eCatechist

Pray with Me: Seven Simple Ways to Pray with Your Children by Grace Mazza Urbanski

Grace Mazza Urbanski gives parents practical advice on how to help children find opportunities to pray throughout the day. Using warmth, humor, and passion, Urbanski draws on personal experience to show how families are brought closer together through deeper contact with God. Many ideas can be used by catechists in the faith formation programs and then shared with parents.

1) Praying Spontaneously

2) Praying from Memory

3) Praying with Scripture

4) Praying with Song

5) Praying with Silence

6) Praying with Reflection

7) Praying with the Apostleship of Prayer

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Ave Maria Press

View Praying with Grace videos on YouTube

 

The Dailiness of the Christian Faith by Tish Harrison Warren

The kind of spiritual life and disciplines needed to sustain the Christian life are quiet, repetitive and ordinary.

I often want to skip the boring daily stuff to get to the thrill of an edgy faith.

But it is in the dailiness of the Christian faith - the making the bed, the doing the dishes, the praying for our enemies, the reading the Bible, the quiet, the small - that God's transformation takes root and grows.

p. 35 Liturgy of the Ordinary

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

The Sacrament of Back to School by Lisa Brown

“In that moment, so pregnant with hope, pride, excitement, joy, nervousness, and expectation, we find our everyday sacrament.”

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From Building Faith at the Virginia Theological Seminary

It Is the Child Who Leads Us To the Gospel

“It is the child who leads us to the gospel,” writes Eberhard Arnold. In children’s generosity and helpfulness, in their natural happiness, and even in their naughtiness, we can experience a freedom to be ourselves. And children often possess an unshakable faith. Jesus is quite forthright about the role children play in his kingdom: “Unless you become like a child, you cannot enter the kingdom” (Matt. 18:3). We too easily forget this, or worse, resist it. The disciples got upset that so many children were being brought to Jesus. If we’re honest, we too, under the guise of serving Christ’s cause, often make ourselves too busy to pay attention to children.

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10 Ways I Practice Faith While Parenting Teenagers by Miriam McKenney

“When Jamie gets to that age, you’re going to help me, right?”

“How can I get my kids to turn out like yours?”

“Why aren’t you writing all of this down?”

As a mom of three spectacular daughters, I get asked these questions on a regular basis, as if I’ve come up with some magic formula for parenting teenagers. All of my parenting comes with a lot of love, respect, and heavy doses of honesty. And, God.

So, to begin to write it down, I asked my girls what they thought held our family together. Here’s what we came up with:

 

Source: Grow Christians

Home Practices from Building Faith

Home Practices from Building Faith

Beatiudes on Film... for children! from Thinking Faith

In a new series, we will be exploring the Beatitudes through the medium of children’s films. We’ve chosen eight films – from classics to recent award-winners – through which school-age children can gain a better understanding of each of the eight blessings imparted by Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel. Thinking Faith

Thinking Faith is the online journal of the Jesuits in Britain. Explore our website to find articles and reviews which will help you think about your faith and think, through your faith, about the world.

A Father's Faith by Tom McGrath

Wisdom borrowed from St. Joseph

 

St. Joseph seems to have been a man of few words but plenty of action. The brief stories that mention him in the Gospels leave us with a vivid impression of a strong, supportive man who revealed his feelings and beliefs more in what he did than what he said. Over the years, I have come to appreciate this humble carpenter who always seems to stand a short distance from center stage. As a foster father he fostered many great traits in his son, Jesus. Through my prayer and reflection I have witnessed four wisdom principles in St. Joseph, the patron saint of fathers, workers and of the universal church.

Source: America

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Six Things To Do When School Is Out

Lisa Dewey Wells, author of the Wonder of Children blog, offers six things that the traditional classroom teacher might consider for summer renewal. Excellent adivce for all catechists.

Six things to do when school is out.

Remaining Faithful by Msgr. John Zenz

On a regular basis over the past two decades I've had the joy of meeting with a group of men for faith-sharing. Inevitably, one topic is sure to emerge: the faith-life of their adult children and grandchildren. I always try to reassure them that if they themselves remain constant in the practice of their faith, without even needing to "preach" about it, sooner or later their adult children will come back to the practice of the faith. Sometimes it's only after people "leave home" (the Church) that they begin to recognize what they've lost and they return.

For those of us who are the "elders," the challenge is remaining faithful, praying fervently and waiting patiently. The consistency of our witness speaks more than thousands of words and will invite and challenge others to want to know and experience what (or better "who") gives us meaning and hope - Jesus Christ.

Msgr. John Zenz Pastor, Holy Name Parish, Birmingham, MI 

Former Director of Relegious Education for the Archdiocese of Detroit

 

Ernie Harwell and Msgr. John Zenz (The Gospel of Mark)

Msgr. John Zenz  on the Sacraments (USCCB)

 

5 Lessons for Parenting in the Digital Age

 

Soren Gordhamer is the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conferences. Along with its annual event, it is also holding a Wisdom 2.0 Youth Conference for parents and others focused on supporting young people in the digital age. You can follow him at @SorenG on Twitter.

“Dad, can I use your phone to play games?” asked my son recently as we drove through the southwest on a beautiful summer day. I was taken by his question. On one hand, it was a lovely day, and I had been greatly enjoying our conversation. On the other, why not let him play a game if he wants? I check my email continuously — why shouldn’t he also be able to play games continuously?

My son’s question is one that millions of parents are asked each day, whether about a phone, computer, Wii or Xbox. The essential plea is the same: “Mom or dad, can I please direct my attention to a screen?”

Parents of older children face similar challenges — for instance, whether it’s acceptable for their teen to text at the dinner table, or whether it’s tolerable for a teen to peer at his laptop when someone is trying to address him. Essentially, we wonder, just how much technology should be allowed in our lives and those of our kids?

SEE ALSO: Kids & Technology: The Developmental Health Debate

Few parents are going to completely forbid their children from interacting with today’s amazing gadgetry. However, it’s essential that we focus on a conscious, rather than habitual, use of modern technology.

1)  Technology has no longer boundaries

2)  Know when to cut it off

3)  The difference between preference and addiction

4)  Focus on technology that truly connects us to our kids

5)  Model the balance

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Families, You Are Not Alone by Benedict XVI

Benedict XVI says that learning about God is a lifelong endeavor, much broader than simply preparing a child to receive the sacraments. "In this educational effort, the family remains the first responsible party. Dear parents, be the first witnesses of the faith," the Pontiff exhorted. "Do not be afraid of the difficulties amid which you are called to realize your mission. You are not alone! The Christian community is close to you and sustains you." He spoke of catechesis as permanent formation. "We must grow throughout our lives in knowledge of God, thus in knowledge of what it means to be a man," he said.

The Holy Father called on parents to find light and strength for their educational efforts in the liturgy, particularly in the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist. He invited parents to take advantage of diocesan opportunities for education and volunteer work so as to form people who know how to live in solidarity, "open and attentive to situations of spiritual and material hardship."

"In short," the Pope said, "pastoral action should be geared to forming persons mature in the faith, able to live in contexts in which often God is ignored; persons coherent with the faith, so that the light of Christ will be taken to all environments; persons that live the faith with joy, to transmit the beauty of being Christians."

From Catechetical Leader Weekly, a weekly online publication for members of the National Conference for Catechetical Leadership (NCCL) and Zenit.org.

 

The Family in the Documents of the Church

From:

THE PASTORAL CHALLENGES
OF THE FAMILY
IN THE CONTEXT OF EVANGELIZATION

Link

4. Throughout the centuries, the Church has maintained her constant teaching on marriage and family.

One of the highest expressions of this teaching was proposed by the Second Vatican Council, in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, which devotes an entire chapter to promoting the dignity of marriage and the family (cf. GS, 47-52).

This document defined marriage as a community of life and love (cf. GS, 48), placing love at the center of the family and manifesting, at the same time, the truth of this love in counter distinction to the various forms of reductionism present in contemporary culture.

The “true love between husband and wife” (GS, 49) implies a mutual gift of self and includes and integrates the sexual and affective aspects, according to the divine plan (cf. GS, 48-49).

Furthermore, Gaudium et Spes, 48 emphasizes the grounding of the spouses in Christ. Christ the Lord “comes into the lives of married Christians through the Sacrament of Matrimony,” and remains with them. In the Incarnation, he assumes human love, purifies it and brings it to fulfillment.

Through his Spirit, he enables the bride and groom to live their love and makes that love permeate every part of their lives of faith, hope and charity. In this way, the bride and groom are, so to speak, consecrated and, through his grace, they build up the Body of Christ and are a domestic Church (cf. LG, 11), so that the Church, in order to fully understand her mystery, looks to the Christian family, which manifests her in a real way.

 

From America Magazine:

IN SYNOD WORKING DOCUMENT, A REALISTIC PICTURE OF THE FAMILY
TODAY [1]
Ashley McKinless

Our Sunday Visitor

Familiaris Consortio (On the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World) by John Paul II

Letter of Pope Francis to Families

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Dear families,

With this letter, I wish, as it were, to come into your homes to speak about an event which will take place at the Vatican this coming October. It is the Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which is being convened to discuss the theme of “pastoral challenges to the family in the context of evangelization”. Indeed, in our day the Church is called to proclaim the Gospel by confronting the new and urgent pastoral needs facing the family.

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