Friday 9 February 2007

Friday Morning Prayer for 19 January 2007: St Anthony

Good Morning! If you come from 1A, 2A or any of the A classes, I am sure you know who the patron saint of your class is. Yes, it is St Anthony. Mr Tang has been sharing with you about St Anthony for the past few days. Why we talk so much about him this week? In 1946, 60 years ago, on 16 January, the Catholic Church made St Anthony into a “Doctor of the Church.” St Anthony is a doctor of the Church, that means he understood religious knowledge very well and his teaching is very valuable even for today.
As you can see on page 15 of your hymnal, St Anthony has once given a sermon and he talks about Jesus like this:
“The humanity of Christ is like the grape because it was crushed in the winepress of the Cross so that his blood flowed over the whole earth…. How great is his love!”
St Anthony talks about the humanity of Christ. HUMANITY is the human quality. We all know Jesus is God but he is human at the same time. God loves us so much that Jesus has become human to live among us. The interesting thing is that St Anthony says that Christ’s humanity is like the fruit, grapes. When you think of grapes, you may think of wine that is made from grapes. Now why would St Anthony use grapes as a way to describe Christ’s humanity? Being God, Christ would not have body or blood, unless he first becomes human. You see Christ died on the cross for us. When he died, his blood flowed from his body. Blood is a red liquid, very much like grape juice or red wine, which is made from grapes.
To make wine from grapes, one has to step on grapes to get the juice. We put grapes in the winepress first. You can see a little picture of a winepress on page 15 of your hymnal. That’s why St Anthony talks about the cross as a winepress. Grapes are crushed, squeezed in the winepress to make juice that makes wine; similarly it was on the cross that so his blood flowed.
Let’s learn a new song: The hymn we are going to sing today is Glory be to Jesus. There are several words, which I would like to go over with you:
Bitter: We say something is bitter when it has an unpleasantly sharp taste. We describe an experience to be bitter when it causes deep pain or anger. For example: Susan puts sugar into her coffee. Without sugar, black coffee is too bitter for her. // Calvin’s mother died recently and it was a bitter experience for him.
Pour: We pour a liquid when we make a liquid flow from or into a container. For example, Susan puts some sugar into her coffee first, then she pours milk as well. // We say: “Oh, it is pouring rain” when it rains so hard that it feels like water is being poured from the sky.
Sacred. We say something is sacred when we want to say it is holy. You may remember the phrase: The Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Vein. A vein is a tube in the body that carries blood. For example, Last week, Veronica went to Red Cross to donate blood and the nurse put a needle in her vein to draw the blood out.
Let’s look at the first verse of the hymn Glory be to Jesus. Please repeat after Mr McKenzie.
1. Glory be to Jesus, who in bitter pains / Poured for me the life-blood from His sacred veins!
Can you write down the word that rhymes with pains? (Veins)
Let’s turn to page 7 and learn this new song. Please now turn back to page 15 and say the prayer together.
(Everybody together) In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
O Lord Jesus, in bitter pains You have poured out your Most Holy Blood to save all humanity. Your blood flowed over the whole earth as a result of your holy love for us.
All: We thank you for your love that brings us new life.
Please help us to remain united with Your love.
All: We thank you for your love that brings us new life.
We ask you to help those who have to face bitter pains since you have gone through bitter pains on the cross.
All: We thank you for your love that brings us new life.
Please help them to experience the sweetness of your love.
All: We thank you for your love that brings us new life.
We ask this for You are God and King for ever and ever.
All: Amen.
St Joseph
All: Pray for us.
St Francis
All: Pray for us.
Thank you. In the Student Learning Zone on your First Class, you will see a transcript – that is the text – of all the morning prayers in English. There are some extra activities for you to do. If you do those activities, I promise you a little souvenir.

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