 Well, good afternoon, everybody. My name is Jose Gonzalez. I'm just a little bit about myself before we dive into the presentation itself. So I am a graduate of this university. I graduated in 2002, and I think that was the last time I was in this room. So this is a little trippy because I spent a lot of time in here as a student. I was a theology with religious ed concentration major. So before Catechetics existed, I have worked some very good friends with a lot of the professors still here. After I left here, I graduated here, and I ended up in Wichita, Kansas, where I taught high school religion at a Catholic high school for 10 years. I actually did two five-year stints. I took two years off in the middle and moved to Denver, where I got my master's at the Augustin Institute, met my wife. And while I was in Denver, I was a part-time youth minister. I used the air quotes because in the church, there's no such thing as part-time anything, only part-time pay. And then additionally, I coordinated a summer catechetical program called TOTUS Tuis, which many of you might be familiar with all over the country. So I've done a little bit of everything. So then I moved back to Wichita. I taught for five more years. And then in 2014, I left teaching and went to work for a nonprofit called Sophia Institute for Teachers, where I run catechetical professional development workshops for Catholic school teachers all over the country. So I travel the country and I run workshops. I always say the Lord has a sense of humor because I loved teaching. I loved teaching high school. High school kids are, in my opinion, amazing. They're the biggest pain, but they're the biggest joy, too. They're just absolutely loved it. And I thought I would die in the classroom. But the Lord had other plans. And I say he has a sense of humor because the thing I hated the most about teaching was going to PD in services and workshops. And now I run them for a living. So the Lord just kind of laughs in those situations. So that's me professionally. I've been with Sophia now for nine years, which is sort of how I came to be here. And Dr. Amy Roberts has presented for me. It works with me. So all the workshops I do, we contract catechetical and theological scholars to present alongside me. And so Dr. Amy Roberts, Sister Johanna, James Pauley, Dr. Scott Solam, Dr. Ashley, who's in the theology department here, all present with me at least once a year and some multiple times a year. So in building those relationships back up, I was invited to come back and present at this conference here in the Catholic school track. Can I just get a show of hands? How many in the room are Catholic school teachers? Awesome. And how many are parish catechists are serving in the parish level? Okay, wonderful. Good mix. Hopefully this will be applicable to both sets. Personally, on a personal level, I always like to introduce my family. So this is my crew. I went from teaching high school where I was literally obsessed with, not obsessed, but I was so, I would lose sleep over the salvation of the souls of my students to now all that energy is transferred. Once you have kids, it's like, it just all goes in that direction. So my wife, Mary Beth, and I have been married for 13 years. We just celebrated 13 years a couple weeks ago. Our oldest up there, the tallest one is Sophia Rose. She is, she's 11 years old. And then she's sort of my drama queen. I knew I was in trouble when we were in a store and when she was seven years old, she pointed at something and said, Daddy, can I have that? And I said, no, sweetie, not today. And she goes, pling, that's the sound of my heart breaking into a million pieces. And I thought, seriously? Okay, I'm in big trouble when you're a teenager. Kiara is next and Kiara turns nine this Saturday. She is my head in the clouds, no nonsense, calls it like it is, sweetest thing in the world. So when she was three years old, we were watching the movie Bambi, right? And you all know Bambi, right? If you haven't seen it, I'm sorry, spoiler alert, the mom dies, right? But they show nothing. All you hear is a gunshot off screen. Well, the gunshot goes off. Sophia, my drama queen, screams and jumps in my lap and Kiara goes, takes her pizza and goes, well, she's dead, takes a bite of it. So that kind of sums up the difference between these two girls to a T. The next one is Dominic, Carol with a K, Francisco. He got two middle names and it's a good thing because he is a boy, so naturally, like you need more names to yell when you're frustrated. And so the relief just ends. So you're a little more calm. Dominic, Carol, Francisco, Gonzalez, but also because we couldn't decide, he had to be Dominic because my wife was gonna be Dominican sister before we got married. So that was off the table. And then I wanted to incorporate John Paul II and Francisco of Fatima into the name and we couldn't agree so we just gave them all three. So that's him, he's total boy. And then the last one is Faustina, she's three, Faustina Violet. My wife's grandmother was Polish and had a huge devotion to Faustina and her name was Violet so we named her after her Faustina Violet. And we nicknamed her Fosboss, Fosy Bossy, because she is very bossy and she is, she's got the hardest head of all our kids. I'll just say that. So anyway, that's my crew. All right, so I wanna begin a conversation about art. When I say art, I almost wanna lump it in and talk about beauty because I'm not just talking about paintings, I'm talking about the big picture of the beautiful. So to begin that conversation, I wanna just do briefly talk about the transcendentals. I'm assuming many of you are familiar with the transcendentals, but we'll do a quick rundown, okay? So the transcendentals, truth, beauty and goodness. This is really the root of what our education, our catechesis should be about, right? What our Catholic schools, what our parishes are trying to do in informing and educating our young people is to lead them to truth, beauty and goodness. These transcendentals are timeless, they're enduring, they're uniting, they are really the lens through which we should evaluate the things that we consume. Because again, we all live in the secular world and so not everything that we consume and look at is gonna necessarily be directly Catholic or directly Christian, but to think to ourselves is what I'm consuming here, is it true? Is it good? Or is it beautiful? Or is it all three, right? Because if not, why am I consuming it? And why are we even putting it in front of our kids and our students? Because that really is sort of the criteria. I always say anything that is true, good and beautiful is Catholic, whether the artist or the creator intended it to be or not, right? And so we can garner, we don't wanna throw out anything that's secular, but we wanna kinda have that as an evaluation piece. Is it true, is it good, is it beautiful? It's not something that is self-focused, these transcendentals are not focused on the self, they're focused on the transcendental, things that come from out there. We really need a Christian anthropology to understand what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful, which is why it's so hard in the secular world for people to discern these things because without a Christian anthropology and a basis for who we are and how we're made, it's hard to discern what is true, what is good and what is beautiful. And really, and we can get going a whole lot of different directions, but if we think about it, there's a trend, right? Right now, particularly in creating content for children, that the villains from when you and I were kids, are now good guys that are misunderstood or the heroes of the story, right? Take the movie Maleficent, for example, if anybody's seen that. Like, it is an attempt to make this really beautiful film, like visually, and then it twists and takes the most evil of all Disney villains and makes you misunderstood in the hero of the story, which might seem like, oh, whatever, but it's kind of this subversive mentality where we are even, it's getting harder for our kids and our children to recognize the beautiful, the good, and the true, because it's all sort of being distorted and played with, right? And what's most frightening about some of these films is they are visually appealing, they are visually beautiful, and then they insert a message that is not true, we're not good. The transcendentals really is what gives us this Catholic approach to education, right? Because we, the whole focus of Catholic education means to be an aiming at heaven, an aiming of creating saints, not just education for the sake of education. And I think we all fall into that. Most of us, I mean, I remember having arguments with teachers on my faculty, on the faculty that were not religion teachers about what the purpose of education was, and they would reply with, well, to make our students go be productive members of society, I'm like, no, it's to form disciples, it's to form saints, right? The whole college readiness thing is an added bonus, but it is not, it should not be the focus for us as Catholics. So let's go through each one briefly. So goodness, how would we define goodness? That which helps something be true to its purpose. So that which helps something to be true to its purpose. Kinds of goods, there's two kinds of goods, goods of pleasure, goods of utility, and honest goods, right? Goodness, we all desire it. We're all attracted to it. Even those things that are not good that we desire, we desire them because they're apparent goods. So when we desire them because we think in our minds that they're good, even though they may not be. We are naturally drawn to goodness, we naturally desire goodness, but to seek true goodness and to understand goodness that requires virtue and virtue, the cultivating of virtue is what points us to goodness, to points us to good things. It's almost another way of saying goodness, we can equate almost to with happiness, right? Every person desires and craves happiness. The fullness of goodness is of course what we find in the incarnation, right? That the incarnation in the fullness of time, God becomes man to redeem us, to save us. Goodness sat, which makes us more like Christ and moves us closer to our purpose, the attitude. The beatitudes in the Catechism is described as the key in the path to happiness, right? This is where our goodness lies. But again, oftentimes our students and even ourselves, what is it we are tempted by sin because the sin comes across as an apparent good, right? The devil's a genius because none of us would sin if it actually looked bad, right? Sin is made to look attractive, otherwise nobody would do it, right? So it's masked there. Truth, conforming of our mind to reality, we have the truth when what we believe and what is are the same. And right now, so it's interesting, I was having a conversation with a friend, right now the biggest struggle, I think for us as Christians is for a long time, there was an attack on us as Christians as is Christianity true? And people, well, is it true? Is it really true? That's the culture's attack. But I think in recent years, what we're starting to see is not only is Christianity true, is Christianity good? There's an attack on the goodness of Christianity. And so we are really left with a very difficult dilemma in our educational system and we are at a point in our culture where not only is the truth of Christianity being questioned, but now it's goodness is being attacked, right? And I thought there was a really, I only had that conversation a few months ago and when my friend brought this up, I thought that's really insightful. And so, but truth, truth first, that attack was actually a really smart attack to go at that attack first, because you have to make it not true, you have to make people, you have to discredit it first and then you can attack it more clearly. But this is the biggest thing, I mean, I don't know, it drives me crazy, you guys probably, if you've watched any kind of TV in the last 15 years, you've probably heard the term, speak your truth, right? What is your truth? No, there is not your truth, there is not my truth, there is the truth, right? And in Christianity, that truth is a person. We can know the truth through our reason, faith and reason or faith in science never contradict and both have the same goal, to understand the universe as it really is. If two things contradict, at least one as well. This is the biggest thing, a lot of what I've discovered in my time of teaching, this was very, the kids that were totally bought in and were super intellectual, would attack the church from the perspective, they would think science in the church just didn't mesh, but faith and reason, as John Paul II so brilliantly said, those two things are what lead the human mind to truth, that we need both, we need faith and reason to lead us to truth. So truth, goodness, truth, and then the last one which is gonna be the main focus today is beauty. The radiance of something well-ordered and true to its nature, integrity, proportion and clarity. Guys, beauty, I'm gonna say something that, I actually heard this for the first time and it blew my mind when I was in undergrad, sitting in Sister Johanna's class, she looked at us and she goes, beauty is not subjective, it is objective. And in that moment, I'd never heard that before, but it's true. Because beauty, orders is order to God and lifts us to God and reveals who God is to us. The whole beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We can say, there are things that this world calls ugly, which are in fact beautiful. And there are things that this world deems beautiful that are not, okay? Beauty is objective. It evokes wonder and delight. This is the language, right? I think this is why I'm most excited to talk about this topic is because this is the language that speaks universally. So my brother, who is a self-proclaimed atheist, still remember we're in Ireland, that we were in Ireland in 2016, my sister got married in Ireland. We are standing at the cliffs of Moher and I hear my brother under his breath go, wow, God, this is so beautiful. And I looked at him and I go, what did you just say? He's like, shut up, right? It just, it evoked this wonder and delight, which points us to this universal truth. And then here's this, we often respond to beauty before we think about it. That's what my brother did right there. He responded to beauty. He pointed into something transcendental before he even realized it was pointing him to it. My wife and I just got back from an Alaskan cruise and let me tell you, like the pre-ration, like I just sat, we had a balcony on our thing and I just sat outside with like my jaw dropped the whole time. Look at that mountain, look at that glacier. Oh my gosh, oh look, there's a sea-op. Like it was just this constant stimulation of the beautiful, right? Without even thinking about it, I was evoked. But it's the same thing with cathedrals and churches and man-made beauty as well. I mean, why was the world who was seemingly so anti-Christian, so appalled and horrified at the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral a few years back? Like they were just, because why would you get rid of something that beautiful whether you, like they recognize the natural beauty. My mom who stopped practicing the faith, I'm the last remaining practicing Catholic in my family. My mom and my aunt who were just in Europe, they had to go see the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Spain, they just had to get there. It doesn't represent anything you believe in anymore or does it, and you just don't want to admit it because you're seeing something truly beautiful, right? Beauty is not just the arts, but math and science can also be beautiful when it's presented with elegance, simplicity, purity and truth, right? And this is one of my favorite quotes from Pope Benedict XVI. I have often affirmed my conviction that the true apology of the Christian faith, the most convincing demonstration of its truth, are the saints and the beauty that the faith has generated. Beauty and saints, I think that's the key to really opening people up to conversation and certain, particularly our students who might come in with a grudge. Put something beautiful in front of them and give them an opportunity to look at it and discuss it and you might see some walls come down. So this is just an interesting way to look at Catholic education. So goodness is affiliated with the faculty of the soul with the will and the theological virtue of love. Beauty, the faculty of the soul of the memory and the imagination and the theological virtue of hope and truth, which is affiliated with the intellect and the faith, right? So if we look at this Catholic, if we have a Catholic approach to education, we are teaching our students goodness by helping them form their wills and helping them to love. Beauty by helping them form their memory and their imagination and giving them, that gives them the virtue of hope and truth is the formation of the intellect which gives them the life of faith, right? So those things there. So in the school culture, right? Goodness, for example. You don't wanna form students just in anti-bullying which is sort of the secular trend. It's about forming them in the virtues of friendship. Beauty in the arts, like a Catholic school should have art, music, decor, the dress code, the liturgical year, all of those things evoke beauty. Again, I echo a lot of what I learned here. Sister Johanna used to tell us in class, she used to say, in your classrooms, your walls should be catechetical tools. What does that mean? It means put up art, put up beautiful things on bulletin boards and whatever because believe it or not, I mean, I don't know about you but my students actually had the audacity to be distracted and their eyes would wander while I was teaching. I mean, really, I'm pretty interesting. How dare they, right? Well, no, they're gonna wander. So let them be catechized while their eyes are wandering and being distracted. Let them be influenced by what they see. And I'm talking here, beauty. I am probably, I'm great at recognizing beauty. I don't create beauty, okay? I'm bad at all that stuff. I'll never forget the first year I taught with a classroom and I actually was married at that point, right? Prior to that, I'd been single. My wife comes in one day, I'd been sitting in the classroom in the summer, she comes in and she looks at the bulletin boards and she's like, oh no, no, no, no, no. She took it all down and reset it up for me and I was like, wow, that's beautiful, honey. That looks so good. She's like, yeah, now that's appealing to the eye. So thankfully, I needed a feminine touch to fix that. So, but whether if you're bad at bulletin boards, find someone to help you. Find someone who's good, good, who can make your classroom beautiful. And then truth, intellect, faith, science. And this is where, as Catholic schools, we have to emphasize everyone is a religion teacher. Everyone, right? I still will never forget my first day as a first year teacher, our principal at the time. I was in there, she had all the first year teachers stick back for like a lunch meeting. I was the only new religion teacher, all the other ones were teaching other subjects. She looked at everybody and she said, some of you were hired to teach science, some of you math, some of you foreign language and some of you religion. However, the primary goal in this school is to form disciples and you're all religion teachers. And if you're not on board with that mission, there's the door. And I thought, I'm in the right place. Because that's really, unfortunately, some of you might have the situation where you are literally undoing what the science teacher did in class down the hall earlier that day, right? But it's this understanding that a Catholic school who is focused on truth is focusing every teacher is a religion teacher. All right, so let's get into art and then we're gonna start digging into some practical things and doing a couple activities. So again, at the beginning, I sort of said this, what do I mean when I say art, when I mean teaching with beauty? Use paintings, sculptures, icons. And I'm not just talking sacred. If you teach history, there's beautiful pieces that replicate moments in US history. There are beautiful pieces of art and sculptures that replicate pieces of literature, right? Beautiful photographs to use to emphasize a point in science class, right? So visual, so that's painting, sculptures, icons, photography, natural beauty, nature. I was actually just talking to a friend while we were, we went, before we got on our cruise in Alaska, we spent two days in Anchorage with a good friend of mine who I used to teach high school with in Wichita who now teaches in Alaska at a classical school. And she says one of the things that she does with her classes is she found a nature trail close enough to the school that she takes them on that nature trail three times during the year. Fall, dead of winter, and spring. And she has them like observe and write down things that catch their eye, that they find beautiful and that speak to them about God as they're on that trail. And she says it is so amazing that these kids see something different every time by doing the exact same trail in those three different times of year in Alaska, particularly the one that they did a winter, it's dark outside because it's dark all day, right? So just natural beauty being able to use that is important as well. Music and then literature and poetry, right? Anything that evokes beauty I think is important. Film, theater, and dance as well, okay? Now, okay, some practical considerations. I wanna, this I'm gonna start, these are more practical considerations when doing things with paintings. Don't just look at the image, look into the image. Don't just look at the image, look into the image. And this is something I would tell your students. And give them a moment. Don't just look at it, look into it. Give time for silent gazing and pondering before any discussion begins. Take out the image, project it. You can distribute copies, I'm gonna distribute copies of some of the images we're gonna use as well as have it projected up here to help. But give a moment of quiet to just, okay, everybody just look. We're gonna take 30 seconds to a minute and nobody's allowed to say anything or contribute, anything to discussion till we've taken 30 seconds to a minute to just look. Be okay with awkward silence and allow them time to get the discussion going. If they're not used to doing this, it might take a while to get it going. And that's okay. Just let them sit and stew in the awkwardness for a minute, particularly middle school, right? Middle school, we all know middle school kid discussions and even high school, you gotta let the awkward silence and eventually they will get there, right? Which is why when I say this, I'm giving you these tips is hopefully you're not just doing activities like this with art, one and done. But it's a regular thing you're gonna do in class. Be open to the Holy Spirit and allow the conversation to go in unexpected directions. So when I taught with art, when I teach with art still, I always have discussion questions to go with it. But I always tell people those are there as a guide. You're not using these questions like you do a worksheet and you're trying to get through them all and answer all of them and make sure you have something to say about all of them. No, you're gonna use them as a guide and if the Holy Spirit prompts you in a different direction or another question pops up that you wanna ask or say in conjunction with the art, let it go. Let the Holy Spirit take it where it's gonna go. Within reason, obviously sometimes you gotta rein it in. But have art music as one of your regular learning tools. Hopefully you'll come away with some ideas to do that. Okay, so if everybody could get, I don't, I might have close to enough, but if you all could get into just small groups of like three to four people, you can turn chairs and chat. I'm gonna start with, we're gonna start with just with this first image. I'm gonna come around and I'm gonna hand out a copy to each group. If I have more, I can give extra copies and there are questions on the back of this image again as a guide. So the gold, right, I wanna talk about that. What is she actually wearing? What's she have around herself? Emergency blanket, right? And what color are those typically? Silver. But in this depiction, it's gold. Why? What color is gold affiliated with? Royalty, right? So even though she's not very adorned, like you said, that's a really good point that you see she's very regal, she's very simple, but yet she has this very ordinary thing, the emergency blanket, which is typically, it's associated with people who are marginalized, with people who are struggling, with people who have been hurt and abused and it's gold, right? What's the learning goal here, right? The learning goal here is a reminder that we're all, our dignity is, we're all clothed in royalty because we're all sons and daughters of the King of Heaven. And it's a reminder that guess what? Also, those who are marginalized and suffering have the same exact dignity and our royalty just as you and I, right? So it's a pointing to that, that, yeah, any other thoughts with this one? What else do you see? Yes. So one of them is her eyes. Yes, yes, right, yes. That is a very unique element. The foot, which we're so used to seeing that foot crushing a serpent's head, but it's also here, this sign of strength, this sign of one foot in front of the other. I'm gonna keep going. And you look at her face. Again, I see so many artists, particularly the other place where it strikes me is the pieta, the other artists who do the pieta. The emotions that are captured with one look, like that face in that image, you see worry, you see anxiety, but you also see hope and you see strength and you see peace, like there's so much, like the artist I think does a brilliant job of capturing a whole ton of emotions that are present in her, right? So again, this is a great piece of art that you could use to talk about a theme of Catholic social teaching. Like this could be an intro into a lesson on immigration or it could just be a lesson on the blessed mother, have it be an image that's drawn in amongst all the others that we have of the blessed mother, right? What I love about this image too is you look at it and you're like, that's Mary, that's Mary. Like, we actually, we discovered this image when we started, we were doing workshops on helping schools kind of address the racist shoe after all the George Floyd stuff happened and I just think this image just beautifully kind of fits into those discussions and those conversations because you don't look at this and go, wait, that's a black lady. How can that be Mary? No, it's Mary, period, right? Like she, yeah, the humanity is there, the beauty is there, it's just a spectacular image. It's a newer image, but spectacular. Okay, the next thing I wanna do is you all, I just passed out while you were working on these two others' images. So we're gonna go one at a time. The first, I gave you two different depictions of the crucifixion. The first is this one and it is the crucifixion by Van Dyke. What is the first adjective word or phrase that comes to your mind when you see this image? You can go ahead and shout it out. First adjective word or phrase that comes to mind when you see this image, go ahead and, pain, agony, surrender. Okay, let's go to this one for a second. We're gonna come back here to both in a minute, but this is same event, completely different depiction. This is the Raphael, Raphael's crucifixion. What's the first adjective word or phrase that comes to mind when you see this one? Strength, what else? Glory, redemption, offering, okay, so here they are side by side. I want you to take a couple of minutes and in your small groups, I want you to come up with three differences and three similarities for each. Go, three differences, three similarities for each. Ding, ding, ding, you got to my learning goal. Like, yes, no. So now I wanna talk, really, art, this is also the other beauty of art, is particularly these two images, you can have all kinds of learning goals when it comes to art. And you can use pieces multiple times if they got a lot out of it once and you bring it in. There's a subjective nature to the discussion of art, particularly in like a religion classroom setting or in a non-art classroom setting, right? In an art classroom, you might study these pieces of art more for, well, here's the angle and this is the way this is drawn means and traditionally, and you'll get into the history and like the concept of art, which is great to do, but then to have it more in a subjective nature that allows students to draw truth from it without you kinda spoon feeding it, right? There's a, art is a great way to sort of get them to pull truth on their own and have these realizations. It's also okay if, like a piece evokes something in you that it doesn't invoke in somebody else, right? And there can be a subjective experience that's okay there. But yeah, so the human and the divine. So I actually use this when teaching about the sacrament of anointing of the sick and let me explain why. Anointing of the sick is a sacrament that very easily, it's sort of one of the sacraments you kinda get through that this is why we do it, here's the matter, the form, okay, so now what else? Anointing of the sick is a great opportunity to talk about redemptive suffering, right? And if we look at the human and divine natures here, right? The human side, the divine side. This is the human side of suffering. This is what, if anybody in this room has ever experienced intense suffering or have seen somebody in your life go through intense suffering, this is what it looks like. It's ugly, it's awful, it's horrible. But as Christians, what do we believe? What does Christ do to suffering? Christ redeems suffering. Christ takes that suffering and makes it redemptive. This image almost points more to the resurrect. Yes, it's a crucifixion depiction, but it points almost to the resurrection in some way. There's hope here in this image. And so in the anointing of the sick, Jesus may not come and heal you of this human suffering. It can, that can be an effect of it. But if you are not healed physically, it's Jesus' way of going, I'm here with you. I suffered too when I'm continuing to suffer alongside you and there will be an end to this on the other side. It may not end in your healing here, but it will end in your glory in heaven, right? That this is, it's appointing the human and the divine. Just to share a somewhat personal story briefly. So my father passed away in December of Alzheimer's. He had a very odd, a very rare form of it that attacked his speech and his motor skills, but not his memory. And so he knew what was going on and you could tell he looked like a prisoner, trapped in his own body. It was the most awful thing to watch. But in a weird way, I love how Jesus works. He, I think that it was his suffering. Like I saw a redemptive suffering. I saw his redemption at the end. I was blessed to see it, which is why I'm so at peace. My father left the faith. He was a very influential man in the faith for me. And then when I was like half, when I was halfway through college, I'm like in my early years of teaching, he left the faith. He decided he was atheist and kind of walked away, which was very jarring for me. But I kept praying and praying. Well, when he got to this stage in the disease, his mind is not at capacity. So Sunny Boy gets to give him the sacraments and I said, mom, can I have dad anointed? And she goes, I don't care. He wouldn't have wanted it, but whatever, if it makes you feel better. Like, well, we have no way of knowing whether he'd want it or not. So I had him anointed at Thanksgiving and my aunt, who was helping take care of my dad, had been wearing a necklace of the blessed mother. And she was sharing with me that she could, that my dad would, in the last couple of weeks, had been clutching, had been trying to clutch at her necklace of the blessed mother, like trying to grab at it. And that she would hear him say the Hail Mary in Spanish and she would finish it for him and then she could hear him mutter, amen. So then he's anointed. So then less than a week after Thanksgiving, we think he's, I thought he had a while still, like he'd just gotten into a hospital. So my mom calls me and she says, you gotta come back. He's going. So I came back and I thought, I had a friend say, well, have you gotten him the apostolic pardon? And I was like, no. That's a good idea. So I call the priest and I say, hey, can you come back and anoint my dad again and give him the apostolic pardon? Sure. So he comes and he anoints my dad, he gives him the apostolic pardon. I had never seen the apostolic pardon before, but part of the apostolic pardon requires a profession of faith as part of the formula. Well, he couldn't do it. So father said, why don't you stand in right here and I want you to reply back. So I did the profession of faith as part of the apostolic pardon and I literally gave my dad the gift that he gave to me at my baptism on his deathbed. He went home the next day, which was December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception after clutching at that blessed mother necklace. And that was also the name of his grade school in Peru because we're Peruvian originally, that was the name of his grade school and the name of Peru was Immaculate Conception and I thought, holy cow. And then of course my mom is like, all right, let's get this funeral done ASAP. I don't want anything religious, nothing, nothing, nothing, no religious, no mass, nothing. And she's pushing for it so I'm in charge of the funeral stuff. And she's like, I want the first day available. I'm like, mom, it's Thursday. She's like, I want it on Saturday. I'm like, we're not gonna have a funeral on Saturday when he, she's like, no, I want it now. So I said, the soonest day is Monday. She said, okay, Monday. What was Monday? Our Lady Guadalupe. So I was like, all right, Mary's got the last laugh. So it's all, it all worked out. But anyway, okay, how much time we got? I might have to skip over some things. All right, I want to jump to, so I wanted to share a couple things that I was going to do so you kind of have ideas. I was going to do a little Lectio Divina with you guys, which I think this is a great way to incorporate the art. What I mean was have the Lectio Divina and this was gonna be on the blind man. On the healing of the blind man. And so the idea is do the Lectio Divina so that they visualize it first. Don't show them any art first. Have them go through and do the visualization that the step we're like, okay, imagine the scripture verse in your head. What do you see? What comes out? And after they've kind of shared from the scripture, then you bring out the piece of art. Okay, how does this image compare to what you pictured in your mind? How does the artist's version compare to what you pictured in your head? What did the artist see that you did it? What do you see that the artist doesn't? Okay, great exercise to kind of get him into the scripture, but also you're incorporating that art. I want to jump to, you all got two handouts and I'll explain the other one in a minute, but you got how great thou art. All right, we're gonna all sing acapella, okay. Might be sound terrible, but that's okay. God gave us all a voice. And if he doesn't like, if you don't like your voice, just give it right back to God. We're gonna start by singing this. We are just going to do, for the sake of time, the first two verses in the chorus, and then I'm gonna have you do a little bit of discussion and you can kind of like read through the lyrics briefly in that discussion point. Okay, so again, I'm like a teacher, I planned way too much, but we'll, but so then the idea here would be, and I know you may not get kids who would sing this, I get it, so maybe the other option is if they're not gonna sing, you find a YouTube version or you bring it and you listen to it with the lyrics in front of them and then have them discuss these questions, right? You look at it and what does the author of this hymn see God's greatness? What causes the author of this hymn to bow in humble adoration of God? What does the word wonder mean? What causes you to wonder? And if you look at this, the lyrics here, right? If you keep going, it talks about the pascal mystery. I mean, you can use a hymn like that, like this hymn in particular, you could use it to talk about creation. You could use it to talk about the pascal mystery. You could use it about talking about, simply about praise, like praising God, right? And obviously this is just one example of a hymn or a piece of music that you can do something with to pull out doctrine and incorporate into whatever you're doing. Listen to it, sing it, if you have kids that are willing, et cetera. So just sort of some additional ideas. We've done a couple of things with art today. So the first, we just focused on one image, right? That's a very simple way to kind of introduce it, focusing on one image. Then you've got to compare and contrast what we did, right? I think that's another great way to generate the conversation. Let's take two images, different depictions. You can do two images of totally different things that have similar themes and have them pull those similar themes out. So for example, sometimes I've done, when talking about the sacraments of healing, I'll do a comparison of the prodigal son by Rembrandt with that healing of the blind man that I showed you earlier. What similar themes can you draw from these? They're two totally different stories and depictions of what are similar themes. So the compare and contrast works well. Another thing that I have done and I absolutely love, this is a little trickier logistically, but if you can make it work in your building to print multiple images almost poster size, put them up and have them walk around like an art gallery, play reflective music or give them questions to discuss, get them getting groups. They can walk in groups and stop images and discuss and give them a good chunk of time to kind of roam. That's also great for getting those students that need some movement during the day. They're moving, but they're also kind of engaging. That's a great way to kind of incorporate art too. That one takes a little more planning, a little more logistics, but a great way to do it. Use it for prayer, especially if you don't have access to a chapel. I get images for the Rosary or the Stations of the Cross even to have those projected as you're praying, as you're praying those things. For music, again, we just did this saying to him or give him time to discuss the lyrics or reflect on it, play music quietly in the background and really do not be afraid of using secular music with caution, because again, anything that expresses truth-beating goodness is Catholic, whether the artist intends it to be or not, and so keep an eye out for those secular things that might be able to speak some truth into your students' lives with music. I gave you all the other handout. So this is kind of just a free lesson to take with you. If you're not familiar with us, so we have lots of free resources. I'm not here to sell you on anything that Sophie Institute for Teachers does, but I do wanna share with you, we have free resources on our website that I encourage you to check out. This comes from a series that we did for a little while. Unfortunately, we're not still doing it, called The Call of Beauty, and it has little art activities. So this is a great one that reflects on the Blessed Mother, and it has a music component, as well as an art component to it, and everything you need is in here and describes it. So this is just something to take with you, use it if you like. Any questions or comments or anything before we're up? Yes, sir. So yeah, so I think, yeah, I think obviously, if you're having like third, fourth and fifth grade, or multiple age groups, you just have to kind of be creative as far as what your learning goal is and what your image you're using. But I think there's ways. The beautiful thing about art and music is it's a very universal language, and it is the level of discussion might be different. What you might wanna do in that situation, especially if you're gonna like, you can break them up, try to like here, the third graders go over here and here's a set of questions. Use the same image for all of them, but maybe have a slightly different set of questions for each age group and based on their ability. And then when you share in the large group, those third graders will learn from some of the insights of the older kids and stuff like that. So that would be my advice. And yes, sir. I would say try for once to twice a week if you can. I would say in general, at least if you can, find a way to incorporate, when I say art, like some kind of beauty, once per like unit slash lesson if you can. That might be more difficult with some topics than others, but to find ways, I mean, I would also even like include with caution pop culture into this, right? So like if there's a video clip to a movie, they can speak to them. These are great ways to sort of, they're kind of the good hooks. They're the warmups to really, before you get into the like full content. And so any way you can do this, I think sometimes that hooks them and keeps their attention for the rest of the class if you start with something like this when you can. So yeah, I would say once to twice a week if possible, but yeah. Yeah, I'll go back and if anybody wants to, it's five, so I don't wanna keep anybody here that doesn't want to, but if you wanna stay back, I will go back to any slides and stick around for a moment. God bless you all. Thank you for coming. Have a wonderful and I'll be back here tomorrow in the morning doing biblical catechesis. So all right, thank you all. God bless.