I grew up knowing where I had been baptized, but I didn’t know the exact date of my baptism. That changed when I came to Sacred Heart Academy as Mrs. Cilmi’s aide in First grade almost twenty years ago. Talking about baptism came up throughout the year during religion and over time I became curious to know the specific day I had been baptized. So when I saw a Word on Fire article this week about the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord I had to read it. One line in particular struck a cord with me, “For most of us, our baptism was a once-off that happened when we were infants but that we have mostly forgotten about. In our minds, our baptism is something that happened once rather than something that defines us now.” To know the date of our baptism, both this author and Pope Francis say, is to know a blessed day, and this is something I have come to understand and appreciate over the years. This is one of the reasons I like Easter Sunday and the Baptism of Our Lord because we all renew our Baptismal promises and have occasion to think about what we have received in this Sacrament: not only have our sins been forgiven, we’ve also been anointed priests, prophets and kings. We have been given a share in the divine life. If you do not already know your Baptismal date I encourage you to take this opportunity to look it up. For those who are not baptized you may wish to consider going through the RCIA process and share fully in the divine life. May our baptism truly define who we are as Catholic-Christians everyday.
Through Jesus’ birth, manifestation to the Magi, and his baptism that we have celebrated these past weeks we see he came for all. In his essay Our 7th grader includes everyone. He shows how community is richer when we all join together, rich and poor alike.
Radical Community Care
By Conner
Radical community care means a crazy way to support your community. I have thought of multiple good examples of this, but my mom came up with the best, one I feel we should actually put into practice. Her idea was this: We should have a community dinner every night. I know there are already things like it, such as soup kitchens, but there are several reasons why this is better. The most prominent of these is that there would be much more man power, enough to feed the entire community, rich and homeless.
We could accomplish said man power in several ways. The best of them is that every house owner in the community who is going to use the Radical Community Kitchen would have to volunteer cook one of the days every month. That way there would be healthy, delicious food for moms too tired to cook, families who want to meet up for free food, working poor, or elderly people who just want to have some company. At the end of every night we’d bring the leftovers to the homeless or those who don’t own cars. Also, to prevent people from other cities who don’t pitch in and just want a free meal, we’d have community cards for Redland’s homeowners that cost one dollar per month to pay for the food. That doesn’t mean, though, that this would be Redlands exclusive because each community can start their own. If every place in the world used his method, it has potential to end world hunger.
Coming off of our Christmas break last week we were still in the Christmas season and reflecting on how the Incarnation was God’s plan to restore broken humanity came to mind for my video choice. San Filippino is a beautiful Tuscan oratory greatly in need of repair and was a good opening to talking about how God can restore anything. Here’s what the 7th graders noted: “People saw that the church was broken down and they did something about it.”; God restores us like they are restoring the church. It was old and abandoned but they are fixing it.”; “God involves us in things to help us work together. We get stuff done together. Important stuff done.”; “I think that the church being restored reminds me of reconciliation because souls are being restored like the church.”; “I really enjoyed the fact that the high-schoolers took time to translate articles, which made a big difference for the church.”; “When God resurrected at Easter, he came back like this church is coming back. God never gives up, like this church won’t give up.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M193ZUjBjc4
Link to Word on Fire article: https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/the-gift-of-baptism-and-our-search-for-meaning/5994/
Thank you,
Mrs. Alhadef