Each week, our lesson is based on the upcoming Sunday’s readings. Rather than having a single textbook for the entire year, we have weekly “pamphlets” or magazines. We use these in class and send them home with the children. You can refer to these in conjunction with my descriptions of the weekly class sessions. Each has the title “Venture” on the front.
We started the class with special opening prayer in light of events in the Middle East. It focused on peace. We asked the students to close their eyes and to listen carefully to a reading of the Beatitudes. It finished with all reading a Peace Prayer from St. Francis.
Last Wednesday’s class was a little odd in that it had two entirely different messages. It was based on Matthew 22:1-14. The first part of the lesson dealt with the issue of poverty and especially hunger. The second part focused on hearing and answering God’s invitations.
We started with the hunger quiz on the front cover and discussed the answers and the problem of food insecurity.
We had volunteers read the story of Cynthia’s Kitchen on pages 2-3 (True story, by the way.) and discussed the “Think” questions. We showed a short video from NBC News “Kids News” about a food pantry in Texas.
We moved on to the Gospel reading and had volunteers role play the parts of the Gospel on page 4. We reemphasized the idea that a parable is a story with a message in it. In the parable, Jesus tells the story of a king who invites people to a wedding feast, but most refuse the invitation, even killing the messengers who carry the invitation. The king invites others to the feast, but one shows up without being properly dressed. The king has him bound and thrown into the darkness.
We discussed that Jesus is not really giving an etiquette lesson on how to respond to a wedding invitation. The key is in nature of Jesus’s audience. They are the chief priests and elders, who are Jesus’s enemies. We pointed out that Jesus was a rabblerouser, looking to make changes. His audience was the religious power structure of the time — those who were invested in the status quo and resisted Jesus’s message. Through discussion, we drew out the idea that the king in the parable is God; the wedding is the Kingdom of Heaven; and the invitations are God’s invitation for us to join him. Jesus is warning his enemies the repercussions of refusing God’s invitation.
In the “Connecting Gospel and Doctrine” section on page 4, this concept is reinforced. “As baptized Christians, the Eucharist is the feast to which God invites us.”
As usual, we ran out of time before we ran out of material. We finished up by asking each student to cite something they learned that evening. All were able to do so and were rewarded with a piece of candy.
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