A "company of witnesses" - Saints and
Blesseds who were featured and honored
at tonight's learning session at St. Anthony
of Padua Church, Kailua (from Top, Left to
Right): St. Edith Stein, St. Katherine Drexel,
Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, Bl. Teresa of
Calcutta, and St. Therese of Lisieux
For the past seven weeks, my parish of St. Anthony of Padua Church has been conducting weekly informative presentations using the Catholicism - The New Evangelization DVD series. The series includes 10 episodes, each hosted by the excellent Fr. Robert Barron, who discusses various topics on Catholic Church teachings. This week's episode happened to be called, "A Vast Company of Witnesses: The Communion of Saints".
Given the subject matter of the episode, I was invited by our parish office to facilitate tonight's learning session, which I gladly accepted. I was permitted free reign to tailor the evening session to include a brief lesson on Holy Relics and to also bring actual relics for the participants to view.
As it turned out, the episode featured the biographies of four woman-Saints for whom I had the privilege of being a custodian of their precious relics: St. Edith Stein, St. Katherine Drexel, Bl. Teresa of Calcutta, and St. Therese of Lisieux. I also ended up adding my own mini-biography about Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati so that the audience would have an example of sanctity, as exemplified in the life of a lay-person. It was a good move because it seemed the audience really enjoyed learning about him, too (he's not very well-known in Hawaii).
As it turned out, the episode featured the biographies of four woman-Saints for whom I had the privilege of being a custodian of their precious relics: St. Edith Stein, St. Katherine Drexel, Bl. Teresa of Calcutta, and St. Therese of Lisieux. I also ended up adding my own mini-biography about Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati so that the audience would have an example of sanctity, as exemplified in the life of a lay-person. It was a good move because it seemed the audience really enjoyed learning about him, too (he's not very well-known in Hawaii).
The holy individuals pictured above were
represented at our learning session about
Saints, via a couple of statuettes, a 1st
Class Relic, and four 2nd Class Relics.
So we started the evening with a prayer, followed by an introduction to the Church's teachings on Holy Relics... then proceeded with the DVD video presentation and a group discussion about the contents of the showing. All of us present, including our parish priest - Fr. Clarence - found the episode highly interesting and inspirational, and it was made all the more meaningful by the presence of the hallowed remains of the very Saints whose images we had just viewed on the TV screen. After concluding the lively discussion period, we ended the week's learning session with a wonderful prayer for the "New Evangelization" that came included with the Catholicism DVD set:
The beautiful prayer we recited at the
conclusion of our evening learning session.
Many "faith-seeds" were definitely planted tonight by the Holy Spirit, thanks to the lessons given by Fr. Barron through his easy, practical style of teaching. I would definitely give the Catholicism DVD series an enthusiastic two thumbs-up rating and recommend it to all Catholics (and non-Catholics, too!) for its immense value as a learning tool. Watch the series yourself and become a living light for the new evangelization!
"The prayer of a just man availeth much."
~ James 5:16
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