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‘Heroes of Grace’ book can help parents and teachers impart the faith

Nora Hamerman | For the Catholic Herald

‘Heroes of Grace from the Holy Bible’ author Carol Anne Jones is a longtime religious educator and a parishioner at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Great Falls. COURTESY

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“Heroes of Grace from the Holy Bible” explains St. Luke’s role as the artist who painted the first icons of the Blessed Virgin. The page on the left is for younger children. COURTESY

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“Heroes of Grace” explains St. Luke’s role as the artist who painted the first icons of the Blessed Virgin. The page on the right adds more information for older children and adults. COURTESY

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A new book by Carol Anne Jones,
a longtime religious educator and a parishioner at St. Catherine of Siena
Church in Great Falls, is particularly timely as parents struggle to impart the
faith to their school-age children learning from home due to the coronavirus.
But it will continue to be a priceless resource when schools and churches fully
reopen. 

 

Titled “Heroes of Grace from the
Holy Bible,” (Coronae Rosarum Publications, Vienna, Va., $30) the book
comprises 50 stories from the Catholic Bible and 12 lessons on the Ten
Commandments and God’s graces.

 

Drawing on her experience as a director
of religious education for more than nine years in the Arlington diocese, Jones
ingeniously places two versions of each story side by side. Each page has an
illustration or two. The left-hand page offers an account of each biblical
story aimed at the understanding of an elementary school-aged child. The facing
page offers a more sophisticated understanding of the same subject, geared to
readers in middle school or older.  (There
is plenty of information here that will profit adults, as well.)

 

The full-color illustrations,
culled from a wide range of sources, provide an opportunity to give youngsters
access to the treasury of Catholic art, which is the wellspring of all Western
European art.  Many of the pictures are
based on stained-glass windows of more recent vintage. For others, Jones
recruited the classics: Michelangelo’s fresco of “God Creating the Sun and Moon”
on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508), a panel by the northern
Renaissance master Dirk Bouts of “Moses and the Burning Bush” (1475), “The
Presentation of Jesus in the Temple” by the Italian Renaissance master (and
Catholic patron saint of art) Fra Angelico (1450), Raphael’s “The Transfiguration”
(1519) and “Moses and the Tablets of the Law,” by the Spanish master de Ribera (c.
1630), to name but a few. 

 

For variety, the book includes
slightly cartoonish illustrations of the story of Joseph that look like
Egyptian tomb paintings, and the occasional photo or diagram of a site such as
Solomon’s Temple, the Nativity shrine in Bethlehem, the River Jordan, Mount
Tabor and the Way of the Cross in Jerusalem.

 

While the left-hand pages tell
each Bible story and its moral in simple words, the right-hand pages serve up
nuggets of knowledge about Catholic practices. For example, for the raising of
Lazarus, the right-hand page explains that the miracle is recounted in the
Third Scrutiny on the fifth Sunday of Lent, a liturgical note that possibly
even Catholic adults don’t recall. The right-hand page for Christmas contains
the “O Antiphons,” the evening prayers from the prophecies of the Messiah by
Isaiah, which are recited for seven days leading up to Dec. 25. In the lesson
devoted to Isaiah, both pages are entitled, “The Prophet of Christmas.”

 

Besides being beautiful and easy
to handle, thanks to its spiral binding, “Heroes of Grace” provides a roadmap
to Catholic teaching about the Bible as distinct from Protestant interpretations.
(Catholic Bibles have 46 books in the Old Testament, while Protestant Bibles
have 39. The seven additional books in Catholic Bibles are Tobit, Judith, 1 and
2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach and Baruch. Catholic Bibles also include sections
in the Books of Esther and Daniel that are not in Protestant Bibles. These are
called the deuterocanonical books, which the Catholic Church believes are
inspired by the Holy Spirit.)

 

In the introduction, Jones
emphasizes that the Bible’s truths are free from error in the original
languages, making translations important. She also notes that the Bible is not
always meant to be taken literally. “The authors often used stories, metaphors
and poetry to convey the great mysteries of God,” she writes.

 

Nearly 30 years ago, Jones began
creating Catholic religious education materials to meet the needs of parishes
that wanted to hold vacation Bible schools but found the only programs available
had a Protestant slant. The result was the “Week of Graces,” a five-day program
that entertained young children while giving them an introduction to prayers,
songs and rites of the Catholic Church that they would remember for a lifetime.

 

“Heroes of Grace from the Holy Bible” carries
on in the same spirit.

 

Hamerman writes from Reston.

 

Find out more

 

To learn more about “Heroes of Grace from the Holy Bible,”
go to:

 

https://coronae-rosarum.square.site/

 

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