This year, I came out of the cave known as my house and started teaching religious education again. In the summer, I spent time with our Confirmation class, and it was, in a word, delightful.

It reminded me of why I spent a number of years before I had kids teaching third grade religious education, and it made me look forward to this year with the fifth-graders.

One of the resources I immediately turned to, when I was gearing myself up for being a catechist in a classroom again, was Lisa Mladinich's indispensible booklet Be an Amazing Catechist. It prepared me in the way stretches prepare me for the torture otherwise known as zumba. It's the kind of booklet that I think I'll need to keep a few copies of on-hand, because both of my aides needed it, and the religious education director didn't remember seeing it last year, and...well, you get the idea.

I happened to have a chance to get to know Lisa a bit better this summer (And wow! She's the real deal!), and she told me there would be another installment focusing on sacramental preparation.

Check out what showed up a few weeks later in my mailbox: Be an Amazing Catechist: Sacramental Preparation.

If you've followed Lisa Mladinich for any amount of time, you won't be surprised by the practical approach she takes in this follow-up work. This booklet will probably not stay in my possession long, because I just know too many people who need to read and absorb Lisa's wisdom and advice.

At $2.95, it's a bargain. At 31 pages, it's digestible. As a resource, it's awesome.

This is an obvious choice for catechists, but I want to take a moment and look at you parents, grandparents, and adults who have children in your life. YOU are catechists, too, whether you embrace the role or not. Those kids in your life look to you FIRST. I am going to ask our parish if we can give a copy of this to all the First Communion and Confirmation parents next year, in part because it's a resource that doesn't propose a bunch of impossible things.

Mladinich approaches sacramental preparation just as she approached catechist preparation: with a smile and a big cheer. YOU CAN DO IT, she shouts from every page, and God will help you!

This new booklet gets my highest recommendation, and if you haven't yet read the first one, why not pour a cup of coffee and treat yourself to them both?