Unsharpened pencil at each table

Say: will someone at each table pick up the shiny yellow thing?

What is it called? What is it for?

Is that a good pencil or a bad pencil? How do you decide if it's good or bad?

(Hold up the variety of pencils)
So it doesn't matter if it's long or short, pretty or plain, old or new, right? A pencil is good if it writes, bad if it doesn't?

Can I write with it now?
What does sharpened mean?

Poke a leader with it.
Hey look, I can use it as a weapon. Is that a good use for it? Why not?

Could you make a pencil? What raw materials would you need?

So now I've got a big pile of stuff: wood, graphite, metal, rubber, yellow paint, black ink, a stamp for the label. How do I go from that pile to this pencil? What process would you need to make this pencil?

So let's say you want to make a pencil. That will be your purpose. And to fulfill your purpose you will need a plan and a process.

What is the purpose of the pencil you're going to make? Yes, we said earlier a pencil is for writing. It'll be a good pencil only if it writes, bad if it doesn't.

You're going to have to make some detailed plans for your pencil business, we'll call them blueprints. And you'll have to acquire all the materials you will need: the wood and graphite and paint. And you will have to create all of the machines that turn that will turn that stuff into pencils and hire and train people to run the machines.

So now you have your process and your workers all trained, so you can begin making pencils.

But there are bound to be problems. Discuss at your table some of the problems you might run into.

By now I'm sure you realize that our lesson tonight is not really about pencils. We're talking about PERSONS, not pencils. The first question we asked was "What is this for?" And we agreed that a pencil is for writing. So now I'm going to ask you this question: what is a person for? (Ask a few teens, what are you for?)

The pencil maker had a clear purpose: to make an instrument that could be used for writing. So let's think about the person-maker: Who is that? (God)

What purpose did God have in mind when God created this human person? What are you for? Who made you? What did God make you for?

As you can see there are lots of answers to this question, but the final answer is: God made the human person for Loving. A pencil is made for writing and a person is made for loving.

Let's do some thinking about the word LOVING. You were made for loving. Does that mean you were made to love (the active verb) or to be loved (the passive verb)?

It means both, doesn't it? Loving is a very special kind of of verb because it is both active and passive. You were made to be loved and you were placed in a loving family where you would gradually learn to love back.

So here you are 17 or 18 years ago in the arms of two people who love you unconditionally. They love you every minute of every day. And besides vreating that darling little body that needed to be loved and cared for every minute, God had already given you two great powers that would make you capable of loving: knowledge and freedom. Does anyone remember what those two great human powers are called? (Intellect & Free will)

And there would have to be a long complicated process by which you would gradually LEARN to love and freely CHOOSE to love. This little Venn diagram is a symbol of this long and complicated process. We will be talking about it in a few minutes.

We're going to spend the next section thinking about that exciting, unsettling, mysterious, sometimes frightening, and always amazing reality we call Falling in love. Let's watch this video to help us focus on this experience.

After the video:
The video is a lovely presentation of the process we call falling in love. Let's think about the video in terms of those two lines that we have talked about in earlier sessions of the LIFE program. Falling in love combines two of the relationships from the LIFE acronym: Friendship and Infatuation. We call this relationship the big IF because if some things happen in the relationship, it can lead to real LOVE but if other things happen it can lead to various levels of exploitation.

So how do we develop a real love relationship? Let's see if we can find an answer in the two Great Commandments that God has given us in both the old and new testaments.

The great comandments tell us that we were created to love God with our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind and all our strength. BUT before we can love God that completely, we will have to learn to love that way. Falling in love can be that teacher but it is a hard and sometimes confusing teacher.

So let's use those four words, heart, soul, mind and strength as a framework for discussing what the Great Commandments mean by LOVE. This discussion will take place between each teen and his or her own parents. You may want to move away from the table a bit so you can talk privately and hear each other well.

I'm going to ask you some questions that will help you to talk about the falling in love experience. Parents, I want you to think back to your late teems and 20's to a time when you were very much in love. Young people, your contribution to the discussion will depend on your own experience of falling in love, or an experience you have witnessed in a good friend or sibling.

Remember, the goal of this discussion is to help us all understand how deeply our lives can be affected by a falling in love relationship.

Let's use the word heart to discuss the feelings we associate with falling in love. What does it feel like to fall in love? Use the words on this list to help you talk about your experience. Do these words describe the way you felt when you were deeply in love? (Allow time)

Falling in love not only forced you to deal with your own feelings, but you also had to figure out how to deal with the feelings of the person you were in love with. How did that go for you? Was it hard or easy to understand the feelings of the other person?

God wants us to learn to love with our heart, soul, mind and strength. Let's take the word "mind" next. Remember that our INTELLECT (another word for mind) is one of the two powers that make humans capable of love. When you really love someone, that person is always on your mind. You think about then all the time. And you want to know what they think about, what they worry about, what they are hoping for in life and in this relationship. You want to spend lots of time together, really talking and really listening. You want to listen to their dreams and plans and problems - and you want them to really listen to yours. The words on the list name some of the things that are going on in your mind when you are deeply in love. What other words would you use?

The word soul is a profound word in scripture. It refers to the deepest part of the person, the secret place within your being where choices and commitments are made. The soul is the basis of the great power we call FREE WILL. Being deeply in love demands that you make some serious choices and decisions. (Read the list) How does each word on this list affect a growing romantic relationship?

When you really love someone, you want to be sure about your ability to live up to a love commitment. And you want to know that loving you back is a totally free choice for the person you love.

Falling in love nearly always demands some serious decision. It might be a decision to take the relationship to the next step of intimacy. It might be the decision to put the relationship on hold for some reason - college, a new job, the death of a family member, the military. Or is might be a decision to break up altogether. Talk about a decisive point in any of your past relationships. How did you arrive at your decision? How did you tell the other person? This might be a painful discussion for some of you. Maybe the commitment didn't hold. Maybe one or both of you found it impossible to live up to the promises you made. These, too, are important matters for an in-depth parent-child conversation.

Finally, let's look at the fourth key word. When you love with all your strength, all of your ACTIONS become acts of love. The sex act is meant to be THE SIGN of that love. Deciding to have sex is meant to be a promise that from now on everything you do, (read list) you will do for and with the person you love. Sex is supposed to mean that evry action in your day to day living will be a sign that you love this person now and that you will keep on loving him or her for better or for worse for the rest of your life.

Parents, talk with your teen about the early years of a committed relationship. How did you learn to live with the person you loved? How did you both deal with the inevitable problems and tensions of living together? And when babies were born, how did you and your spouse share the everyday efforts of living with and caring for them? Talk about your efforts to learn to really love each individual child that God put into your life. (Allow time)

Let's look at the chart one more time. God created you for LOVING, gave you the powers of intellect and free will which would make you capable of love, and put you in this three-circle process where you would learn to love and choose to love. And once you reached puberty, God arranged that you would begin to have that mysterious experience called falling in love where you could learn how to love someone with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength.

But learning to love is no easy task, not for teens and not for adults. Becoming a loving person takes a lifetime of grace from God and a life-time of effort from us. And there are lots of problems in all four of these categories: heart, soul, mind and strength.

This quote describes the problem:

These are words from the book Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtyla, also known as Pope St. John Paul II. Talk to your family what you think this quote means.

Another problem with learning to love is that it requires us to develop our will power.

Most of us have to admit that our will power is not as strong as we want it to be. In several of the earlier LIFE sessions we have talked about virtues as the name we use for the positive choices and decisions we make on a day to day basis. To practice virtue, we have to KNOW what is good, WANT to do what is good, and DO what is good. However, when we look at our lives most of us discover that we use a different formula: we KNOW that we are meant to be kind, and patient, and forgiving, and courageous, and we really WANT to practice all of those wonderful virtues, BUT...

Our US Bishops have given us this definition of chastity:

This formal definition is explained by the two lines we were talking about earlier.

So chastity is YOU choosing to follow God's plan regarding your sexuality. We all need to practice the virtue of chastity every day. Chastity should guide the sites we go to online, the music we listen to, what we watch, the parties we go to and the people we choose for our friends. I am in charge of ME. You are in charge of YOU. Each of is responsible for all the choices we make regarding our sexuality. We are also responsible for the effect our choices have on the persons we love.

Next we are going to look at how we learn to love with our whole mind or intellect. This one is complicated. We all know people who are super intelligent when it comes to doing math or science or fixing cars, but who don't know the first thing about how to develop a healthy romantic relationship.

One of the reasons for this can be found in the biology of brain development. Did you know that the brain is divided into several parts, each of which has a different function and develops at a different rate?

The largest part of the brain is called the frontal cortex. It shows up in blue in the diagram. (Put your hand over the front part of your head.) This part of the brain helps us to think before we act. It controls things like: impulse control, problem solving, long-range planning, delaying gratification and making good judgments. Notice how important everything on this list would be in developing a real love relationship. However, brain scientists tell us that this is the last part of the brain that develops and that it is not fully functioning until about age 25. Talk to your group about what this slide says about developing good romantic relationships in the coming years.

Finally, let's look at loving with all of our strength and actions. The relationship of actions to our inner person is one of the core teachings by St. John Paul II called Theology of the Body. St. John Paul explains that because we are body-spirits or spirit-bodies, everything we do or say with our bodies is meant to be an outward sign, or sacrament, of what is happening in our hearts and minds, A handshake is supposed to mean something, so is a friendly punch on the shoulder, or even a smile. When these signs are true, they help to deepen an already existing love relationship.

This is especially true of the act of sexual intercourse. The sex act is supposed to mean that this man and this woman love each other so much that they are freely open to choosing to give their entire lives to one another. It also means that they are open to to accepting and loving a child that might be conceived by this act. Sex is meant to be a sacrament of their loving union. And because God is love, God himself is present in their love for one another and in their love for their family.

Sex is supposed to mean all of this. Like the other six sacraments, it is supposed to be holy and a source of God's grace. That's why having sex with someone outside of the marriage commitment is such a serious sin.

We will close our session tonight with a parental blessing. Parents, as I say each part of the blessing, I ask that you trace a cross on your child's forehead, then heart, then hands.

May the God of love bless your mind that you will truly know that God created you for loving

May the God love bless your heart that you will want to follow God's plan for love

May the God of love bless your hands and body so that all you do will be done in love.