although his parents were only nominally Catholic, Carlo had a supernatural love for the Eucharist. His love inspired him to use his talents with computers to create a website that catalogs every Eucharistic miracle in history.
Divide students into small groups and have them open Bl. Carlo Acutis’ website on Eucharistic miracles.
Ask the students to explore the website and select a Eucharistic miracle that they find particularly interesting.
Regather and ask each group to share their chosen miracle with the class.
This activity was created by Larisa Tuttle, a senior at the University of Dallas.
“Adoro te Devote” is a Eucharistic poem written by St. Thomas Aquinas and frequently used as a hymn in Eucharistic processions and other public acts of Eucharistic devotion. St. Thomas Aguinas is one of the greatest medieval poets (as well as theologians), but his stunning Latin poetry has become most accessible and well-known through Gerard Manley Hopkins’ translation of the poem, titled “Godhead Here in Hiding.” This exercise will introduce or better acquaint students with this classic poem while demonstrating that the Eucharist is the wellspring of the Catholic artistic imagination.
Materials
Copies of the Handout (see below)
Recording of “Adoro te Devote”
Instructions
Have students follow along on the handout while you play a recording of the original Latin “Adoro te Devote.”
Have students go around the room each reading a stanza of “Godhead Here in Hiding.”
Discuss the following as a class:
What is a line or image from the poem that stands out to you? (There doesn’t need to be an understandable reason why the line stands out, as beauty often catches us unawares!)
What does it mean to be “lost in wonder” before the Eucharist?
How should wonder affect the way that we participate in personal prayer, Mass, and Eucharistic Adoration?
What does the second stanza teach us about transubstantiation?
How should we respond to moments when we struggle to have Faith in Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist?
What was “the prayer of the dying thief?”
How do we become like the dying thief at Mass?
What is the story of Thomas and Jesus’ wounds?
How can our faith in the Eucharist fulfill Jesus’ words, “Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe?”
According to old legends, the pelican would pierce his own chest with his beak in time of famine so that his children could drink his own blood. Why does St. Thomas call Jesus a pelican?
Handout [set in 2 columns]
“Adoro te devote,” St. Thomas Aquinas
Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,
Quae sub his figuris vere latitas:
Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit,
Quia te contemplans totum deficit.
Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur,
Sed auditu solo tuto creditur:
Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius:
Nil hoc verbo Veritátis verius.
In Cruce latebat sola Deitas,
At hic latet simul et humanitas:
Ambo tamen credens atque confitens,
Peto quod petivit latro paenitens.
Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor:
Deum tamen meum te confiteor:
Fac me tibi semper magis credere,
In te spem habere, te diligere.
O memoriale mortis Domini,
Panis vivus, vitam praestans homini,
Praesta meae menti de te vivere,
Et te illi semper dulce sapere.
Pie pelicane, Jesu Domine,
Me immundum munda tuo sanguine,
Cujus una stilla salvum facere
Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.
Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio,
Oro fiat illud quod tam sitio:
Ut te revelata cernens facie,
Visu sim beatus tuae gloriae.
“Godhead Here in Hiding,” Gerard Manley Hopkins
Godhead here in hiding whom I do adore
Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more.
See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.
Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived;
How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;
What God's Son has told me, take for truth I do;
Truth himself speaks truly or there's nothing true.
On the cross thy godhead made no sign to men;
Here thy very manhood steals from human ken:
Both are my confession, both are my belief,
And I pray the prayer made by the dying thief.
I am not like Thomas, wounds I cannot see,
But I plainly call thee Lord and God as he:
This faith each day deeper be my holding of,
Daily make me harder hope and dearer love.
O thou, our reminder of the Crucified,
Living Bread, the life of us for whom he died,
Lend this life to me, then; feed and feast my mind,
There be thou the sweetness man was meant to find.
Like what tender tales tell of the Pelican,
Bathe me, Jesus Lord, in what thy bosom ran--
Blood that but one drop of has the pow'r to win
All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.
Jesus whom I look at shrouded here below,
I beseech thee, send me what I thirst for so,
Some day to gaze on thee face to face in light
And be blest forever with thy glory's sight.
Larisa Tuttle, a 2024 Summer Editorial Curriculum intern for Ave Maria Press, is currently a senior at the University of Dallas where she is a double major in English and Theology.
Materials needed: cardstock, colored pencils or markers
Instructions:
1. Distribute art materials to students.
2. Read the following quote by J.R.R. Tolkien to your students: "Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. . . . There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death."
This exercise will allow students to meditate on this quote through sketching.
3. At the bottom of the cardstock, have students draw an image of darkness (e.g. a stormy sea) and write down any darkness and frustration that they are currently facing in their lives.
4. Next, have students draw a monstrance in the center of the page, above the darkness. Read the following words, one at a time: romance; glory; honor; fidelity; death to life; healing; surrender. Pause between reading each word to have the students write the word on the rays of the monstrance. Before going on, ask he corresponding question for general class discussion, partner discussion, or journal writing:
Romance: How is the Eucharist a romance?
Glory: What is the glory Jesus destines you for?
Honor: How can you honor Jesus in the Eucharist? How does Jesus honor you in the Eucharist?
Fidelity: How is Jesus faithful to you in the Eucharist? How does he teach you fidelity?
Death to life: How is Jesus in the Eucharist calling you to die to sin and selfishness? Is your faith in the Eucharist more alive or more dead?
Healing: When you receive Jesus in the Eucharist, what healing do you need to ask for him to give you?
Surrender: What is one situation in your life that Jesus is inviting you to completely surrender to him, trusting that he will take care of everything?
5. On the stem of the monstrance, have the students write True Love. Beneath the monstrance, have them write down the people who they love and who they want to surrender to Jesus, as well as ways that Christ is calling them to love these people.
Display the finished artwork in the classroom.
Can you imagine forgiving someone who struck you over the head with a baseball bat, nearly gouging out your eye?
Can you imagine recommending the person who injured you for the highest honor in his field?
Can you imagine offering a eulogy at the funeral of the man you struck with the bat?
This story really played out on the baseball field in 1965 when Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants attacked John Roseboro of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the middle of a game. You can read about the incident here.
Ask your students the questions posed above and briefly introduce the incident. Then play a twenty-two minute video documentary that explains what happened to Juan Marichal and John Roseboro in the years that followed.
After the video, write the following questions on the board for discussion or journal writing:
What is your reaction to the video?
How do you feel about John Roseboro?
How would you feel about Juan Marichal?
What did you learn about forgiveness and reconciliation from this story?
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops offer an abridged article on marriage entitled Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan. Make copies of the article for each student. Ask them to read through the article and then go back a second time and underline the six sentences that begin with “Marriage is . . . “. These are the sentences from the USCCB article:
Marriage is a natural institution established by God the Creator.
Marriage is not merely a private institution.
Marriage is important for the upbringing of the next generation, and therefore it is important for society.
Marriage is meant to be a lifelong covenantal union, which divorce claims to break.
Marriage is a vocation, or divine call, as necessary and valuable to the Church as other vocations.
Marriage is a school of gratitude, in which husband and wife are thankful for the gift of each other.
Clarify each of these statements in a class discussion. Call on students to share their own ideas on what each statement means and examples of how they have witnessed these statements being lived out in marriages they are familiar with (e.g., parents, grandparents, neighbors).
Next, on the back of the handout, ask students to write three of their own statements beginning with “Marriage is . . . “ When complete, continue with the discussion based on some of the examples the students came up with.
This famous short story written by William Sydney Porter under the penname “O. Henry” was first published in one of the New York City newspapers at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is a remarkable story of unfailing love between a husband and wife, and of self-gifts, both appropriate topics for Advent and Christmas. Share this story with your students. Ask them to complete both the Comprehension and Reflection questions.
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Delia counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Delia did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James Dillingham Young.”
The “Dillingham” had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Delia. Which is all very good.
Delia finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling—something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an eight dollar flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Delia, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass, her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Delia’s hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Delia would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Delia’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: “Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.” One flight up Delia ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”
“Will you buy my hair?” asked Delia.
“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”
Down rippled the brown cascade.
“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
“Give it to me quick,” said Delia.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value—the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the eighty-seven cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Delia reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends—a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do—oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?”
At seven o’clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Delia doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the comer of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.”
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two—and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Delia, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Delia wriggled off the table and went for him.
“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again—you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say ‘Merry Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice—what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”
“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
“Cut it off and sold it,” said Delia. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”
Jim looked about the room curiously.
“You say your hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
“You needn’t look for it,” said Delia. “It’s sold, I tell you—sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Delia. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.”
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs—the set of combs, side and back, that Delia had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims—just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”
And them Delia leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.”
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
“Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ’em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.”
The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
Comprehension
How much had Jim’s salary been reduced?
What were the most precious possessions of the married couple?
How much was the wife paid for the sale of her hair?
What did the wife do with the money she received for her hair?
Why was the husband dumbfounded when he saw his Christmas gift—the platinum chain for his watch?
Reflection
What do the actions of the husband and wife tell us about real love?
Why does O. Henry compare this husband and wife to the magi of Scripture?
This is an individual spiritual exercise students may use as an examination of conscience prior to receiving the Sacrament of Penance. Make a copy of the directions and exercise below for each student. Option: allow students to discuss their response with a partner or in a small group.
Directions: Read the description of the biblical names for the four obstacles to ridding oneself of an area of sinfulness. Look up and read the corresponding passages from the Bible. Then write your responses to the questions that follow.
1. Blindness is the failure to even see your own sinfulness. Read John 9:1-41
What were the Pharisees blind to?
Name a personal pattern of sinfulness you have fooled yourself about (but cannot fool God about?)
2. Pride is the refusal to admit something is your own fault. Read Luke 18:9-14
What is the attitude that is praised in the parable?
Agree or disagree. Is it more effective to admit your sin out loud than to just admit it to yourself? Explain your answer.
3. Hardness of heart is knowing that you are sinning, but not caring or wanting to change. Read Luke 5:27-32.
What effort did Levi make to show he had given up his sinful ways?
How has another person helped you to recognize and change your sinful ways?
4. Weakness or fear leads to your inability to do anything about your sins. Read Romans 6:12-23
According to the reading, what is the final result of a life of sinfulness?
In the Sacrament of Penance, what are some visible signs that help you to overcome sinfulness?
Recently the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments published a Letter to Bishops on the bread and wine for Eucharist. The letter became the stir of the internet as it was promoted as "The Church Bans Glutton-Free Hosts." In fact, the letter was a reiteration of current Church teaching. In any case, this issue may have an impact on liturgies at your school.
This is a good opportunity to review with your students the importance of the matter and form of the sacraments. The host, made of unleavened wheat bread, and the natural grape wine are the "matter" of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.
More, in the sacraments, the Church uses elements from creation (such as water, bread, and wine) and human culture (such as washing or anointing) to make God’s grace available to us. The traditional physical element(s) and/or gesture(s) used in each sacrament are called the matter of the sacrament.
The celebration of each sacrament also involves solemnity. The traditional words said for each sacrament are called the form of the sacrament. When you hear these words, you know that the sacrament is taking place. God is truly present, filling you and others with his love and grace.
As far as the current announcement from the Vatican, this article "The Matter Matters: Unpacking the Vatican Guidelines on Bread and Wine for the Eucharist" is an excellent resource.
