Talking about the Trinity with 7th graders

I was asked to be a substitute teacher/ catechist for the 7th grade Faith Formation class this past Sunday. What a great experience! The students were very respectful and responsive in the discussion on the Trinity. One of them remarked at the end of class, “that went by really quickly”.

We talked about the roles of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit while also mentioning their unity. We likened it to the family of father, mother, and child. The students were ready for analogies like that, and one knew about the shamrock analogy that St. Patrick used. Impressive! We focused a lot on the Father which is fitting because that’s exactly what Jesus did. They seemed to be very interested in how the Father’s love can be in us which is for what Christ prayed to the Father in John 17:26 (“that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them”).

We spent a good amount of time talking about how we receive the Father’s love- sacraments like baptism, confession, and the Eucharist, prayer, service, kindness of others, etc. And we even talked about receiving it from priests. I explained the reason we call a priest, “Father”, is because he is supposed to reflect the Father like Jesus does and bring the Father’s love to people.

It probably helped starting the class with an icebreaker of asking them to tell me one thing they’ve learned this year in class or a fun fact / embarrassing story about themselves. Some said one thing they’ve learned, and some gave a fun fact / embarrassing story. I started with the story of pretending to do Mass growing up when sometimes home alone. I forget if I told it as a fun fact or embarrassing story lol.