Celebrate Catholic Life

CELEBRATE CATHOLIC LIFE

By Colleen Rooney

Let me introduce myself. I am a baby boomer born in Vermont. I have a master’s degree in Theology from St. John’s University where I studied under Msgr. Eugene Kevane, founder of the Notre Dame Institute (now Notre Dame Graduate School). I worked for Fr. John Hardon, S.J., on his Modern Catholic Dictionary and several years for Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J. as assistant editor, of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review. My husband Bob and I have been married for thirty-six years. Fr. Baker celebrated our wedding Mass. We have four adult children and ten grandchildren.

I owe my Catholics faith initially to my parents, who had me baptized five weeks after my birth. And I owe my adult faith to my grandmother, Katherine, who prayed the rosary for me when I was slipping away from its practice as a teenager. I received a special grace through her intercession.

I have had many grace-filled experiences of our Catholic faith. One is the privilege of living through the pontificate of St. John Paul the Great. His life and legacy are and will always be an incredible blessing of my life. He showed us how to live a rich, authentic Catholic life in the twenty and twenty-first centuries.

I am involved in several different ministries in the Diocese of Arlington: Arlington Diocesan Council of Catholic Women, Our Lady of Angels Catholic Women’s Council, Auxiliary of the Legion of Mary, and Our Lady of Angels Catholic Grandparents As

sociation. These groups offer women events which celebrate Catholic life in its many different aspects.

Two projects which I would briefly like to share with you are my book, Celebrating Advent and Christmas with Children: Food Celebrations with the Saints for Home and School, and a workshop I am giving at this year’s 2019 Diocesan Catechetical Conference entitled, “Jesus as a Boy in First Century Palestine.”

The book highlights the seasons of Advent and Christmas by offering recipes for many of the saints’ feast days with shorts sketches on the saints. Celebrating Advent and Christmas with Children is meant to help bakers from elementary school age through teens to keep the focus on the rich, Catholic celebrations of the seasons while having fun in the kitchen. All the recipes are photographed on my blog: https://www.foodsandfestivitiesofthechristianyear.blogspot.com. Look for them in the archives: September 17-26. 2014. In the back of the book under the Resource section books, DVDs and websites are listed to complement the recipes.

The workshop which I will be giving is scheduled for November 16, 2019, in Reston at the Diocesan Catechetical Conference. In 2017, I proposed a talk to Fr. deLadurantaye for the Diocesan Catechetical Conference, “Introducing Your Students to Jesus as a Young Boy.” He accepted my proposal and invited me to give it again for the 2018 con

ference. I have been invited back this year by Fr. Saunders to give the workshop under the title: “Jesus as a Boy in First Century Palestine.” I hope many of the catechists reading this write-up will attend.

The workshop will be offered twice during the day and focuses on the hidden life of Jesus from ages five through twelve. Although, there is little from the Gospels about Jesus’ life in Nazareth as a child, more information about the life of first century Jews living in Palestine is becoming available as archaeologists unearth the remains of earlier centuries. From these findings, we can piece together information on the diet, clothing, games, housing, work life and religious life during the first century. This helps us to reconstruct what the normal, everyday life of a first century Jewish family in Palestine was like. I use a PowerPoint presentation and Five Stations which demonstrate food, clothing, games, housing and religious life from this time period. Many resources and ideas are available

for the catechists from this workshop to take back to their classroom.

The workshop concludes with references to spiritual writers such as Cardinal Pierre de Berulle, 1575 – 1629, who reminds us that the things and mysteries of Jesus ’childhood, although past, are not dead, but rather are living and present and available through our reflection. It is through our study and reflection as catechists on His childhood that we can draw on its riches, grow more deeply in our personal relationship with Jesus, and invite our students to do the same.

I have a new website, www.celebratecatholiclife.com which will be up and running for the Diocesan Catechetical Conference. It is a work in progress so not all the resources I intend to offer will be available at first, but you will find many of them. Keep checking the site, and I promise it will be a treasure trove for catechists, parents and those interested in a healthy, holy Catholic life.