During our class on September 24, we welcomed our new class aide, Hadley Kalas, a junior at Fenwick.
For our opening prayer, we prayed with the hymn "Be Thou My Vision". This video is performed by two sisters, Abby and Annalie.
September 24 was the day that I participated in a Confirmation retreat 3 weeks before my Confirmation Mass. Then we considered what we know about the Holy Spirit, even as Paul shared teh celebration of his Confirmation with special treats.
The Holy Spirit is the presence of God dwelling within us.
As the Gospel according to St. Matthew states, Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. In the final chapter of Matthew, Jesus sent forth the apostles, and declared that He would be with them always, a promise fulfilled when the Holy Spirit came, a story described in Acts 2.
The Holy Spirit sends us on our mission to proclaim the Good News that God saves and that God is at work among us.
This mission has been fulfilled in so many ways throughout the centuries.
Spanish priests came to Mexico in the 16th Century to catechize the indigenous Aztecs. One of those people was San Juan Diego, who played a pivotal role in evangelization in Mexico. I played a clip in the last two minutes of the first episode of The Saints podcast series about San Juan Diego.
San Padre Junipero Serra was a Franciscan priest from Spain who went to Mexico in the 18th Century and then founded several missions in what is now the state of California, which are now major cities.
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| Above and below are photos at the Mission San Diego in California. I visited there with friends back on July 16, 2022, the anniversary of its founding. Below is a photo of me by a sign out front, taken by one of my friends. |
We have the opportunity to testify to how God is at work in our lives, like in this news interview with Grace McCallum, an Olympic gymnast at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games.
We finished class with the song "Come Rest on Us" with a video of it from a NEC session. (Here's another music video of the song.)
As usual, please feel free to let me know if you have any questions, feedback, etc.
May the Holy Spirit be at work in you, as we remain connected as One Church, brought alive by that Spirit:
All my relations.
God's blessings,
Paul
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