Level II, January 10th and 13th

It was a great week in the atrium, though for the Wednesday evening classes it was a little shorter than usual! The Sunday and Wednesday 7pm classes will be leading the singing on January 24th at 10:30 mass (mark your calendars if you haven't already), and the 7pm class began rehearsing this week. The Wednesday evening classes also celebrated Vocations Awareness Week by watching the film Fishers of Men (click on the title if you would like to watch it. It's about 20 minutes long, but very good). One 3rd grade boy was struck by the testimony of one of the priests in the movie, because he had given up everything for the "precious pearl" (Matt 13:45-46--This is one of the parables we present in the atrium). The child ran up to his catechist afterward and with great joy announced: "That movie reminded me why I gave up everything for the Precious Pearl: Jesus!"

We began classes with our Christmas procession, since we have not had class since the Christmas season started. The season of Christmas actually ended on the 10th, the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, but everyone got to sing "Joy to the World" and process in with the white cloth that signifies a celebration. We also presented the "Flight into Egypt" which is the final infancy narrative material we have in the atrium.
This presentation, based on the scriptures from Matthew 2: 13-18, was met with a combination of sadness and wonder by the children. Of course, fearing for the child's life, the parents of Jesus had to travel very far (some children wanted to check out some reference materials to see how far Jerusalem and King Herod were from Bethlehem--less than 10 miles!--and we could see that Egypt was a very long trip indeed). The child was always well guarded and protected, though, and the angels seem to still have a very important place in Jesus' life: we saw the angel come to Mary, the angel appear to Joseph in a dream to tell him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, the angels appeared to the shepherds to announce Jesus' birth, and now an angel warning Joseph of the danger caused by Herod's jealousy. Of course, we did have some children who thought that the Holy Family walked to Egypt, so they were a little surprised that "they took a flight?!" :) The children also continued to grow in their understanding of who's who in scripture as they discovered to their surprise that the King Herod in this story died, and so it was a different Herod that we hear about when Jesus is older.

Next week, we will return to the green cloth that we haven't seen since November! We are all looking forward to the special "growing time" in the atrium before the solemn season of Lent is upon us.

God bless! ~ Mandie