Everything you teach, you put in the context of the Good News. The sacraments are all about your relationship with God.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhen describing what happens in the sacraments, use active voice rather than passive voice.<\/p>\n
Not Enough: \u201cIn baptism, original sin is removed.\u201d*<\/p>\n
Explain: \u201cWhen you ask for Baptism, you are asking God to come into your life and remove all sin from your soul.\u00a0 You are asking Him to remove every barrier that separates you from Him, so that you and the Lord can again share the intimacy and loving bond that He created you to experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not Enough: \u201cIn the sacrament of reconciliation, mortal sins are removed and supernatural grace is bestowed upon the soul.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes: \u201cIn the sacrament of confession, you are approaching our Lord and asking Him to forgive you of your sins.\u00a0 It is, in its essence, apologizing to Jesus.\u00a0 You are rebuilding your friendship with God, just like you\u2019d have to do some \u201crebuilding\u201d if you\u2019d had a fight with one of your friends, or with your mom or dad.\u00a0 The thing about the sacrament is that God is always, always, waiting for you to come to Him, because He desperately wants to be in a relationship with you.\u00a0 You never ever have to worry that you\u2019ve done something unforgivable.\u00a0 No matter how far you\u2019ve gotten away from God, He always wants you back in His arms.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so forth.\u00a0 Meditate upon the sacraments.\u00a0 The theology is beautiful.\u00a0 It\u2019s beautiful because God is beautiful.\u00a0 The study of God is the study of the one most beautiful thing.<\/p>\n
Can There Be Too Much Mercy?<\/h2>\n
One of the fears that some faithful Catholics have expressed is that in teaching God\u2019s mercy and forgiveness, we risk teaching an all-approving teddy bear god.\u00a0 If your definition of \u201cmercy\u201d is \u201ceverything you do is just fine,\u201d then yes, you are teaching about a false god.\u00a0 If your definition of \u201cforgiveness\u201d is \u201cyou didn\u2019t really do anything wrong,\u201d then yes, again, you are teaching a false god.<\/p>\n
One of the joys of teaching young people is that they do have a keen sense of justice.\u00a0 Just ask any child who\u2019s been given 2% less ice cream than his sibling: It is possible to sin against God and man.<\/p>\n
Without the hope of forgiveness, the sinner has two choices: Condemnation or flight.\u00a0 If you stay and admit your sin, you will be condemned.\u00a0 To avoid condemnation, if there is no forgiveness you must either deny you have sinned or flee the condemner.<\/p>\n
It is important, therefore, that we give teens a clear sense of what forgiveness is: You actually did something wrong.\u00a0 Something truly evil.\u00a0 And now the person you harmed is willing to restore his relationship with you.<\/p>\n
After you have established, firmly, this understanding of forgiveness, it becomes possible to both teach about God\u2019s bountiful mercy and to teach teens how to examine their consciences.<\/p>\n
Because forgiveness (and sin) is such an alien concept in our culture, plan to repeat the definition of forgiveness every class period.\u00a0 Likewise, plan to repeat a short version of the Good News every class period.\u00a0 60 seconds a class devoted to re-grounding your students in the Gospel, and then you can teach all the rest with much more success.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
*Updated for Clarification: you should<\/em><\/strong> give your students the concise technical definitions of the sacraments.\u00a0 Absolutely yes.\u00a0 But you don\u2019t leave it there.\u00a0 Preach that Good News in your explanations.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Artwork: By Jagba (Own work) [GFDL<\/a> or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0<\/a>], via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over at Sherry Weddell\u2019s Forming Intentional Disciples Forum, someone asked: Anyone have any thoughts on how to approach teaching sacraments to high school students in an evangelizing way? The other responses were excellent, and helped me form my thoughts.\u00a0 Building on the ideas of several others, here\u2019s my answer: Everything you teach, you put in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,13,7,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catechesis-2","category-catholic-qa","category-evangelization","category-forgiveness"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n