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Showing posts with the label Catechism of the Catholic Church

"Because I said so": Modeling the Love of God to Our Children

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As a parent, I have a responsibility to imitate God’s loving guidance for my children. God, in His infinite perfection, is the Perfect Father, and parents have to model their child-rearing after Him. Consequently, the way we parent our children will have lasting effects on the way they perceive God. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become acutely aware of the similarities in how I talk to God and how I talk to my own dad. It’s amazing how my mind has categorized the two so closely. Now that puts a lot of pressure (as if we didn’t have enough already) on parents. I have wonderful parents who were exemplary models of God to my siblings and myself, but that is not a universal experience. I constantly remind myself of my need to be loving, just, kind, merciful, and forgiving to my children, lest I place a stumbling block in their path to God. One of the big perks of this responsibility is the ability to say, “Because I told you so.” .... Click to read the rest at "Messy Buns ...
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Cristina Trinidad visits A Seeking Heart with Allison Gingras on BreadboxMedia.com.   We discuss a fabulous new book that I was sent to review  and fell in love with How to Read Your Way to Heaven   by Vicki Burbach (Sophia Institute Press) All Rights Reserved, Allison Gingras 2017
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Do you have a body? There's a theology for that! Today I review TOBET's (Theology of the Body Evangelization Team) Theology of the Body Marriage Preparation book. Author Monica Ashour created this book with her TOBET team. (You may remember other books by Monica Ashour I've reviewed before: her Theology of the Body board books for toddler s and paperbacks for children .) The book focuses on couples preparing for marriage, of course, but anyone wanting to learn more about the Theology of the Body could benefit from its clear, innovative format. Perhaps my favorite part of the book is a series of pages on personal health (16-18). This section proposes an integrated view of the human person, providing checklists for assessing physical, emotional, and spiritual health. How providential that I picked this book back up during Lent! The health checklists help me identify areas of personal growth I can cultivate intentionally during these 40 days before Easter. Join me at P...

Should Children Memorize Prayers?

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Want to start a fight? Ask two teachers what they think about memorization as a learning tool. (Go ahead! Try! I'll wait here with some bandages and antiseptic ointment.) Click here to watch the video! Personally, I have always been a fan of memorization, even though (or perhaps because) I don't have a great memory. In the Google Age, of course, facts are always just a click away! But I often feel annoyed with myself when I am forced to do an Internet search for something I should just . . . know. When Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries flew into the news after 9/11, I was ashamed that I had never memorized the geography of that region. When the US invaded Iraq, I had no mental context for the battle and had to spend time searching for maps of the Middle East. Sure, the maps I needed were easy to access, but I was frustrated, even embarrassed, that my brain had never permanently recorded a basic image of that region of the globe. Memorization provides perpetua...