Community, the Works of Mercy and the Seamless Garment of Life

Lyn Pajk
Nov 9, 2017
2 min read

This past Sunday each grade level spent 70 minutes in their small groups doing a lesson and then spent 20 minutes at gym time and 30 minutes in Outreach time. During Outreach time the 6th and 7th graders made “thank you” banners for 18 community organizations that help people; Open Door, Fire Department, Police Department, Diaper Alliance, United Way… The 8th graders decorated cookies made by our Thursday after school program to send along with the banners. Eline Morabito and I will drop these off to the different organizations on Friday. We’ll let you know what the organizations have to say in our next post. We all just felt it was important to say thank you to these amazing groups that do so much for the people of our community!

During class time, the 6th graders learned about the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, the 7th graders focused on living out the Works of Mercy in their everyday lives by doing freeze frame skits and the 8th grade focused on the seamless garment of life. Each table group had to think about one life issue and write a letter about why life is important and how others can help to support life. They absolutely blew me away!!! These are in Conference Room B at the parish center if you ever have the opportunity to stop by and read them. Here is just a sample from one of them:

“Dear Followers of Jesus,

I would like the world to know that peace is only attainable if we do not make war. War is a horrible man-made machine of death. Some people say “yes” to war. Saying “yes” to war is the same as saying “yes” to death. The reason of war is human anger and hate over another or greed. My name is Anne and I live in Houston, Texas. My life used to be great. I lived with my husband and two beautiful sons, Eric and Jim. My husband, Thomas, was serving in the military. Then one day, the Korean War broke out…”

The kids had to develop a scenario to illustrate this life issue… these were 8th graders doing some deep thinking and hard work. Their words are amazing!!

This coming Sunday we will be delving into the Story of Stuff, thinking about how lucky we really are, focusing on gratitude for all that we have and learning about wants vs needs. It’s the perfect topic as we are coming upon Thanksgiving and the Advent/Christmas season of giving and getting.