FIRST DAYS OF KIDSRELIG

First Days! The sign above the church doors read:

“I have called you by name. I love you, and you are mine.”

Words spoken by God through the prophet Isaiah and put to music in the hymn You Are Mine, which we sang together once we got into church.

I told the kids that their names had very much been on my mind. As I stood there with a borrowed fedora hat on my head, I told them how I had read their names putting away last year’s books and file folders and archiving last year’s digital files. How their names popped up on my computer screen all summer as registration came streaming in. How their names became like little puzzle pieces as I assigned them to classes and put together that big puzzle, called KidsRelig.

Names on my mind! And to prove it, I pulled off that fedora hat and out came tumbling hundreds of pieces of paper with the kids’ names on them.

“Until now,” I asked, “did you know I had all your names on my mind?”

“Not really,” they answered.

“So what difference does it make if you didn’t know I was thinking about you, worrying about you, wondering about you?”

What difference does it make? That’s this year’s question in KidsRelig. God has called each of us by name—thinking about us, worrying about us, wondering about us. And yet, most of the time, we hardly know it. So, what difference does it make?

The question will be asked in each grade:

• 1st—meeting God and learning to pray
• 2nd—preparing for 1^st Penance & Communion
• 3^rd—learning about our call to faith
• 4^th—studying the Commandments & Beatitudes
• 5^th—learning about the Sacraments
• 6^th—The Old Testament
• 7^th—The New Testament
• 8^th—The Church & Church History

Love,

Deacon Charlie