My week - Saturday

Saturday is a day of semi-rest. I'm not very active physically. This morning I drove daughter 3 to her boyfriend's house, dropping her off about 6:40. After I came home I surfed the web, listened to music, watched TV, in no particular order. Whatever I felt like doing at any given time.

I start to think through the Sunday school lesson for Sunday on Friday night. This week we'll be talking about the Holy Spirit, the beginning of the Church on Pentecost, apostles, and martyrs. The word "apostle" is often taken to refer to one of the twelve orginals, but it was a Greek word long before there was a church or a Twelve. "Apostle" simply means "one sent on a mission." When President Obama sent Hillary Clinton on an overseas mission, she was an apostle for him. The word "epistle" means "letter", so if Ms. Clinton sent a foreign dignitary a letter rather than making the trip, it was an epistle from an apostle. If that person sent a letter in reply, it was an epistle from that apostle. It had no connection with a church at all. In the Nicene Creed that the Roman Catholics and most Protestants (but not the Eastern Orthodox) subscribe to, we refer to "one holy catholic and apostolic church" (Roman Catholics capitalize the "Catholic".) The phrase means "one holy universal church with a mission."

We'll talk about martyrs. The martyrs we'll be focusing on will be associated with the violence in El Salvador in the early 1980s: Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated in March, 1980, and four American church women, three of them nuns, who were beaten, raped and murdered by five Salvadoran soldiers in December of that same year. We talked a while ago about Pedro Calungsod, a Filipino 18-year-old martyred in Guam a few centuries ago. The question: what is it that would motivate someone to surrender their very lives for something, as these people did?

On Friday night I work through some preliminary thoughts. During the early part of Saturday I fill out the subject matter. Later Saturday I start to consider the methodology. I have a catechists' guide (why say "teacher" when you can say "Catechist"?) and sometimes I adhere pretty closely, and sometimes not at all. Tomorrow will be a bit of a hybrid.

It's 10:42 now, and this is about the time I'm usually wrapping up, but after the 5 PM Mass Cindy and I and a couple of family members went out to a movie so things are a bit delayed. Cindy and I would notice if the plot was believable and well-developed, if the acting performances were good, if the screenplay was well-written. The family members we had with us are of such an age that they only notice if the actors are hot.

So, back to finishing up the prep. If a teacher shows up for a class unprepared, trust me, junior high kids will pick up on that quicklike and in a hurry.

Thanks for hanging out!