Day 10

Knock Knock? 
Who's there?
John.
John who?
JOHN THE BAPTIST!!!!! (pours water bottle on top of person)

No, I did not pick on any of my students are act this out.  I fell subject to this many years ago as a counselor at Camp WOW back in the day.  Too funny!

Anyway, today we talked about Baptism and the difference between Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist (J-the-B as Padre from Loras referred to him- I used that and my students got a kick out of that) and our Baptism in the Catholic/Christian Church.

I won't go on about everything I told them about the sacrament other than how awesome Jesus' sanctifying grace is and how it still stirs things up in our hearts if we allow it!  This grace helps us live out both the cardinal and theological virtues!  Baptism encourages and helps us bring about moral goodness into the world.  

We are a Church that says "Yes" to the culture of life.  We ran out of time because of another early out today.  Just found out that we have an early out for the rest of this week which is exciting but it really narrows down my time with them :(.  So, tomorrow they will do an activity of making billboards/signs that promote how we say yes!  For example:  Say YES to life!  or Say YES to social responsibility....etc etc.  Basically I wanted to show how we are a community of people striving for good in our world and not some outdated group that constantly says no.  We do say no.  We have a list of commandants that say "Thou shall not...."  We say NO to sin, but to put a more positive twist on it, I want them to be creative and come up with what we say yes to!  Those will be displayed in my classroom tomorrow so you'll see pictures of those tomorrow!

Today I brought in my Holy Water, seeing it was fitting when talking about the Sacrament of Baptism and we used it to bless ourselves as we started off class with prayer.  Yesterday, someone asked me why we bless ourselves with holy water when we walk into church and I said because it prepares us for mass and to receive Jesus in the Eucharist.  It also reminds us of our Baptismal promises.  Oh, and I mentioned that by doing so, we are forgiven of our venial sins!  They got SO excited about that!  You would have thought I told them we were having a pizza party or something.  But no, they all got so excited over the function of holy water.  (Saints in the making?!  Ehhh?!  I think SO!)  I told them how even though it might not be common, it's totally ok to have holy water in our homes.  I shared that sometimes I use it when I'm praying at home or if I have nightmares I usually grab it to bless my bed.  That made them smile.  Back to today. As I was dismissing them, one of my students said, "Miss Sexton, should we bless ourselves on our way out?"  They continue to surprise me every single day.  So yes, I encouraged them, if they wished, to bless themselves on their way out.  Every one of them took the moment to pour a little holy water on their fingers and bless themselves by making the sign of the cross.  DAY MADE.

I need to get a holy water font or bowl so they can do this every class.  For now, we'll just be using this little bottle.