Here’s an activity and reflection to accompany either the Feast of the Immaculate Conception or the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. If you could create the ideal mother, what would she be like? Have the students use an art medium of their choice to design the perfect mother. Then have them listen and reflect on the Mother of Jesus (25:18) by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.
This exercise works well as a classroom prayer and meditation. Share this story in your own words: An older man came to the library every evening, sitting at the same table each time. At 9:50 the announcement came: “The library is closing in ten minutes.” Still the man wouldn’t leave. Every night the librarian would have to come to his table and tell him that it was time to leave. One night, she could resist no longer. “Why do you come here each night? You never have a book. All you do is sit here.” “Oh,” the man said. “Why I am waiting for my friend. My friend is the most beautiful person you could ever meet. So talented in many ways. I love my friend so much. If you give me just a few more minutes, my friend is bound to come.” So the librarian gave the man some extra time. A few minutes later, as the library was being closed, she returned to the man and told him to leave. “My friend is extremely busy,” the man said on his way out into the night. “But tomorrow my friend will certainly be here.” Ask the students to share some thoughts on what the story means. They should recognize that the older man is meant to represent God. The man’s friend is meant to represent each of them. Point out that God longs to spend time with each of us. How patiently God waits for us. God will never give up on us. God will always be waiting. It’s up to us to notice God’s presence. Play a reflective song as an interlude, perhaps “Center of My Life” by Paul Inwood. Have the students turn to Psalm 139 in their Bibles. Tell the students to spend a few minutes reflecting on the words of the psalm. Explain that Psalm 139 is a message that God is a loving, caring presence in their lives and has been intimately connected with their lives since they were first conceived. Ask the students to complete the following sentences as a journal exercise: The thought of a God who is very close to me . . When God examines my heart, he finds that I am . . . As appropriate, call on students to share their finished sentences either with a partner or with the entire class. Conclude by praying the Our Father.
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines to words that have opposite meanings. What might be some “Christian-themed oxymorons”? Have your students work in small groups to brainstorm some samples. You might award a winning group that comes up with the most examples. Or, just call on representatives from each group to share. For any confusing examples, the group members must explain why they came up with them. Here are some examples to get the class started: Holy Hell Righteous Sinner Hell’s Angel Minor Miracle Lukewarm Christian
This one-on-one discussion activity encourages students to meet and dialogue with a variety of people in class, including those they don’t know well or don’t know at all. Make a worksheet with a large traditional clock with numbers on it. Print copies for every student. Tell them they will be finding people in class ask asking them to write their names on each hour of the clock. They can only use a person’s name one time. Read the items on the list one at a time, pausing between each item to allow the students to find a person and write in the other’s name. Items At twelve o’clock, exchange names with a person with different color hair than yours. At one o’clock, exchange names with a person who lives more than five miles from where you live. At two o’clock, exchange names with a boy if you are a girl, and a girl if you are a boy. At three o’clock, exchange names with a person who is fan of a different sports team than you. At four o’clock, exchange names with a person who has different musical tastes than you. At five o’clock, exchange names with a person who has a different number of siblings than you. At six o’clock, exchange names with a person who has different color eyes than yours. At seven o’clock, exchange names with a person who is has a different political perspective than you. At eight o’clock, exchange names with a person who hangs out with a different group of friends than you. At nine o’clock, exchange names with a person who has a different hair length than you. At ten o’clock, exchange names with a person with different color socks than yours. At eleven o’clock, exchange names with a person who was born in a different month than you were. When everyone has filled in a name at each time on the clock, tell them they are going to conduct short (one minute) interviews with the people they listed. Say: “Meet with your one o’clock appointment. Discuss this question: When was a time you got really angry and why?” Allow one minute, call time and ask the participants to meet with their “two o’clock appointments.” Continue with the same process using the list of questions below. Questions When was the last time you got really angry? Why? When was the last time you cried? Why? On what basis do you choose your friends? What advice would you give to a sixth grader? Are you more of a leader or a follower? Explain. How important to you is following the Ten Commandments? How important to you is attending church on Sunday? When do you pray? What does your prayer mean to you? Who is a person who has influenced your life? How? Who is an adult you find it easy to talk with? Why? If you could go back in time, what period of history would you like to live in? Why? Tell about a goal for your life.
No matter what subject or level of theology course you are teaching, it’s wise to continue to teach students new vocabulary terms and assess their comprehension of these terms. You can do this in several ways, including having the students study and memorize the correct spelling and definitions of terms, and then repeat them back to you o a written text. You might also make a vocabulary assessment as part of regular opening or closing period of a class session. Here is one idea for assessment to use without having to have the students write responses. First, prepare a list of ten vocabulary terms and definitions and give them to the students. Or assign, particular terms and definitions from the glossary of their textbook. For example: Annulment— An official church declaration that what appeared to be a Christian marriage never existed in the first place. Beatific Vision—Seeing God “face-to-face” in heaven, the source of our eternal happiness; final union with the Triune God for all eternity. Catechesis—Process of systematic education in the faith for young people and adults with the view of making them disciples of Jesus Christ. Concupiscence—An inclination to commit sin that can be found in human desires and appetites as a result of original sin. Dogma—A central truth of revelation that Catholics are obliged to believe. Encyclical—A letter on some important topic written by the pope and sent to the whole Church or to the whole world. An encyclical contains the ordinary teaching of the Magisterium. Magisterium—The official teaching authority of the Church. The Lord bestowed the right and power to teach in his name on Peter and the apostles and their successors, that is, the bishops and the pope as their leader. Sanctifying grace—The grace, or gift of God’s friendship, that heals our fallen human nature and gives us a share in the divine life of the Blessed Trinity. A habitual, supernatural gift, it makes us perfect, holy, and Christ-like (CCC, 1999). Subsidiarity—A principle of Catholic social justice that holds that a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving it of its functions. For the sake of the common good, higher order societies should support and help lower order societies as needed. Transubstantiation—The term used to describe that at the consecration of the bread and wine at Mass their entire substance is turned into the entire substance of the Body and Blood of Christ, even though the appearances of bread and wine remain. Next, come up with two lists of sentences — one with correct usage of vocabulary words and one with incorrect usage. Write both lists and keep them with you. Read each sentence aloud, pausing between each one so that students can identify the vocabulary word and determine if the word is used correctly or not. If you have digital options for students to respond “correct” or “incorrect” you will be able to gain an accurate understanding of the class’s comprehension of the terms. If not, simply use hand signals to respond correct (e.g., thumbs up) or incorrect (e.g., thumbs down).
Prepare a worksheet using the following text. Have the students follow the directions listed below. To conclude the activity, call on volunteers to share any part of the activity or discussion with the entire class. Directions: Read the following quotations on prayer. Start the quotation that you find most meaningful. Complete the sentences below. Share them with a partner. My heart is restless, Lord, until it rests in you. --St. Augustine Prayer is wine which makes glad the heart of all. --St. Bernard The whole world is asleep, and God, so full of goodness, so great, so worthy of all praise, no one is thinking of him! See, nature praises God, and we . . . who ought to praise God, sleep! Let us to and wake up the universe and sing God’s praises. --St. Mariam Baourady Prayer does not change God, but changes the one who prays. --Soren Kierkegaard We must pray without tiring, for the salvation of humankind does not depend on material success; nor on sciences that cloud the intellect. Neither does it depend on arms and human industries, but on Jesus alone. --St. Frances Cabrini I pray when . . . A time prayer helped me was when . . .
Here are three simple ways for you to learn the names of your students and for them to know a little bit more about each other. 1. Give each person a 3 x 5 card with his or her first names printed in capital letters. Next, tell the students to arranged everyone’s first names in capital letters in a “circle” around the four corners of the room. The person with the first name should be at “12 o’clock” against the front wall. The person with the last name at 11:59. When the ordering is done, have the students hold up their cards wo that everyone can read them. Then tell them to go around the room beginning with the person at 12 o’clock and say their names. Next, have the participants turn their cards around. Call on several people to try to name everyone beginning with the first person and going all the way around the room. When the person misses a name, allow others in the class to give some help. 2. Give each person a 3 x 5 card with his or her first names printed in capital letters. Ask them to move around the room and find at least two people with whom they can form a word using the first letters of their name. For example: William, Eva, Nancy form NEW. When everyone is in a word group, have them share their word and names with everyone. Take a second turn through and have them share only the “word.” Call on volunteers to tell their names. 3. Randomly pass out 3 x 5 cards making sure that no one gets their own name. Tell the students to find the person who is named on the card and to give them the card. When the students all have their own cards, they should go around the room meeting new people and collecting signatures on their card. The person with the most signatures wins! Photo Credit: hiclipart.com
Dorothy Day (1897–1981) was a founder, with Peter Maurin, of the Catholic Worker Movement. Throughout her life she sought to apply the Church’s teachings on social justice to modern economic conditions. She founded a group of Catholic Worker homes across the country where Catholics lived and worked among the poor. Dorothy Day was a lifelong pacifist and was arrested several times for her anti-war activities. She is also known for her writings on prayer and the spiritual life. Before Sharing this Reading In this reading Dorothy Day makes two points. First, in her description of a neighbor at prayer, she illustrates that contemplation is not a form of prayer that can only be attained in convents and monasteries. She believed that the highest form of prayer and the closest union with God occurs in the factory, the office, and the home. Second, she underscores the fact that material possessions don’t bring satisfaction. She held that our hearts yearn for the infinite riches that only God can offer, and that the fight for economic justice for all can help us to attend to the spiritual realities of human life. The Reading It was in Chicago, where we moved to afterward, that I met my first Catholic. It was the first time we had been really poor. We lived in an apartment over a store, on Cottage Grove Avenue. There was no upstairs, no garden, no sense of space. The tenement stretched way down the block and there were back porches and paved courtyards with never a touch of green anywhere. I remember how hungry I became for green fields during the long hot summer that followed. There was a vacant lot over by the lakefront, and I used to walk down there with my sister and stand sniffing ecstatically the hot sweet smell of wild clover and listening to the sleepy sound of the crickets. But that very desire for beauty was a painful delight for me. It sharpened my senses and made me more avid in my search for it. I found it in the lake that stretched steel gray beyond the Illinois Central tracks. I found it in a glimpse of supernatural beauty in Mrs. Barrett, mother of Kathryn and six other little Barretts, who lived upstairs. It was Mrs. Barrett who gave me my first impulse toward Catholicism. It was around ten o’clock in the morning that I went to Kathryn’s to call for her to come out and play. There was no one on the porch or in the kitchen. The breakfast dishes had all been washed. They were long railroad apartments, those flats, and thinking the children must be in the front room, I burst in and ran through the bedrooms. In the front bedroom Mrs. Barrett was on her knees, saying her prayers. She turned to tell me that Kathryn and the children had all gone to the store and went on with her praying. And I felt a warm burst of love toward Mrs. Barrett that I have never forgotten, a feeling of gratitude and happiness that still warms my heart when I remember her. She had God, and there was beauty and joy in her life. All through my life, what she was doing remained with me. And though I became oppressed with the problem of poverty and injustice, through I groaned at the hideous sordidness of man’s lot, though there were years when I clung to the philosophy of economic determinism as an explanation of man’s fate, still there were moments when, in the midst of misery and class strife, life was shot through with glory. Mrs. Barrett in her sordid little tenement flat finished her breakfast dishes at ten o’clock in the morning and got down on her knees and prayed to God. The Harrington family also lived in that block of tenements, and there were nine children, the eldest a little girl of twelve. She was a hard-working little girl, and naturally I had the greatest admiration for her on account of the rigorous life she led. I had a longing for the rigorous life. But I had a tremendous amount of liberty compared to little Mary Harrington. It was not until after the dishes were done that she could come out to play in the evening. Often she was so tired that we just stretched out on the long back porch, open to the sky. We lay there, gazing up at the only beauty the city had to offer us, and we talked and dreamed. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I do remember one occasion when she told me of the life of some saint. I don’t remember which one, nor can I remember any of the incidents of it. I can only remember the feeling of lofty enthusiasm I had, how my heart seemed almost bursting with desire to take part in such high endeavor. One verse of the Psalms often comes to mind: “Enlarge Thou my heart, O Lord, that Thou mayest enter in.” This was one of those occasions when my small heart was enlarged. I could feel it swelling with love and gratitude to such a good God for such a friendship as Mary’s, for conversation such as hers, and I was filled with lofty ambitions to be a saint, a natural striving, a thrilling recognition of the possibilities of spiritual adventure. Comprhension Questions 1. What was it that Dorothy missed most when she moved into her tenement apartment? 2. What did Dorothy discover when she went to her friend’s apartment for a visit? 3. What were Dorothy’s feelings for Mrs. Barrett? 4. Describe Dorothy’s thoughts as she lay on the porch in the evening talking with her friend, Mary Harrington. Reflection Questions 1. Both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dorothy Day were giants in bringing about social change in the United States. Where do you think they got the energy and strength to pursue goals of justice and to withstand hatred and imprisonment for their views? 2. Thomas Merton, the great American Trappist monk and writer, wrote a book titled Contemplation in a World of Action. How does that title aptly describe the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dorothy Day? 3. Read Matthew 6:6. How does Jesus’ teaching on prayer apply to the actions of Mrs. Barrett? Activity A retreat is a time for people to step out of the routine of their daily lives and go away and spend some quiet time with God. Many people go to monasteries in the country for a few days each year for this experience. Research the types of retreats that are available to your school or your parish. Select the one that appeals most to you and explain why it attracted you. This material is adapted from The Catholic Spirit: An Anthology for DIscovering Faith Through Literature, Art, Film, and Music (Ave Maria Press 2010).
