CONFIRMED IN THE SPIRIT!
"Confirmation was beautiful" was the
remark of the month in October. Many parents and guests at
Sacred Heart for Confirmation were so positive and excited
to celebrate with our 82 young people and eight adult
confirmandi. We truly are blessed to have so many people
ask to be confirmed in their faith.
This has been an extremely busy fall
for the Religious Education Office. We have a higher
enrollment in the PSR program, we have many new teachers,
and we have been working on becoming certified in the
diocese to teach the Faith. We have seven catechists who
are fully certified and our new catechists are currently
working on certification through the year.
In November we completed a Faith
Formation course of 6 hours, which is one segment of the
certification process.
A new program that has been well
received is the new Faith First Family Night. This gives
families an opportunity to attend the 5:00 p.m. Mass on
Saturday evening, gather in McMahon Hall for a potluck
supper, and then spend about an hour and half developing a
particular liturgical theme. We pray, do activities, and
sing. We are finished at 8:00 pm.and then we all help to
clean up. In October we looked at the Blessed Mother and
learned more about her and how Mary is a part of our
lives. We worked on the Saints in November and we will be
developing Advent in December. Families of all ages are
welcome; please call the Religious Education Office if you
would like to attend. We take turns bringing the main
course and naturally there is pizza for the younger
people.
Another very exciting piece that is
new this year was the Community Mass and Potluck supper in
November for children in the 3rd and 4th grade. This was
an opportunity for children in the day school, home
school, and PSR to gather together to celebrate Mass with
their families. After Mass, families shared a potluck. The
echo prayer the children used for the Communion Reflection
was done in preparation for the closing of our parish
Eucharistic Devotions.
MOST IMPORTANT
of all the activities we did this fall was the involvement
of the 2nd, 3rd and 8th graders in Eucharistic Devotions.
All children preparing for the sacraments are required to
participate in this celebration of Eucharistic Devotions,
the heart of our Catholic Faith.
The next Confirmation class is off
to a great start. We have 75 new confirmandi who are
preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation in 2003. If
there is an eighth grader who would like to join this
process and hasn’t yet signed up it isn’t too late. Please
call the Religious Education Office.
All second graders in the day
school, home school, and PSR who would like to participate
in the special Children’s Christmas Mass on Christmas day,
at 10:00 a.m., please watch for the flyer to come home
very soon. We will be doing something a little different
that promises to be very exciting. Call the Religious Ed.
Office if you don’t see a flyer from your child.
BIG NEWS COMING IN
JANUARY!
On January 8, come and join us for
our Vocation Press Conference. We will be holding a press
conference with the children on Wednesday, January 8th,
and all parishioners are invited to attend. We will have
parishioners sharing how, why, and when they discovered
their vocation. We will have singles, married couples;
Father Joe, Deacon Roger, and Sister Therese Marie speak
on their vocations.
This will be is the initial
introduction to the contest for the best art contribution
for VOCATIONS. In March we will ask our parishioners to
vote on the art piece of their choice. The top three
winners will have their art piece displayed at the
Vincentian Motherhouse for the diocesan open house of all
religious communities in the Cleveland Diocese on April 6,
2003.
