G10 and G9 Prayer Format

G10 PRAYER FORMAT

  • Make the Sign of the Cross
  • Say a special intention for a particular current Social Issue (E.g. Lord, we pray for the civilians caught in the conflict between Russia and Urkaine. May peace come to their homes as soon as possible).
  • Gospel Reading of the Day
    • The prayer leader should write the Gospel passage on the board before the prayer begins. The rest of the class should already look for the assigned Gospel passage.
    • The prayer leader should follow the proper way of reading the Gospels. The leader should begin with: “A Reading from the Gospel according to…” then everyone will say: “Glory to you, O Lord.” (Making the proper gesture) Then, at the end of the Gospel the leader will say: “The Gospel of the Lord.” Everyone will respond: “Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ.”
    • Refer to http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings or http://www.catholic.org/bible/daily_reading for the readings of the day.
  • Short Moment of Silence
  • Short Prayer-Reflection
    • This is in the form of a personally-composed reflection and 1-2 reflection questions.
    • A short reflection related to the passage is recommended. It is also recommended that the leader is able to connect the passage to the lesson at hand or to the general theme of G10, which is to Finding Happiness by living as Christ lived.
    • Finally, the prayer-reflection may end by asking for God’s grace needed for the day or for the period.
  • The Xaverian’s Prayer
    • Jesu, lux mundi… Luceat lux nostra! (Jesus, light of the world… Let our light shine!)
  • Invocation to the Saints (Class Patron – if blessed or saint, St. Francis Xavier and St. Ignatius of Loyola)
  • Make the Sign of the Cross

G9 PRAYER FORMAT

  • Make the Sign of the Cross
  • Gospel Reading of the Day
    • The prayer leader should write the Gospel passage on the board before the prayer begins. The rest of the class should already look for the assigned Gospel passage.
    • The prayer leader should follow the proper way of reading the Gospels. The leader should begin with: “A Reading from the Gospel according to…” then everyone will say: “Glory to you, O Lord.” (Making the proper gesture) Then, at the end of the Gospel the leader will say: “The Gospel of the Lord.” Everyone will respond: “Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ.”
    • Refer to http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings or http://www.catholic.org/bible/daily_reading for the readings of the day.
  • Short Moment of Silence
  • Short Prayer-Reflection
    • This is in the form of a personally-composed reflection and 1-2 reflection questions.
    • A short reflection related to the passage is recommended. It is also recommended that the leader is able to connect the passage to the lesson at hand or to the general theme of G10, which is to Finding Happiness by living as Christ lived.
    • Finally, the prayer-reflection may end by asking for God’s grace needed for the day or for the period.
  • Special Intention
    • The prayer leader should offer a special intention for a classmate.
  • The Xaverian’s Prayer
    • Jesu, lux mundi… Luceat lux nostra! (Jesus, light of the world… Let our light shine!)
  • Invocation to the Saints (Class Patron – if blessed or saint, St. Francis Xavier and St. Ignatius of Loyola)
  • Make the Sign of the Cross

Jesus and Freedom Reflection

Reflect on the passages you had just read (The Samaritan Woman and Zacchaeus the Tax Collector). On this journal write your reflections on the passages based on the following guide questions:

  1. With which character, the Samaritan Woman or Zacchaeus the Tax Collector, can you relate to the most in the way that you exercise your own freedom? Why?
  2. Evaluate your relationship with Jesus. Do you have a good relationship, or is your relationship non-existent, or somewhere in between? How does your relationship with Christ affect the way that you exercise your freedom.
  3. In what way can you further strengthen your relationship with Christ and improve your exercise of freedom?

Note: Your posts will not be published on this site or in any other. This will simply be stored in the moderated comments section, meaning you can be as honest and as candid as you can.

Format in Posting:

Name, Section

1.)

2.)

3.)

AFTER posting your reflection, sign in to this link or look up GOOGLE CLASSROOMS and sign and enroll in the G10E Class using the group code: 8mrygc8. Look for the individual homework.

Baptismal Commitment

Together with the lighting of the candle is the Renewal of the Baptismal Promises/Vows made by the Godparents of the Child.

Renewal of Baptismal Promises

  1. Do you reject Satan?
    R. I do.
    V. And all his works?
    R. I do.
    V. And all his empty promises?
    R. I do.
    V. Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth?
    R. I do.
    V. Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary was crucified, died, and was buried, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father?
    R. I do.
    V. Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?
    R. I do.
    V. God, the all-powerful Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has given us a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and forgiven all our sins. May he also keep us faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ for ever and ever.
    R. Amen.

Taking into account the different symbols used in baptism and our call through it to be holy, to be of mission and be with others, COMPOSE three to five WELL-THOUGHT-OUT statements of your OWN Baptismal Commitment. After composing as much as you can, reflect prayerfully to this question: How would you truly live out your baptismal promises today?

FORMAT

Name

Baptismal Commitment:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Prayer Reflection:

White Garments PITSTOP

In the Rite of Baptism, the Priest says:

Anointing of Chrism: “God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has freed you from sin, given you a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into his holy people. He now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.”

Clothing with White Garment: “Receive this white garment. Never let it become stained, so that when you stand before the judgment seat of Our Lord you may have life everlasting.”

This prayer said at Baptism is a petition that we are anointed to share Jesus’ mission as Priest, Prophet and King and in the white garment, we may be kept without stain.

PITSTOP Contemplate:

Looking at your own life today, what resolutions can you make to make you worthy to be called a Baptized Christian keeping one’s life and faith pure and without stain?

Forgiveness PITSTOP

After watching the video on The Sinful Woman Anoints Jesus’ Feet (Lk 7:36-50), and Soul Pancake’s Science of Happiness: Forgiveness, reflect on the following questions:

  1. Who do you find difficult to forgive in your life right now? Why?
  2. Do they deserve to be forgiven? Why or why not?
  3. Right now in our lives, how closely do we resemble Christ who we put on in terms of showing Mercy and Forgiveness?

Salt and Light PITSTOP

“To live by Jesus’ Vision of Morality, his vision of the good life, we must possess the godly character of ‘loving’. Our presence to people must not be bland, tasteless and dull. It must invite and welcome, not isolate and reject. To be truly loving, one must be transformed from within and be a new creation in Christ, which simply means to bear the flavor of Christ. In this way, our mercy, our love for others, the respect we show them become more authentic.”

Question: In a scale of 1 – 10 (with 10 being the highest), how closely does the way I I live my life today resemble Christ’s Vision of Morality? Explain.

Church as Catholic PITSTOP

Vatican II synthesizes this mark further in a way to remind us of God’s call to universality in the world:

  • All are called to belong to the new People of God. Wherefore his People, while remaining one and unique, is to be spread throughout the whole world to all ages… This character of universality which adorns the People of God is that gift of the Lord whereby the Catholic Church strives energetically and constantly to bring all humanity with all its riches back to Christ the Head int he unity of his Spirit. (Lumen Gentium 13)

PITSTOPS

  1. Do I make myself available to others or I am focus on my own problems?
  2. How do I communicate to others the joy of encountering the Lord and the joy of belonging to the Church?
  3. Do we accept the other as who they are or do we intend to form them the way we want them to be?
  4. How do the answers to 1-3 speak of catholicity in the Church?

Why be Holy?

Take the time to reflect on the questions in order to come up with an honest answer. Please respond to the following guide questions:

  1. Why should I be Holy?
  2. Do I allow myself to be sanctified (made holy)?
  3. Are we a Church in which the love of God is lived, in which there is care for the other, in which we pray for one another?

FORMAT

Section

Name

1.

2.

3.

 

An Apology by Richard Dawkins

Those intrepid enough to venture onto my Twitter feed will have noticed a new feeding frenzy yesterday (20thAugust 2014), for which I apologise. The issue is the morality of abortion following screening for Down syndrome.

Down Syndrome, or Trisomy 21, results from the presence of an extra copy (or partial copy) of Chromosome 21. Symptoms vary but usually include characteristic facial features especially eye shape, abnormal growth patterns, and moderate mental disability. Life expectancy is reduced, and those who survive through adulthood often need special care as though they are children. Parents who care for their children with Down Syndrome usually form strong bonds of affection with them, as they would with any child. These feelings are sincere and mutual, and probably account for some of the hate tweets I have been experiencing (see below).

Screening for the chromosomal abnormality is normally offered, especially to older mothers who are more likely to have a child with the condition. When Down Syndrome is detected, most couples opt for abortion and most doctors recommend it.\

Yesterday a woman on Twitter, one of our respected regulars on RichardDawkins.net, said she would be unsure what to do if she found a fetus she was carrying had Down Syndrome. I replied to her, beginning my reply with @ which – or so I thought (I’m told Twitter’s policy on this might recently have changed) – meant it would not go to all my million followers but only to the minority of people who follow both her and me. That was my intention. However, it doesn’t stop people who go out of their way to find such tweets, even if they don’t automatically pop up on their Twitter feeds. Many did so, and the whole affair blew up into the feeding frenzy I mentioned.

Here is what I would have said in my reply to this woman, given more than 140 characters:

“Obviously the choice would be yours. For what it’s worth, my own choice would be to abort the Down fetus and, assuming you want a baby at all, try again. Given a free choice of having an early abortion or deliberately bringing a Down child into the world, I think the moral and sensible choice would be to abort. And, indeed, that is what the great majority of women, in America and especially in Europe, actually do.  I personally would go further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the child’s own welfare. I agree that that personal opinion is contentious and needs to be argued further, possibly to be withdrawn. In any case, you would probably be condemning yourself as a mother (or yourselves as a couple) to a lifetime of caring for an adult with the needs of a child. Your child would probably have a short life expectancy but, if she did outlive you, you would have the worry of who would care for her after you are gone. No wonder most people choose abortion when offered the choice. Having said that, the choice would be entirely yours and I would never dream of trying to impose my views on you or anyone else.”

That’s what I would have said, if a woman were to ask my advice. As you might notice, it takes a lot more than 140 characters! I condensed it down to a tweet, and the result was understandably seen in some quarters as rather heartless and callous: “Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.” Of course I regret using abbreviated phraseology which caused so much upset. I never wanted to “cry havoc”!

[…]

To conclude, what I was saying simply follows logically from the ordinary pro-choice stance that most us, I presume, espouse. My phraseology may have been tactlessly vulnerable to misunderstanding, but I can’t help feeling that at least half the problem lies in a wanton eagerness to misunderstand.

Pope Francis on Church as One

On the Unity of the Church
Vatican City, September 25, 2013 (Zenit.org)
Here is the translation of Pope Francis’ address during his weekly General Audience today held in St.
Peter’s Square.
* * *
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In the “Creed” we say “I believe in One … Church,” that is, we profess that the Church is one and this Church is, in herself, unity. However, if we look at the Catholic Church in the world we discover that she has almost 3,000 dioceses scattered in all the Continents: so many languages, so many cultures! Yet the thousands of Catholic communities form a unity. How can this be? We find a synthetic answer in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states: the Catholic Church spread around the world “has only one faith, only one sacramental life, only one apostolic succession, one common hope, the same charity” (n.  61). Unity in faith, in hope, in charity, unity in the Sacraments, in the Ministry: they are as pillars that support and hold together the one great edifice of the Church. Wherever we go, even in the smallest parish, in the most isolated corner of this
earth, there is the one Church; we are at home, we are in the family, we are among brothers and sisters. And this is a great gift of God! The Church is one for all. There isn’t a Church for Europeans, one for Africans, one for Americans, one for Asians, one for those who live in Oceania, but it’s the same one everywhere. It is as happens in a family: one can be far away, scattered around the world, but the profound bonds that unite all the members remain firm no matter what the distance is. I am thinking of the experience of the World Youth Day at Rio de Janeiro: in that immense multitude of young people on the beach of Copacabana, so many languages were heard, very different facial features were seen among them, different cultures met, yet there was a profound unity, one only Church was formed, there was unity and it was felt. Let’s all ask ourselves: do I feel this unity? Do I live this unity? Or don’t I care because I’m closed in in my small group or in myself? Am I one of those who “privatize” the Church for my own group, my own nation, my own friends? When I hear that so many Christians in the world are suffering, am I indifferent or is it as if someone of my family were suffering? Do we pray for one another? It’s important to look beyond one’s own enclosure, to feel oneself Church, the one family of God!

2. We take another step and ask ourselves: are there wounds to this unity? Can we wound this unity? Unfortunately, we see that in the course of history, also now, we don’t always live unity. Sometimes misunderstandings, conflicts, tensions, divisions arise that wound, and then the Church doesn’t have the face we would like, she doesn’t manifest charity. What God wants. We are the ones who create lacerations! And if we look at the divisions that there still are among Christians, Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants … we feel the labor of rendering this unity fully visible. God gives us unity, but we often
find it hard to live it. We must seek, build communion, and educate ourselves to communion, to surmount misunderstandings and divisions, beginning with the family, with the ecclesial realities, in the ecumenical dialogue. Our world is in need of unity, of reconciliation, of communion and the Church is the House of communion. Saint Paul said to the Christians of Ephesus: “I therefore, prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (4:1-3). Humility, gentleness, magnanimity, love to preserve unity! And he continued: There is one body, that of Christ which we receive in the Eucharist; one Spirit, the Holy Spirit that animates and constantly recreates the Church; one hope, eternal life; one faith, one Baptism, one God, Father of us all (cf. vv. 4-6). The richness of what unites us! Each one should ask himself today: do I make unity grow in the family, in the parish, in the community or am I a motive of division, of hardship? Do I have the humility to heal with patience, with sacrifice, the wounds to communion?

3.Finally, the last step in greater profoundness: who is the motor of this unity of the Church? It is the Holy Spirit. Our unity is not primarily the fruit of our consensus, of our effort to be in agreement, but it comes from Him who makes unity in diversity, which is harmony. Because of this, prayer is important, which is the soul of our commitment as men and women of communion, of unity. Let us pray to the Lord: enable us to be ever more united, to never be instruments of division; make
us be committed — as a beautiful Franciscan prayer says –, to bring love where there is hatred, to bring forgiveness where there is offense, to bring union where there is discord.

* * *
Speaker:
Dear Brothers and Sisters: In the Creed, we confess that the Church is “one”. When we consider the rich diversity of languages, cultures and peoples present in the Church throughout the world, we realize that this unity is a God-given gift, grounded in our common Baptism and our sharing in the Church’s one faith and sacramental life. Like a great family, we are united to all our brothers and sisters in Christ, wherever they may be. We might ask ourselves how much we appreciate and
express in our daily lives, and particularly in our prayer, this reality of our unity and solidarity in the communion of the Church. The world needs our witness to God’s plan for the unity, reconciliation and peace of the whole human family. Let us ask the Lord to enable us, and Christians everywhere, to work to overcome our tensions and divisions, to strive, as Saint Paul bids us, to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (cf.Eph 4:3), and to cherish the harmony which the same Spirit creates
from the richness of our diversity.

 

GUIDE QUESTIONS:

  1. What are the three big ideas from the reading above and how do these ideas confirm what we have learned about the Church as one?
  2. What is a challenge to the oneness that is given to the Church?
  3. How can we promote one-ness in the Church?

FORMAT

Section

Name, Name, Name, Name

1.

2.

3.