1 For November 7-28, 2018 Virtue of the Month: Love Loving God above all; Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself In our culture, the word love is used for all sorts of relationships and feelings. We love pizza, the newest superhero movie, our cat, our brother, our parents and the Lord Jesus. But not all of these ways of loving are the same. The Christian virtue of Love (also called Charity) is a deep habit of responding to God and to other human beings with love rather than fear, mistrust or selfishness. If we love God, we spend time praying to be close to Him. If we love God, we perform actions that show our love for Him. In the same way, if we love the people around us, we treat them the way we would want to be treated. This is impossible if we see the other people as competition. For example, how often is it that you want someone else to stop talking so that you can voice your opinion? How often do you wish other people had less fame or fortune so that you could have more? Do you expect people to respect you without offering them respect first? God calls us to something greater. He tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Then he goes even further. Jesus tells us to love our enemies too. Living the virtue of Christian Love is impossible apart from God. Only God can help us love without fear, anger, pride, selfishness or brokenness. In order to break free of these obstacles, we need to give God our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, ask Him to free us from the obstacles that get in the way of our love for other people and actively seek opportunities to show others real Christian love. Discussion: Do you think you could recognize real Christian love? What would it look like? Prayer Come, Holy Spirit, open our minds and hearts to receive God’s word. We ask this in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Read aloud: 1 John 4:7-21 1) How does John describe Christian love? 2) Where does Christian love come from? 3) How are the Father, Son and Holy Spirit active in the virtue of Love? Discipleship Take Home Packet Love: Loving God; Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself/ Family Name: _____________________
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For November 7-28, 2018
Virtue of the Month: Love
Loving God above all; Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself
In our culture, the word love is used for all sorts of relationships and feelings. We love pizza, the
newest superhero movie, our cat, our brother, our parents and the Lord Jesus. But not all of these
ways of loving are the same. The Christian virtue of Love (also called Charity) is a deep habit of
responding to God and to other human beings with love rather than fear, mistrust or selfishness. If we
love God, we spend time praying to be close to Him. If we love God, we perform actions that show
our love for Him. In the same way, if we love the people around us, we treat them the way we would
want to be treated. This is impossible if we see the other people as competition. For example, how
often is it that you want someone else to stop talking so that you can voice your opinion? How often
do you wish other people had less fame or fortune so that you could have more? Do you expect
people to respect you without offering them respect first? God calls us to something greater. He tells
us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Then he goes even further. Jesus tells us to love our enemies too.
Living the virtue of Christian Love is impossible apart from God. Only God can help us love without
fear, anger, pride, selfishness or brokenness. In order to break free of these obstacles, we need to give
God our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, ask Him to free us from the obstacles that get in the
way of our love for other people and actively seek opportunities to show others real Christian love.
Discussion: Do you think you could recognize real Christian love? What would it look
like?
Prayer Come, Holy Spirit, open our minds and hearts to receive God’s word. We
ask this in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Read aloud: 1 John 4:7-21
1) How does John describe Christian love?
2) Where does Christian love come from?
3) How are the Father, Son and Holy Spirit active in the virtue of Love?
Discipleship Take Home Packet
Love: Loving God; Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself/ Family Name: _____________________
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Saintly Example
Saint Therese of Lisieux
(1873-1897, France)
Therese was born into a family that loved God a great deal.
Though Therese had 8 brothers and sisters, only 5 of the siblings
lived to be adults. And they all became nuns.
When Therese was four and a half years old, her mother died from breast cancer and her oldest sister,
Pauline became like a mother to her. But 5 years later, Pauline became a religious sister and she left
to enter a convent (a building where nuns live). Therese was really sad and the rest of her family tried
to make her happy. Therese was a very sensitive girl and cried whenever someone made her feel
uncomfortable. She was so concerned with her own feelings that she had a hard time doing things for
other people. But one Christmas Jesus did something extraordinary for Therese—he helped her care
about other people’s feelings more than her own.
After that, Therese wanted to do things for other people. She also felt that God was asking her to be a
religious sister and to join the same convent that many of her sisters had entered. However, she was
too young. When her father took her on a trip to Rome she actually begged the Pope to let her
become a nun. She had to be carried away by the guards.
Eventually, Therese was able to join the convent. But she knew it would be hard for her to do great
deeds for other people there. So, she began to love others by doing little things for them—things that
other people didn’t notice and things that were hard for her. For example, she began spending more
time with the nuns that she didn’t like and she would eat the leftovers no one else wanted.
By age 24 she was very sick and she was asked to write down her memories to that others could read
them. She wrote them down in a book called “The Story of a Soul.” Though she was sick, she tried to
look cheerful and make other people happy. She did such a good job being cheerful that some people
thought she was faking her illness. But she died soon after.
Therese is known for following what she called “the little way.” Though she didn’t do any
extraordinary things, she did a lot of little things to love other people. In 1925 she was declared a
saint by the Catholic Church.
“My vocation is Love.” - St. Therese of Lisieux
Love: Loving God; Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself/ Family Name: _____________________
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Activity: Recognizing Christian Love
It can be hard to recognize the difference between Christian “agape” love and
other kinds of things we call love. First, let’s practice learning how to identify
something that’s a little more clear—trees.
Can you tell the difference between a Maple
tree, an Oak tree or a Birch tree? Test your
skills and learn what trees are around you by
following this identification quiz.
Tree Identification
Find a tree in your yard or neighborhood. Answer the following questions.
1) Does the tree lose its leaves in the winter or not?
2) Does the tree have needles or leaves?
3) Are the small branches on the tree symmetrical (they come out of the large
branch in the same place on both sides) or do they come out in varied places?
4) Pluck one of the leaves or a small arm of tree needles. Go to:
http://eekwi.org/veg/treekey/index.htm and answer the questions to discover
what kind of tree you found.
5) Tape your leaf or needles to the next page and identify what tree it came from.
Do this for as many trees as you’d like.
Love: Loving God; Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself/ Family Name: _____________________
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Activity: Leaf Identification
Tape your leaf below:
What kind of tree did you identify?____________________________________
Tape your leaf below:
What kind of tree did you identify?____________________________________
Love: Loving God; Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself/ Family Name: _____________________
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Activity: Recognizing Christian Love
Love has often been classified into the 4 categories of: eros (romantic love),
storge (family love), philia (brotherly love) and agape (Christian love). But some
of the ways that we use the word love in English are not represented by these
categories. On the following pages we’ll explore another way of classifying the
relationships in our lives. Regardless of the way we label these types of love, the
most important thing is to be able to identify Christian Love. Do you have
Christian love in your life?
List 4 relationships that you have in your life. For example, you might choose
your mother, brother, teacher and dog. Then look at the chart on the next page to
see what kind of love that relationship has. Write down the type of love below.