Session 4: The Four Faces of Christ

Icebreakers then opening Prayer.

[It's usually a good idea when working in units such as the Christology unit, to review a little at the beginning of each session to give the students an opportunity to reflect on and remember what they experienced the week(s) before. This is also important for the benefit of anyone who missed the session, so they are able to hear what others got out of the previous week. This can also be the lead in for the questions: who would like to share with the students who missed last week what we discussed?]

The resource for this session was a Catholic Update by Virginia Smith that is no longer in print, but can be accessed by going to this website for a pdf file:

The Four Faces of Jesus

You can also use these more recent resources on the synoptic Gospels for additional background material, or for a more in-depth study for a second year group:

http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/SFS/an0100.asp

and

http://www.virtualreligion.net/primer/

http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac1203.asp

"Finding the Heart of Jesus' Life, Looking at Jesus in the Gospels"

[Note: it might be a good idea to assign each of these resources to different leaders, so they can report back to the core team group a summary, and so they are prepared for any questions from the youth.]

Preparation: In our sessions, we usually had each leader or group of leaders prepare by studying one of the "faces", the story given by the four separate evangelists of the Gospels. They would then present this version of Jesus as seen by this writer. Suggest to the students (or enact) that if you had 4 people describe the same person or event, how different would it turn out? Each person would focus on the parts that were important to him/her, that touched him/her, and would not necessarily repeat everything if the others had already talked about that. As you are describing the evangelists, use verses from the Gospels to illustrate it. This gives the students exposure to more texts as well as giving them a feel for the language and expressive qualities of each evangelist.

Some ways of doing this exercise, depending on the size of your group: If you have a small group, it is probably easier to have the four leader groups just take turns presenting their evangelist's view of Jesus to the whole group. If the group is large, you can break into 2 or 4 groups, have the groups rotate around to the leaders groups (with 2 you can have each leader group present 2 evangelists) until they have experienced each presentation.

I would suggest presenting 2, then taking a break before presenting the last 2.

Note for leaders:

Each group should spend approx. 15 minutes presenting your Evangelist's focus and personality. If you can find this resouces, which is out of print, you could include some insights from the "Four Ways to Follow Jesus" by Steve Mueller [Catholic Update Dec. 1992]. It discusses how your belief in this point of view of Jesus from the four Gospels affects what kind of disciple you become by the action it suggests. You can also give a little background on the writing of the Gospels taken from the resources above, if you have time.

Again, another great resource is:

http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac1203.asp

"Finding the Heart of Jesus' Life, Looking at Jesus in the Gospels"

Closing: regroup as a large group and have the subgroups share with the full group some of the insights they gained about who Jesus is. Which viewpoint of Jesus is most meaningful to you?

+Closing prayer.