Children of The Church

Friday, April 14, 2017

Holy Thursday 2017

On Holy Thursday we remember Jesus celebrating the Last Supper and washing the feet of his 12 Apostles. We also then remember Jesus going to the garden to pray before his arrest. After Holy Thursday Mass the Eucharist is placed on a temporary "altar of repose" and it is a tradition to travel to Seven churches for adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. As Jesus asked his apostles to stay with him and pray in the garden, he also asks us to spend time with Him in adoration. While this tradition is supposed to be done after Holy Thursday Mass, with little children it would be very difficult to visit seven churches starting at 8pm! After getting the tip from a few others, I decided that we could start this tradition in our own way and visit Jesus in adoration during the day time on Holy Thursday at Seven Churches! I would love to one day be able to do this tradition in the evening with our family, but until that time we can still enjoy making this a great Holy Week tradition!

As we visited each church we prayed 2 Stations of the Cross at each location and lite one candle for a loved one who has passed away. We also really enjoyed looking at the similarities and differences of each church, how they displayed the Stations of the Cross, etc. It was a great morning and definitely something I look forward to continuing in the future!

Church 1 - The Church of the Holy Spirit

Church 2 - St. Cecilia's Cathedral

Church 3 - St. John's Catholic Church

Our Son Ryan at the Baptismal Font where he was baptized over 7 years ago!

Church 4 - St. Peter's Catholic Church

Church 5 - St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church

Church 6 - Our Lady of Lourdes

This is the church were my husband and I were married and our children love visiting here and hearing stories of our wedding day!

Church 7 - Immaculate Conception

After dinner we read the Bible story of the Last Supper and the Washing of the Feet. Our little ones then loved reenacting the story in their own ways.

Our oldest son Ryan is getting ready for his First Communion in about 1 1/2 weeks and I loved this moment as he is learning to receive Our Lord on his tongue.

Our little priests wanted to get out their Chasubles for Lent and Easter to make their experience more "real"!

Afterwards we spoke of how the Altar is stripped after the Holy Thursday Mass as Jesus died and was laid in the tomb. We stripped our prayer table of all but the Stations of the Cross which we prayed on Friday and the Crown of Thorns as a reminder to us of the day to come.

After I helped put our children to bed I snuck away for a while to our new parish where they had Adoration at the Altar of Repose. It was beautifully set up and a beautiful time for me to have some special quiet prayer time as we entered Good Friday.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Spy Wednesday 2017

On Wednesday during Holy Week, otherwise known as Spy Wednesday we remember how Judas was offered and accepted 30 pieces of silver in return to show the guards were Jesus was. This is such an important day to talk about being a witness to our Faith and how to be able to stand up, and turn away material desires or other things to proclaim our faith in Jesus! Our children also love the tradition of doing a little hunt for 30 pieces of silver!

Also, we were planning on going to Catechesis of the Good Shepard in the morning, but I had a flat tire so we stayed home instead! I had planned on doing the Crucifixion Water Painting on Good Friday, but since we had the morning suddenly off we did it that morning!

I had explained that they could just paint the background and our oldest son started painting little bits of red. I asked what he was doing and he said he was drawing Jesus's wounds and bleeding. He then drew Mary and John at the bottom of the Cross with Mary "weeping". I almost started weeping when I saw how his heart was really thinking of the entire story of Jesus' crucifixion! I also adore how when my oldest does something everyone else follows in line, so our 5 year old made his own depiction of the same story!

Monday, April 10, 2017

Lenten Lunch

We started the tradition last year to have the Symbolic Lenten Lunch created by Lacy with Catholic Icing last year. We loved it so much that we knew that we wanted to do it again! Thankfully, I had made the note cards last year and saved them in my Lent storage bin that had what each item was in what order, what the Bible verse was and what food to be served with it! This made it very easy to re-create again for this year.

I love that as our children get older they are so much more helpful and truly appreciate things more! Connor helped me set up the whole lunch and was constantly saying, "I remember what this is for!" and was re-telling me parts of the story of Jesus's crucifixion.

During our Lunch we discussed:

The Agony in the Garden: Luke 22:39-46 (with Olives, to symbolize Jesus being at the Mount of Olives)
Judas' Kiss: Luke 22_47-48 (with Hershey' Kiss to symbolize the kiss of Judas)
The Arrest of Jesus: Luke 22:49-54 (with string cheese with a sword to symbolize Jesus' arrest)
Peter's Denial: Luke 22:55-62 (with a hard boiled egg to symbolize a cock crowing)
Judas' Silver: Matthew 27:3-8 (with Peppermint Patties to symbolize Judas' 30 pieces of silver)
Crown of Thorns: John 19:1-3 (with crackers/peanut butter and pretzels in the shape of crowns)
Pilate Washes His Hands: Matthew 27-22-25 (with a glass of water)
Crucifixion: John 19:17-19 (with pretzels put together in the shape of a cross with peanut butter)
Vinegar to Drink on the Cross: John 19:28-30 (with Salt and Vinegar chips to symbolize when they offered vinegar for Jesus to drink)

As we continue to homeschool and work on listening, comprehension, etc something that I used to have to kind of rush through to finish now can linger on with questions and discussion. We read each bible verse in full and then talked about how we would feel or what we thought about when certain things happen like Judas kissing Jesus to show the guards where he was in the garden, or Peter denying Jesus and why he maybe did that. We also were able to take a moment for prayer after we read about Jesus dying on the cross. The boys each prayed out loud why they were thankful for Jesus dying on the cross for them, and it was so sweet to hear there thoughts.

We ended talking about how although it is fun to eat the different foods, the most important part of this activity is the words in the Bible that tell the most important story of our history. It was a wonderful way to start our Holy Week this year.

Palm Sunday 2017

Holy Week is upon us! Our Lent this year has been a bit up in the air between buying a new house two days after Lent began, finding out we were pregnant, moving, experiencing a miscarriage and the chaos of contractors and getting our new house in order! Things are kind of settling down so we have big plans for the week to help us focus on the Crucifixion and Resurrection of our Lord! We started with some of our favorite books about Palm Sunday including The Week that Led to Easter, Hosanna to You, Jesus and A Picture Book about Easter!

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Preparing for First Communion

This has been such a special year as we have been preparing for both First Reconciliation and First Holy Communion with our oldest son Ryan! Check out a few other things we have done below:

Tour of the Church

Creating a Special Prayer Space

Feast of Our Lady of Rosary

Also, check out his amazing First Reconciliation Day below:

Ryan's First Reconciliation

We are now just a few weeks away from Ryan's First Communion and we are so excited that the big day is almost here. Ryan picked out on his own what he wanted to do for his First Communion Banner. We loved learning about the symbolism about each thing that we added as we went.

We also re-watched the Kids and Sacraments DVD all about Communion. Although we have watched this before it was a lot of fun to watch with all of the kids and see Ryan's excitement. We have also been reading My Path to Heaven, The King and the Golden City, and some other special books preparing for this special sacrament!