Glory Cloud

This post links to Sunday Snippets

This year so far is the best year I've had catechizing 6th grade, which is saying a lot, since even the worst year (which I clearly remember) was still a good year. It takes a couple of months for the children to adjust to how class works, but lately we've become quite the little family, laughing, learning, anticipating, finishing each other's sentences. It's like sitting around the dinner table and the topic of lively conversation is always Jesus and his Church. The last two classes were like group flow-states, if that's possible. The kids believe in themselves, partly because they know I believe in them and love them like my own children. Every Wednesday night we hit the ground running, and they are fearless thinkers, knowing that even a fabulously wrong answer can still be a good answer.

Last class we were discussing this Annunciation, and how aspects of both Church and Temple are present in the building.

 Panel from the Isenheim Altarpiece

The kids can relate new stuff to old stuff on the fly, and one of them asked if there had been a Shekhinah cloud over the Temple, as there had been over the Meeting Tent. "Huh...maybe as long as it contained the Ark; y'all may remember that the Ark was gone by the time Mary was born. But there's a Glory Cloud in the painting. I see it! Yes! And in the cloud? The dove, the Holy Spirit! Yes! But is it overshadowing the Ark? No, Mary! Yes, because...Jesus is in her? Yes, as of that very moment when both Holy Spirit and Glory Cloud overshadow her. Yes, what? Is there a Shekhinah in church? Uhh...never thought about it. I guess not. Well, maybe it's there but we can't see it because of sin (being blinded or veiled by sin is a standard idea). Wow, you could be right! There's all sorts of glory and saints and angels at Mass with us, so I wouldn't be surprised if the whole church (arms waving around) might be lit like the sun with God's presence. It might be like visions Isaiah and Daniel had (they know them). Wow. We'll get to some of that later this year." And then we continued to discuss the painting.

I know this vignette is a small thing, but for that weekly hour of class we hover on the cusp of Heaven. This is my life. As the song says, God Has Been So Good to Me.

Res Ipsa Loquitur 17: Whole Lotta Eatin' Goin' On

A few minutes from the Bible about eating at this episode of Source and Summit.

Res Ipsa Loquitur 16: Mass Density

This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

James Tissot Strikes Again

Six minutes on a Scripturally-packed part of the Mass, in this podcast at Source and Summit; and a winsome conversion story by host Marvin Max.

Pitchers 21: Uzziah and Mary

This post and the next link to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

"What animal is that? That's an ox. Doesn't look like an ox. Well, two oxen then. It looks like just one. OK, it looks like one ox, thanks for agreeing with me. Now stop whining and look at Uzziah."

Read and draw: "And they carried the ark of God upon a new cart, and brought it out of the house of Abinadab which was on the hill; David and all the house of Israel were making merry before the LORD with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzziah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzziah; and God smote him there because he put forth his hand to the ark; and he died there beside the ark of God."

We discuss how the Ark was too pure to be touched by sinful humans, which of course is why it had carrying poles. One of the kids asks, Do you think Mary could touch it? "Wow, I don't know. I suppose; although I don't think she would have presumed to do so. And the Ark was gone by the time Mary was alive. Good question."

I was tempted right then to digress a bit about Mary being the Ark of the New Covenant, but decided to let it go. But next month when we get to the Annunciation, I'll introduce the New Ark concept by starting with this Old Ark scene from 2Samuel. I'll ask who remembers the question someone asked about who might have been able to touch the Ark and live. That'll be the jumping-off point for talking about Mary the New Ark containing sinless baby Jesus inside her for nine months.

Pitchers 20: Qodesh Qodesh

This post links to Convert Journal

From the Nov. 5 Catechism class

Drawing and reading about the Holy of Holies*  in Solomon's temple: "The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and twenty cubits high; and he overlaid it with pure gold.  In the most holy place he made two cherubim of wood and overlaid them with gold. The wings of the cherubim together extended twenty cubits: one wing of the one, of five cubits, touched the wall of the house, and its other wing, of five cubits, touched the wing of the other cherub; and of this cherub, one wing, of five cubits, touched the wall of the house, and the other wing, also of five cubits, was joined to the wing of the first cherub. The wings of these cherubim extended twenty cubits; the cherubim stood on their feet, facing the nave. Then the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the LORD to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the most holy place, underneath the wings of the cherubim. For the cherubim spread out their wings over the place of the ark, so that the cherubim made a covering above the ark and its poles." Not included in the text is the High Priest at lower right, and the LORD's presence hovering over the Mercy Seat. Cherubim's swords are my addition based on Genesis.

I first drew the 30 x 30 x 30 shape of the space, and the kids recognized it as a cube. Then the other details were added on the fly as they came up while reading. The cube will matter this spring when we draw and read about a much larger one described in Revelations: "The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its breadth; and he measured the city with his rod, twelve thousand stadia; its length and breadth and height are equal." The other bits will matter when we transition from God's Old Covenant dwelling to his New Covenant dwelling.

When teaching adults, a picture is worth a thousand words. A live drawing is worth five thousand words. And with kids, a live drawing is worth ten thousand words. When I get to Revelations in April, will they remember the shape and stuff of the Holy of Holies? You bet they will.

*Qodesh Qodesh, קדש  קדש, Holy (of) Holies.

Res Ipsa Loquitur 15: Food Pyramid

This post links to Source and Summit

Jesus spoke literally at the Last Supper. 7-minute podcast based on 6th-grade catechism class content.

Make Babies

This post links to Convert Journal

Yes, that is a Platytera. It's OK to laugh.

6th-grade catechism class naturally covers a lot of Catholic themes during its year-long trip through the Bible. One of them is marriage and children. I don't ever stand in front of the kids and say, "marriage and babies are good, and divorce and abortion are bad," I let them figure it out as we go, helped along with personal testimony from me. I don't form consciences so much as create the opportunity for the kids to form their own consciences themselves.

Here's a list of Bible bits that the kids learn about and discuss, my intent being to help them develop a Catholic worldview without being didactic about it:

1. Creation. God's last and greatest creation is a man and a woman together, creating babies. But not just any man and woman, a husband and wife, a marriage: one man, one rib, one woman, one flesh.

2. After all, the first commandment is to "be fruitful and multiply," more pithily expressed in class as "make babies."

3. The Flood. As soon as Noah steps out of the Ark, God reminds him and his family of the first commandment: "Be fruitful and multiply."

4. Abraham and Sarah become the parents of a nation.

5. To accomplish #4, Abraham and Sarah have a miraculous pregnancy. They're so happy that their love has at last made a baby that they name him Laughter.

6. Pagan peoples living around Abraham kill their own firstborn children and offer them to strange gods, but God doesn't require that of Abraham right off. But when God does ask for Isaac's sacrifice, Abraham must feel as though he's been asked to kill all the laughter and joy in his life.

7. Isaac and Rebecca have a miraculous pregnancy, and Rebecca bears Esau and Jacob.

8. Jacob and Rachel have a miraculous pregnancy, and Rachel bears Joseph.

9. Manoah and his wife have a miraculous pregnancy, and she bears Samson.

10. Elkhanah and Hannah have a miraculous pregnancy, and Hannah bears Samuel.

11. Psalm 78 says God "appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children; 6 that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God." So even kids not yet born or even conceived still matter to God.

12. In Psalm 128, David reflects on the joy of family: "Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table."

13. Israel falls on hard times, and some parents kill their babies to appease Molech: "Are you not children of transgression, the offspring of deceit, you who burn with lust among the oaks, under every green tree; who slay your children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks?"

14. But God still loves his children in both fatherly and motherly ways: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands."

15. God knew Jeremiah, and had a job for him before his mom was even pregnant: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations."

16. Baby-killing continues in Jeremiah's day: "Stand in the gate of the LORD's house, and say, Hear the word of the LORD, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel,"I will let you dwell in this place if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt. The people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by burning incense in it to other gods; and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents, and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal." The kids figure out on their own how such passages relate to abortion.

17. Zechariah and Elizabeth have a miraculous pregnancy, and Elizabeth bears John.

18. Mary has the most miraculous pregnancy, and bears Jesus.

This is not an exhaustive list, just the things we have time for in catechism class. By the time we get to Mary, the children can place her at the end of a line of mothers that stretches all the way back to Eve; and have acquired a holistic Scriptural basis for a pro-life conscience.