October 4, 2022, Class Update: Our Mission

Greetings everyone!

In our most recent class, we focused on the mission we have as people of faith.

We looked at several different Bible passages that speak to what our mission is:

Matthew 28:18-20
Mark 16:15-18
Luke 4:16-21
Luke 10:1-9
Acts 1:8
2 Timothy 4:1-2

Jesus Christ established the Church through His Paschal Mystery of dying and rising.  He has given us a mission to proclaim the love He has for the world and that the Kingdom of God is coming into our world.

At the end of class, our closing prayer time included 2 prayers.  One is a "Fragrance" prayer offered up by the Missionaries of Charity, led by St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, each morning before they went to serve the poorest of the poor.

The other prayer was the St. Francis Prayer--his feast day is October 4.  Everyone wrote a phrase from that prayer on a slip of paper.  During this week, the activity is to keep that slip someplace where you'll see it regularly and be reminded of this prayer.  If you want to see it again, please go to the link.

There is nothing to submit for this activity.

The Tuesday class schedule includes October 11, but we are off that evening.

We're back in class on October 18.  The plan is to focus on God's marvelous story of salvation, and our part in it.

Please feel free to contact me with questions, etc.

Blessings of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to you all.

And let us remember and rejoice that we are all connected as One Church, all over the world, and through all time:
All my relations,
Paul

P.S. On Friday, Ocrober 7, at 7:30 PM, is the monthly Taize Prayer gathering in Ascension Church. Attending this prayer gathering counts as an optional enhanced extra credit activity. It is about 1 hour long.  Please let me know in class if you attend.  If you attend any other month, it counts as extra credit.

The opening prayer for our class was this music video of the song "I Can Only Imagine" performed by the Utah-based One Voice Children's Choir, which sings lots of uplifting music.

There is a movie based on the story of Bart, the lead musician for the band that first performed this song, called I Can Only Imagine, rated PG.  Watching the movie also counts as an enhanced extra credit opportunity.

October 4, 2022, marked 100 years since the birth of St. Gianna Molla.  We watched this short video about her story, about 2 minutes long.

I mentioned the California missions founded by Saint Father Junipero Serra, a Franciscan missionary priest.  Here's the website of the California Missions Foundation and the California Missions Resource Center with more info and a map.  These missions are now cities in California.

This past summer, I visited the Mission Basilica of San Diego de Alcala, in San Diego, CA, the first mission founded by St. Father Junipero Serra.  The photo above shows the mission church of San Diego with a statue of St. Junipero Serra in the foreground.

My friend Roy photographed me by the sign in front of the Mission of San Diego. We visited on July 16, the anniversary of its founding.

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