Day 33

Happy Feast of Guardian Angels!

Today was Hallway day, and the juniors decorated their hallway as "New York."  Therefore, I dressed as a business professional wearing a black dress, heals, and my pearl earrings and necklaces.  One of my other students interpreted it like that too, so we were dressed very similarly.  It was fun to get extra dressed up for teaching!

To start off class, after prayer, I gave my students time to plan/create/practice a skit based on one of the beatitudes.  I was quite impressed how all of my students really got into the skits!  Sometimes you get a teen that's "too cool" or just wants to play a tree or something like that.  I let them go to the couch room and while they were doing that for about 15 minutes, I read up on the pope, because what else would a pope-loving Catholic do in their 15 minutes of spare time?

I woke up from a very realistic dream this morning.  I found myself in Rome thinking I was in line to get into St. Peter's basilica.  It was early in the morning, the sun was just starting to rise, and it was cool, but not uncomfortably so.  As I got to the part where I'd have them check my bag and walk through the security scanner, there he was, Pope Francis, ready to great me with open arms!  He took a few minutes to talk with me and welcome me to the Vatican.  I could not believe I hadn't noticed him, or the excitement of the people in front of me.  Once I faced forward, I saw him, and out of human nature, turned around and asked the people behind me if they knew Pope Francis was there all along.  The person behind me happened to be one of my students and her father (at least what my dream presented as her father).  Today was the first morning in a long time where getting up to my alarm was not a struggle.  Perhaps it had something to do with the dream.  I look forward to teaching but waking up early has never been a strong point for me. 

Further analyzing my dream, maybe I didn't recognize the Pope waiting for me because I was too busy looking around, glancing at the statues, looking at the top of the basilica, catching a glimpse of the pope's apartment window, and other common things one would look at being there.  It was very accurate because I have been to the Vatican before.  Sometimes dreams misconstrued a place that we are familiar with.  This was spot on!  The things surrounding us are not necessarily bad, but sometimes we focus on the material things and loose focus of Jesus. 

When do I loose focus of Jesus in my life? Is he really at the center?  Maybe these are questions you need to ask yourself.  I'm asking them because I cannot get this wonderful dream out of my head.  I also can't understand why I didn't notice the excitement of the people ahead of me.  It's not every day that you get to casually chat with the pope or be in his very presence.  Our lives should be focused on our destination, which is heaven.  Is Jesus the one I/you are seeking?  Am I/you all in? 

Going back to the skits, each class presented one.  The first class based their skit off of this beatitude: "Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Mt. 5:10)  The other class did theirs based off of "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God" (Mt. 5:9).

Ultimately, how happiness lies entirely in God.  God is the one who we search for, who quenches our thirst for love.  We can only catch a glimpse of this love here on earth.  Our reward for living moral/Catholic lives is in heaven.  Jesus does not promise us that people will love us for doing what is right and moral.  It's a good way to gain enemies today and a few true friends.  I hate to think of society as an us vs. them kind of thing, but there are so many issues that we are split on as a society: premarital sex, contraception for the purpose of preventing a child, abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.  It's complete insanity that half if not more of people in our country alone is ok with these things.  Why?  "Because they make us happy."  No.  Just....no.  Before this turns into an annoying rant, I'll go to the scripture. 

Eve eats a piece of fruit that she isn't supposed to.  But that can't be too bad, right?  Well, it is because God told her not to do it.  What did she do?  She ate it.  Where does that leave us?  Concupiscence.  Disordered desire.  Sin.  Suffering.  Things that make it really hard for us to experience joy. 

God knows his creation.  He is our creator.  He knows what's good for us.  He alone can provide us with the love we need, and through Him we can live in right relationship with Him, our neighbor, and the rest of creation.  That isn't to say that material possessions are bad. It's when we over-indulge.  When we use things for our own selfish motives.

So far our morality classes have been pretty chill.  We haven't gotten into any heated discussions and they haven't have too many questions yet.  We defined morality as:

Knowledge based on human experience, reason, and God's revelation that discovers what we ought to be and what we ought to do to live fully human lives.  In other words, we can come to know how we should act and who we are as people because it has been revealed to us.  In other words, morality is being responsible to God and others. 

So that's the goal.  To live good and moral lives.  I don't know of institutions that wouldn't support that statement, however, how people interpret that can be pretty interesting.

Tomorrow we will dive into what our conscience is and the difference between vices and virtues. 

Tonight's class is all on Salvation History aka the greatest love story of all time!  (God's love for us.) 

Have a lovely afternoon!