Happy Birthday to the Church!

Today is the feast of Pentecost, which is the birthday of the Church!

We began by singing “Happy Birthday” to the Church and celebrating with cupcakes…yum!

For our opening and closing prayers today, we prayed some traditional Catholic prayers to the Holy Spirit:  Come, Holy Spirit and St. Augustine’s Prayer to the Holy Spirit.

We learned about Pentecost, prayed through today’s First Reading from Acts of the Apostles, learned about the symbols, gifts, and fruits of the Spirit, and read an articles about the gifts of the Spirit which we receive in fullness when we are sealed with the Spirit at Confirmation.  Here is the worksheet, and the article we read:

Our next gathering is our LAST ONE OF THIS YEAR, on May 29th!  I will have a summer schedule with our service and social opportunities for you at that time.

Special recognition to Chloe Bayer, Morgan Bayer, Daniel Daily, and Troy Bosse for receiving awards at the DPHS Underclassman Award Ceremony this past week.  They each received awards for outstanding success in their classes, and Troy was recognized for receiving Highest Honors.  In addition, we have some Star Award recipients among us!  Morgan received the Student of Character award, Daniel received the Student Who Serves award, and Troy received the Student Scholar award.  Many congratulations to our talented parish youth!  😀

This week, the DPHS Seniors will receive their awards, as will the Jr. High students, and the 8th graders will graduate and officially become high schoolers!

And most exciting of all, a number of our members will be receiving the sacrament of Confirmation on Sunday!  Please keep them in your prayers as their special day approaches.

Resources:

• Happy Birthday to the Church!
• Pentecost 101
• Gifts of the Holy Spirit
• Fruits of the Holy Spirit
• Prayers to the Holy Spirit
• Scripture readings for Pentecost, May 16, 2016
• What Happens at the Rite of Confirmation:  The 7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit Explained

We are all called to be saints!

This weekend, we talked about SAINTS, playing some games for yummy candy prizes as we learned about them!

We first did a little overview about the saints – who they are, how we got them, why we pray with them, why some are “patrons”, and so on.  Here’s what we learned:

 

What is a saint?

• A saint is a person who is recognized has having an exceptional degree of holiness, or likeness to God.
• To be a “saint” is to belong to the “communion of saints” – you made it to heaven by imitating Christ and living a holy life. We are ALL called to be saints.
• To be a “Saint” is to be canonized – you are recognized by the Church as having lived a life worth imitating, and therefore you are held up as an example to all people.

History

• The first Saints were martyrs, and over the next few centuries, sainthood was extended to those who had defended the faith and led holy lives.
• Now, there are over 10,000 Saints…but we don’t know for sure exactly how many there are.
• Over time, the process for becoming a saint has been developed and formalized. The formal process requires two (2) miracles before you can become a Saint.

Prayer

• Saints are intercessors, not mediators. The only mediator is Jesus; He is the one who goes between God and us. We pray with the Saints, not to them.
• We ask Saints to pray for us, just like we ask friends to pray for us. Both the Saints and our friends are people we trust, who understand our struggle, and who are close to God. That is why we ask them to pray for us.

Patron Saints

• Some Saints are chosen as special protectors or guardians over areas of life – such as occupations, illnesses, churches, countries, and other things that are important to us.
• They are chosen because of a special interests, talents, or events in their lives which overlaps with the special area. For example, St. Francis of Assisi loved nature, and is the patron of ecologists.
• Angels can also be named as patron saints.
• Patron saints can help us when we follow the example of that saint’s life and when we ask for that saint’s intercessory prayers to God.

Feast Days

• A feast day is a day when we celebrate the life of a particular saint.
• Some feast days are worldwide, while others are celebrated locally by people who have a special relationship with the Saint.

Then, we read a brief article that talked about why we choose Confirmation saints.  You can read it on LifeTeen’s website here.

After that, we played Saint Bingo!  We took turns drawing a slip of paper from the bowl, reading the description, letting everyone guess who this particular saint was, and covering his or her picture on the bingo card.  Once we has a cover-all, we began working on a crossword puzzle about the saints, with the time that was left.  You can see the crossword and the answers by clicking on these links.

Our closing prayer was our own Litany of the Saints – we asked all the saints on our bingo cards and crossword puzzles, and our namesakes and Confirmation saints, to pray for us.

So this week was low-key and lots of fun!  🙂

COMING UP:  

• Next meeting:  March 6th
• Fish Fry this Friday at St. John
• Encounter:  March 12th (more info coming; visit this site for info)
• Chosen:  April 16th (more info coming; learn some info here)
  • I am doing the opening/closing music with my work, the JSC, and we might need some help from my youth group, even the upperclassmen!