Religious Emblems Program
	Light is Life Requirements

Eligibility:

Any boy who is in grade 6 up to age 18, is registered in a Boy Scout troop or Venture Crew, and is of Eastern Catholic faith may participate in the Light is Life program.

Purpose:

The National Catholic Committee on Scouting has developed this program in cooperation with the United States bishops of the Eastern Catholic churches.  It is meant to provide a more effective religious emblem program to Scouts of the Eastern Catholic churches.

Program Goal:

The overall goal of the "Light is Life" religious emblem program is to bring about in the Scout, through his Eastern Christian Scouting experience, a deeper awareness of his share in faith-life. Then going forth, he will witness this life through maturity in communal worship and in Christian formation of his world.

Throughout the course of religious education, the Eastern Christian Scout has been introduced to the Triune God – Father, Son and the Holy Spirit – and God’s plan for humanity. As the Scout reaches adolescence, it is increasingly more important that he live out the implications of his relationship with the Trinity. Eastern Christian Scouting provides an excellent framework for this to happen. The Scout must truly become a "light to the world." Light is life! Life is to know the only true God through his Son, Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is the Light – our model and teacher.

Activities:

STEP A:  INTRODUCTION

Goal: To discover, as a Scout, that the material world helps us to come to contemplation of the divine presence. That while the supernatural experience cannot be built upon the natural experience itself, it is developed within it by revealing the real depth, origin and purpose of the natural.

1. Creation reveals God's presence
2. Signs and symbols
3. Icons
4. Liturgy is life

STEP B:  INITIATION

Goal: To study the meaning of Christian initiation for the Scout’s relationship with God and the church.

1. Baptism – Chrismation – Eucharist
2. Kingdom of God
3. The Divine Liturgy

STEP C:  HEALING

Goal: To identify sin as our failure to see God in all that we say and do: and to study Great Lent as the church’s yearly season of repentance, and to see healing as the triumph of the paschal victory over death, illness and sin.

STEP D:  VOCATION

Goal: To identify God’s personal call to each of us through our life vocation.

STEP E:  TOWARD A CHRISTIAN LIFE-STYLE

Goal:  To study what it means to live a Christian life-style and to establish a realistic prayer life.