Why use a homily--not a sermon--format for homeschooling?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote briefly about my faith-based method of homeschooling. To recap: I see methods such as Catholic Heritage Curricula, which bring the faith to individual subjects, as using a sermon format. In contrast, our Contemplative Homeschool starts with a Bible passage. I look for the themes in that passage, and add as many subjects as I can into the discussion of those themes. As my kids get older, I hope to make writings of the Church Fathers and official documents and creeds a starting place for our curriculum as well.

Here are some advantages to using the homily format.

1. Homilies promote meditation on Sacred Scripture.

 

The Contemplative Homeschool is all about teaching our children to put prayer at the top of their priorities. It encourages a prayerful attitude and teaches methods of prayer, especially Christian meditation. As one blog commenter said, meditating on Scripture is like preaching a homily to oneself. My boys are forming the habit of looking for ways to connect Bible passages with their lives. I believe this will make it easier for them to create their own meditations as they grow older.

Read my other 4 reasons.

When you're too worn out to pray

Prayer takes energy. When you are stressed, you may find you can’t use your imagination to meditate. You may be too worn out to converse with God. This was the case with me last year, when homeschooling three kids with a baby overwhelmed me.

Several times when I went to pray, I had too little strength to picture a scene from the Gospels. I could barely muster the energy to think the words, “Jesus, I love you.”

But I knew I had to pray. And I knew Jesus was there. I knew His love was constant. That meant He was loving me at that moment. So I decided just to soak in God’s love, like I might soak in the sunlight. I sat silent, reminding myself briefly every few minutes that God’s love was surrounding me. I let Him love me, and that was my prayer for half an hour.

I’ll never forget one trip to the confessional at this period of my life. I don’t remember what I said to the priest–certainly no specifics about my prayer method–but his advice astonished me. He said I should just sit and let God love me–the very thing I had felt inspired to do.

If you are too emotionally drained to pray, try this method.

3 reasons I love Catholicism: Truth, goodness, and beauty

 Micaela at California to Korea is hosting a link-up called "3 Reasons I love Catholicism." You can submit your link all month. There are lots of good submissions, so check them out and join up. My reasons (in this post, anyway) are the triumvirate of truth, goodness, and beauty. I will show you how truth, goodness, and beauty are essential to the Contemplative Homeschool and to seeking God.


Fr. Benedict Groeschel, in Spiritual Passages: The Psychology of Spiritual Development "for those who seek", uses the categories of truth, beauty, goodness, and oneness in a similar way to learning styles or temperaments. They signify to him four ways of relating to God. We can use these categories to help ourselves and our students/children grow spiritually.

Truth satisfies the intellect 

 

The Catholic Church speaks the truth, no matter how few listen. She does not shy away from controversy. Countless Catholics have been martyrs for the truth. Unlike our relativistic culture, and some other religions and philosophies, Catholics believe the truth is objective and knowable. Humans have minds that desire satisfaction. By upholding objective truth, the Church upholds man's dignity.

Continue reading

An Interview With Christopher West

I recently finished reading and posted my review of Christopher West’s recent book Fill These Hearts. That review can be found here. This was the first book of Christopher’s I have read, but I have known about his work for some time now and was very excited when he agreed to an interview on the book and his ministry on the Theology of the Body. Thanks Christopher for taking time out of your certainly busy schedule and sharing some answers with my readers! Continue Reading

REACHING OUT TO ONE SOUL AT A TIME

I always wear mu crucifix on my outer garment, trolling for those who might want to discuss issues about their faith.  Last week at the gym Mike commented on the crucifix and them informed me he was a Baptized Catholic, had received a Catholic education and the Sacraments.  He recently began reading Darwin's theories and other books on evolutioon and was now an atheist.

The gym is not the best setting for evangelizing.  We exchanged some viewpoints and beliefs, the only thing we agreed on was that he could not prove there was no God and I could not scientifically prove there was.  I left him with this thought.  Believing Makes this life better.  You believe you are nothing more than a very intelligent animal, there are no eternal rewards for doing good or punishment for evil.  After some perhaps ninety years you will slip into an eternity of nothingness.  I believe I am created in the image and likeness of my creator, there is an aspect of my being that will never die.  My struggle for holiness can merit an eternity of joy in the presence of a loving God.  Whether that is true or not it makes this life so much better believing it.

Yours in Christ

John Moreno

Catholic Lay Preachers

www.thelaypreacher.com    

Is your homeschool faith-based?

 

I’ve read at least a dozen books on homeschool philosophy and gleaned something from every one. But none exactly met my vision of what I wanted our homeschool to be. Some were literature-based (Charlotte Mason/Real Learning). Others were history-based (Neo-Classical/The Well-Trained Mind). Others were classics-based (The Latin-Centered Curriculum). The faith-based methods fell into two general categories of Protestant, Bible-based (Ruth Beechick) and either Protestant or Catholic textbooks that incorporated the faith into each subject (Seton Homeschool and Catholic Heritage Curricula). I decided to create a Catholic Bible-based homeschool method.

 

Teaching with homilies, not sermons

 

One way in which the Contemplative Homeschool is different from other faith-based methods is that I spread religion across the curriculum in a homily, not sermon, format. A sermon, common in Protestant churches, starts with an idea. The preacher finds Bible passages to support his idea. A homily, on the other hand, begins with the Church’s Scripture readings for the day, and pulls ideas out of them. Both can teach the same subject, but from the opposite direction. A homily, ideally, should give a greater insight into a particular Bible passage, while a sermon might show how a particular idea is taught throughout the Bible.

Catholic Heritage Curricula (and those like it) takes a subject and brings the faith into it. For example, The Catholic Speller includes words such as “Mass” in the appropriate units. This method is common, even used in some Catholic schools. I see this as a sermon approach. The faith is added on to a subject, but the subject is central.

In contrast, I am going through the Bible with my boys from start to finish. I take a Bible story–Jacob and Esau, for example–and create a union to connect as many subjects as I can to the themes found in the story. The central focus is the Bible, not the subject. I see this as a homily approach.

I see many advantages to the homily approach, which I will detail in a future post.

Read More: Here’s a pared-down example of a unit on Manna in the Wilderness

Share with us: How do you incorporate the faith into your homeschool?

Big News at The Catholic Book Blogger

It has been a VERY busy and exciting two weeks for me. Immediately after the Mike Aquilina interview (read it here), site traffic went through the roof! That resulted in new publishers coming on board that I will be working with. These are all listed on the column to the right. Every one of the publishers on that list are fantastic and each offers great books for your spiritual enrichment. I encourage you to support as many of them as you can by visiting their websites, checking out their selections and making a purchase. Simply click on the publishers logo to be redirected there. I am currently reading Rebuilt by Fr. Michael White and Tom Corcoran.  Continue Reading

What is Carmelite spirituality?

What is Carmelite spirituality? A couple of readers have asked me this question, and I assume several more have wondered and not asked. So I'm going to write this as a post (for maximum visibility and readership), then make it a permanent page soon.

Carmelite spirituality stems from the teaching and lifestyle of one of the oldest surviving religious orders in the Catholic Church. Like the Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, and others, the Carmelites have a particular way of living out the faith, which has been approved by the Church. St. Therese of Lisieux, one of the best-beloved saints of our age, was a Carmelite nun.

From ancient Mt. Carmel to medieval Europe

In the 12th century, a group of Christian hermits settled on Mt. Carmel,  where the prophet Elijah had once lived in a cave. St. Albert of Jerusalem wrote a rule of life for them to follow. They built a monastery and came together for prayer, but each lived in his own cell. They dedicated their oratory to Mary, becoming known as the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mt. Carmel.

As always, tensions were high in the Middle East at this time. Soon the Carmelite brothers left the Holy Land for Europe. There they assumed an active life--that is, living and working in the world. Blessed John Soreth established the Carmelite nuns in 1452. The Third Order, for seculars, began two centuries later.

Continue reading.

Win a free book for a first communicant or other child!

CatholicFamilyGifts.com offered me a free first-Communion gift to review and give away to one of my readers. Since my boys are currently interested in hidden picture books, I chose Can You Find Saints?: Introducing Your Child to Holy Men and Women. After the review, I will tell you how can enter to win this book.

Can You Find Saints? is one in a series of four  books by Philip D. Gallery. The series also includes Can You Find Jesus?, Can You Find the Followers of Jesus?, and Can You Find Bible Heroes? Janet L. Harlow illustrated all four books. They combine hide-and-seek fun with learning about the faith.

Given the cover and the genre, I was prepared for cartoon illustrations similar to the Where's Waldo? series. Harlow provides more than that. The inside front and back covers contain a parchment-like timeline of saints, beginning with Abraham. "Search 1: Mary Lives a Life of Perfect Virtue" delighted me with its depiction of the mysteries of the Rosary and approved Marian apparitions, encircling a Renaissance Madonna and Child. A  version of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam above St. Peter's Basilica forms the background for "Search 7: Saints Who Were Popes."

Finish reading the review and enter the contest.

You can be holy today

There seems to be a dilemma in the spiritual life. We want to do great things for God, but we are caught up in the little tasks of everyday life. We think holiness must wait until some future time: when the kids are grown up, when the job is less demanding, when we retire, when we can go on retreat. But if, as Vatican II taught, holiness is meant for everyone, shouldn’t it be accessible in every circumstance? How can we become holy now?

Although some saints have been martyrs, missionaries, or miracle workers, others have been parents, kings and queens, businessmen, and even children. How did they become great? Through “abandonment to divine providence” as Fr. Jeanne-Pierre de Caussade called it.

Don’t let the big words confuse you. This is simply the “Little Way” of St. Therese of Lisieux, who said that even when she picked an object off the floor, she did it out of love for God. Likewise, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said, “We must do little things with great love.” This practice has also been called “the sacrament of the present moment.”

Continue reading about the Little Way.

Pope Francis on Pastoring

Yertle in Babylon

This post is part of an occasional series called Finding God in Children's Literature, in which I look at children's books in light of the Bible and Sacred Tradition. All correlations between these books and the Christian faith are my own insights, unless otherwise noted. You may quote me or link to these posts, but please do not re-blog them or use these ideas as though they were your own. Thank you.

Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss is the story of a proud and power-hungry reptile. He starts out as king of a pond of turtles. Unsatisfied with that, he commands his subjects to stand on one another's' shells in a stack, while he climbs to the top. The stack of turtles keeps growing, despite the protests of the turtle on the bottom, named Mack. Yertle believes he is king of all he can see, so the higher his throne of turtles goes, the more powerful he becomes. Eventually, he over steps and the stack of turtles collapses. At last, Yertle is only King of the Mud.

Theodore Geisel, who is better known to the world as Dr. Seuss, was a political cartoonist before he began writing children's books. He later said he meant Yertle the Turtle as a condemnation of Hitler. But there is a much more ancient culture than Nazi Germany that had striking similarities to Yertle's kingdom--Babylon.

Continue reading.

Calling all Catholic spirituality bloggers!

Do you blog primarily on Catholic spirituality? Not a blog on Catholic doctrine or apologetics, politics, book reviews or a “Mommy blog”–but one focused on helping your readers grow closer to Christ? I have not been able to find an exclusive list of  spirituality links, so I decided to create one. Send me an email at crossini4774 at comcast dot net to have your blog listed here.

See more details on the requirements first.