Celebrating St Christopher's Feast Day

St Christopher's Feast Day is celebrated on July 25th.  This year we celebrated and learned about St Christopher earlier in the week because we are traveling to this week to visit family.  Which is kind of perfect, because St. Christopher is the Patron Saint of...you guessed it...Travelers!  

St. Christopher is one of the Saints included in Catholic Mosaic, so we picked up the book Christopher: The Holy Giant by Tomie dePaola  and The Legend of Saint Christopher by Margaret Hodges at our local library and dove right in!  These books were both fantastic and we were able to have a great discussion about what it means to say "yes" to God when he calls and how to trust in God.  Also the name Christopher means "Christ-bearer".  We discussed how we can all be Christ-bearers in our daily lives.

Our favorite part in the Tomie dePaola book Reprobus (who is later renamed Christopher) asks "Tell me how to find him (Christ)".  "You cannot find him," the hermit said.  "You must pray, and Christ will find you".  This part of the story was such a great opportunity to talk to our little ones about the power and importance of prayer and a relationship with Christ.

 

Our children also loved how they spoke in the book of Jesus being the MOST POWERFUL King of all!  When they were at Vacation Bible School this year they learned lots of fun faith based songs and one of their favorites is the following "My God is Powerful!"  We sang this song and talked about serving God!

Because we are traveling this week and learning about this great Saint, we picked up a little Holy Coin of St. Christopher to place inside our van to remind us to pray for safe travels!  "Behold Saint Christopher.  Go thy way in safety", as said in Christopher the Holy Giant.

 

Another activity for the feast of St. Christopher was using branches or a small tree to hold something special like holy cards, flowers, etc. 

As it says in the story Christopher The Holy Giant "And to show that you serve me, set your staff in the ground next to your hut.  Tomorrow you shall see it flower and bear fruit".  At that, the child (Jesus) vanished and Christopher did as he was told.  The next morning, there in front of the hut, Christopher found his staff sprouting leaves and flowers and bearing dates, just as the child said it would.

 

Since we have collected so many fun Saint Medals through our subscription to Saint Mail we decided to hang them on branches to remind us to pray to all of the Saints and remind us of the faith of St. Christopher.

 

"When you carried me on your shoulders, you carried the world, for I have the whole world in my hands." - Child Jesus saying to Christopher in The Legend of St. Christopher