Frank will receive a copy of The Catholic Family Connections Bible, a $27.95 value.

The Catholic Family Connections Bible helps families connect to:

• Each other—through family faith conversations
• Faith—through practices of prayer and devotion
• Community—through participating in Christian service together

The Catholic Family Connections Bible uses the New American Bible Revised Edition text and is woven around the core content of the bestselling Catholic Youth Bible® (loved by nearly two million Catholic young people), which includes:

• Over 700 lively articles help you Pray It! Study It! Live It!®
• "Catholic Connections" articles providing a presentation of key Catholic doctrine
• 28 articles addressing the seven principles of Catholic social teaching
• 75 inspirational illustrations
• Helpful index to life and faith issues
• Easy-to-use glossary of Scripture-related terms
• Sunday Lectionary readings for all three cycles
• "Catholic Connections" index
• "Sacraments Connections" index

The Catholic Family Connections Bible
ISBN: 978-1-59982-088-0, paper, 1968 pages

by Joanna Dailey

"A what?" That is the usual reaction when one of my colleagues at Saint Mary’s Press announces his or her new job title to . . . . you, maybe, or anyone. "What IS a content passioneer?"

The descriptive word is con-tent— accent on the first syllable. (We are also content—accent on the second syllable—for the most part, but being contented is not part of the job title.)

Content passioneers (formerly known as editors) are people who are passionate about content—in particular, the content that goes into the resources brought to you by Saint Mary’s Press. Note the word resources: It’s not just about books in print anymore. But you, who have your finger on the pulse of everyday teen life, already know that. We know it, too, and are taking appropriate measures to bring ourselves into the digital age.

The change in our department name (those of us responsible for content now make up the Content Engagement Department) and in job title has occasioned a certain amount of soul-searching on our part: Who are we, really? What are we doing? Why are we doing it?

One of our colleagues, Susanna Seibert, is taking online theology courses in her spare time, aiming for a master’s degree from Loyola University in Chicago. One of her courses was "Theology and Ministry." Her classmates were, for the most part, in direct ministry—in face-to-face contact with children, teens, or adults. Susanna, being a content passioneer, is one of us who is behind the scenes, one of us who helps, as part of one or more project teams, to provide a wide choice of solid resources that those of you in face-to-face ministry might find helpful.

For those of us who prepare these materials, for the content passioneers as well as the designers, the computer gurus, the warehouse team, it’s kind of like operating undercover or from deep in an underground bunker. Our ultimate aim is to reach the kids, who really do not know that we exist and it’s not important at all that they do not. The penultimate aim is to reach the principals, DREs, teachers, and catechists. They know we exist, of course, and they may have met one of the members of our crack sales team. But, unless they have had the opportunity to come to Winona, the rest of the publishing house known as Saint Mary’s Press is known only by its fruits, the resources themselves.

And that is not so bad. We like what we do, and when a new resource comes out we are all quietly thrilled. And we hope you like it. And we hope it helps you get the Word out.

Which comes down to Susanna’s challenge for her final paper in her course on ministry: How does what she does all day (in her little underground bunker which is really not underground but on the second floor with a nice view of the sky, the trees, and one of the Saint Mary’s University parking lots) contribute to the ministry of the Church?

Her answer, summarized in one paragraph, is this:

"It’s for the kids." This unofficial motto encompasses the goal of everything we do at Saint Mary’s Press. Collaboration is the name of the game, collaboration within the company and with our customers: in one way, through the annual Educator’s Summit, and in the second way, through our emphasis on user-centered design. We continually ask: How will this resource work for the customer? In this endeavor, we are led by the voice of the founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, Saint John Baptist de La Salle, who trained his teachers to see to the human and Christian education of their students. Lasallian ministry, of which Saint Mary’s Press is one expression, understands that the fullness of the Catholic faith is properly viewed when it is integrated into the fullness of human life. Our goal, like the goal of ministry in general, is to draw people (in our case, children and youth) into a deeply personal and transformative relationship with Jesus Christ, the definite fulfillment of God’s revelation.

So that’s what we do. And it took a content passioneer to put it into words.

Blessings on your ministry!

Peace and joy,

Joanna

P.S. If you are beginning the school year, have a great one! The activity in Make It Happen in this newsletter can help you and your students to commemorate days during the year to celebrate peace and justice. This month might be a good month to research it and set it up.

This activity helps young teens gain a faith-based perspective on human history by creating a calendar that highlights momentous occasions in which peace or justice has "broken out," and celebrating the lives of people who have worked for a just world.

Suggested Time
This strategy should be done over a period of time to allow for research and development of the calendar. You will need 45 to 60 minutes to plan the format and distribution of tasks, time to gather dates and names, and 60 to 90 minutes to create the calendar.

Group Size
This strategy can be done with any size group

Click here to download the entire activity "Peacebreak: A Calendar of Peace and Justice." This activity is an excerpt from the book Justice and Service Ideas for Ministry with Young Teens in the H.E.L.P. series. Find out more about the book by clicking here!

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
September 14, 2014
John 3:13-17

Opening Prayer

Jesus, we thank you for your willingness to be obedient to your Father, even to the point of your own death. Because of your selfless act of love, you have gained for us the opportunity to live in the grace of God. By your cross you have set us free to live as sons and daughters of God, a God who loves us unceasingly. We praise you with a grateful heart! Amen.

Context Connection
In this week's reading, we hear that Jesus will be lifted up much like the serpent was lifted up in Moses' day. The original story of the bronze serpent is told in Numbers 21:4-9. Briefly the story goes that during the Israelites' desert wanderings, many people suffered from poisonous serpent bites. After many deaths from the serpent bites, the people asked Moses for help. Moses prayed to God, and God instructed Moses to create a bronze serpent and raise it on a pole. God instructed Moses to tell the people that those bitten by a snake would be healed if they looked at the bronze serpent. When those who had been bitten by the poisonous snakes looked upon the bronze serpent, they were healed.

John 3:14 draws a parallel between Jesus and the poisonous serpent as agents of God's saving power. This verse hints at the future event when Jesus saves God's people by being raised up and crucified on the cross. Those who raise their eyes to Jesus on the cross and who believe in him will be saved, just as the snake-bitten Israelites who looked upon the bronze serpent were saved.

Today we know that Jesus on the cross brings about the salvation of all God's people. In John 3:16, we read this often-quoted passage: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." This belief is the core of Christian faith—that God's love, expressed through Jesus, is the dynamic principle in the salvation of the world. Our God has given the world the Son—not to condemn the world but to bring about our salvation. God's gift illustrates the immensity of God's love.

How should we respond to this great love? John 1:12 tells us that everyone who accepts Jesus is given the power to become a child of God. We accept and believe in Jesus Christ, and we are saved.

Tradition Connection

The Word became flesh so that thus we might know God's love: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him."¹ "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life"² (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 458).

An important theological concept permeates John's Gospel. John believes that God's love (3:16) is the dynamic principle that brings about the salvation of the world. In the beginning of the Gospel, the prologue (1:1-18) gives us the wonderful image of Jesus as the Word of God made flesh. In other words, the truth of God is revealed through the person of Jesus Christ. No one except Jesus, the Son of God, has ever seen God, and Jesus has told us of God through his life. He reveals the God of love to the world. Those who believe in Jesus are sent into the world as earthen vessels to continue to make God's love present.

On the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, we honor the holy cross by which Christ redeemed the world. We celebrate this feast on September 14 because of a tradition that says Saint Helen, the mother of Constantine the Great, miraculously discovered the cross of Jesus Christ while on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem on September 14 in AD 326. In the western Church, the celebration became prominent in the seventh century.

Christians exalt the cross of Christ as the instrument of salvation. The cross represents Jesus' obedience to the Father. His obedience accomplished our redemption; therefore the cross is a symbolic summary of the Passion, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection of Christ. The cross also symbolizes the ultimate love of God for all humankind. When we see the cross, we see the immensity of God's love for each human being.

God's love for Israel is compared to a father's love for his son. His love for his people is stronger than a mother's for her children. God loves his people more than a bridegroom his beloved; his love will be victorious over even the worst infidelities and will extend to his most precious gift: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son"³ (Catechism, paragraph 219).

Wisdom Connection
John's message is clear: Jesus' purpose for becoming human was to save all humankind. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son." Salvation was accomplished through the selfless act of love—Jesus' death on the cross. By his cross and Resurrection, Jesus has set us free.

Philippians 2:6-11, the second reading for this Sunday, contains a similar and pointed description of Jesus' mission:

But [Jesus] emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
(Philippians 2:7-8)

Through this self-giving of Jesus on the cross, we freely received the gift of God's never-ending love and grace, which makes possible our eternal life with God. This is why the cross is such a powerful symbol.

Acknowledgments
The scriptural quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Catholic Edition. Copyright © 1993 and 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

The quotations labeled Catechism are from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America. Copyright © 1994 by the United States Catholic Conference, Inc.—Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission.

Endnotes Cited in Quotations from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

1. 1 John 4:9.
2. John 3:16.
3. John 3:16; cf. Hosea 11:1; Isaiah 49:14-15; 62:4-5; Ezekiel 16, Hosea 11.

Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 21, 2014
Matthew 20:1-16a

Opening Prayer

Jesus, we pray with a grateful heart for the outpouring of God's love and mercy in our lives. May we embrace this generous gift and show the same love and mercy toward all the people we meet. Amen.

Context Connection
The parable of the landowner in this Sunday's Gospel begins immediately after verse 19:30, "But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first." The essence of this verse is restated at the end of the parable, verse 20:16, "So the last will be first, and the first will be last." As we read the parable, Matthew wants us to remember that God's justice is gracious and full of mercy. As Christians we are called to live out this justice in our daily lives.

The parable compares the Kingdom of Heaven to the landowner who hires laborers for the vineyard. The landowner agrees to pay the first group hired the "usual daily wage" (20:2), which was one denarius. A few hours later, at nine o'clock, the landowner hires more laborers, telling them that he will pay them "whatever is right" (20:4). The landowner does the very same thing each time he hires more laborers, which he does at noon, at three o'clock, and at five o'clock. "When evening came" (20:8), which would have been about six o'clock, the landowner began to pay everyone who had worked for him that day. At this time and place it was customary to pay workers daily, not weekly. He began with the laborers that he hired last and ended with the ones he had hired first. Everyone received the same amount, which was the usual wage for a day's worth of work. When it came to the group that was hired in the early morning, they gave the landowner an earful: "they grumbled against the landowner, saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat" (20:11-12). The landowner replied by addressing one of them, "Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?" (20:13). The laborers could not argue with him; they were paid what he had promised. The landlord had been just, and he goes on to ask, "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?" (20:15).

The parable reveals something of the last judgment. God's justice will be fair and generous, and those who loved and served their neighbors as themselves will benefit. Whether a person lived an unselfish life matters; what doesn't matter is when he or she began to live such a life. It is not our place to make comparisons, to try to determine who deserves what. We must always trust in the generous mercy of God. In short, the laborers in the parable said yes and went to work. How long they spent on the job wasn't important.

Tradition Connection
Jesus' main message is that everyone is called to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Everyone! Through Baptism we are committed to Christ. With the gift of his grace, we labor together with our fellow Christians to strengthen and build up the Kingdom of Heaven. That Kingdom is open to all peoples. God invites everyone to come inside.

Everyone is called to enter the kingdom. First announced to the children of Israel, this messianic kingdom is intended to accept men of all nations.¹ To enter it, one must first accept Jesus' word:

The word of the Lord is compared to a seed which is sown in a field; those who hear it with faith and are numbered among the little flock of Christ have truly received the kingdom. Then, by its own power, the seed sprouts and grows until the harvest² (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 543).

Jesus often spoke about the Kingdom of Heaven belonging to the poor and lowly, those who are meek of heart and righteous before God.

The kingdom belongs to the poor and lowly, which means those who have accepted it with humble hearts. Jesus is sent to "preach good news to the poor";³ he declares them blessed, for "theirs is the kingdom of heaven."⁴ To them—the "little ones"—the Father is pleased to reveal what remains hidden from the wise and the learned.⁵ Jesus shares the life of the poor, from the cradle to the cross; he experiences hunger, thirst, and privation.⁶ Jesus identifies himself with the poor of every kind and makes active love toward them the condition for entering his kingdom⁷ (Catechism, paragraph 544).

In his ministry on earth Jesus showed to his followers the boundless mercy of God and the desire of God that all people be saved. The challenge to the Christian community is not to judge others but rather to be about building the Kingdom of Heaven here and now.

Wisdom Connection
Matthew points out that the landowner and the laborers hired early on understand justice quite differently. God's justice is based on the relationship between God and human beings. It is based on their response to God's continuous call and invitation. It is a justice that has its foundation in compassion and love, which makes it different from human justice. How often do we as Americans, indeed how often do members of any society, associate justice with compassion and love? Because the parable reveals something of the final judgment, it reveals something of salvation: All who labor in the vineyard of God's Kingdom will receive "the usual daily wage," which is eternal life, salvation. The Kingdom of Heaven has room for more and more workers. God's invitation is constant and the reward consistent. Everyone is invited and everyone is paid in full. There is no such thing as half-salvation. The parable also reminds us that God's love for us doesn't depend on anything we have done, but on our value as children of God. We have infinite value because we were created by God. This parable powerfully expresses the equality of all human beings before God. Our God is never constrained by human logic or justice, for God is generous and forgiving.

Acknowledgments
The scriptural quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Catholic Edition. Copyright © 1993 and 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

The quotations labeled Catechism are from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America. Copyright © 1994 by the United States Catholic Conference, Inc.—Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission.

Endnotes Cited in Quotations from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

1. Cf. Matthew 8:11; 10:5-7; 28:19.
2. Lumen gentium 5; cf. Mark 4:14,26-29; Luke 12:32.
3. Luke 4:18; cf. 7:22.
4. Matthew 5:3.
5. Cf. Matthew 11:25.
6. Cf. Matthew 21:18; Mark 2:23-26; John 4:6-7; 19:28; Luke 9:58.
7. Cf. Matthew 25:31-46.

Saint Peter Claver (1581-1654) was a Jesuit missionary in South America. He served the African slaves who arrived in chains in the holds of ships. He brought them food, medicine, and a message of God’s love and care. His feast day is September 9.

Saint Guy of Anderlecht (950-1012) felt called to a life of poverty, and often served the poor and the sick. His resolution lapsed when he became involved in a get-rich-quick scheme. Its failure convinced him that his first choice was the correct one. He repented and returned to his simple life-style. His feast day is September 12.

Saint Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1663) was a Franciscan friar who was given the gift of prayer—prayer that often lifted him from his feet (a gift called levitation). Because this drew so much attention, his superiors transferred him from monastery to monastery and even sent him into exile. Saint Joseph’s greatest gifts, however, were unseen: his humility and his faith, even in the midst of ill treatment. While he was considered slow and absent-minded, he was able to pass his oral exam for the priesthood—just because the examiner asked him the one question for which he knew the answer. For this reason, he is considered the patron saint of students. He is, because of his gift of levitation, also the patron saint of aviators. His feast day is September 18.