Description: Make your parish Lenten Penance Service family friendly! Offer an extended children’s Liturgy of the Word with a Lenten craft for children ages 4-8 while parents go to Reconciliation.
Get Ready
- Prep Time: About two months prior to a parish Penance Service, discuss the idea for a Family Friendly Penance Service with your pastor and director of religious education. Recruit a children’s liturgy leader and young adult or teen volunteers to help with the craft project and supervision. Purchase craft supplies.
- Volunteers Needed: You will need at least one adult who is comfortable proclaiming and discussing the scripture with young children. One or two young adults and two or three teens are needed to assist with the craft and help with supervision.
- Supplies: Have copies of the scriptures to be proclaimed, and, if possible, get them from a Children’s Lectionary made for Children’s Liturgy of the Word. The readings suggested for this program are scriptures for the 24th Sunday of the Church Year. (Exodus 7-11, 13-14, Luke 15:1-10). You will also need a toy or stuffed sheep and supplies to make Easter cards: pink or purple cardstock, black construction paper, googly eyes, white washable paint or white washable ink pad, card envelopes, glue sticks, markers, and these instructions for making fingerprint sheep.
- Reserve the Space: Reserve a room for the children to gather that is easily accessible from the Church and is suitable to do a craft activity.
- Ideal Group Size: Five – 20 children.
- Who is this for? Young families.
- When is a good time for this? Weekday evenings during Lent. Be sure it is early enough in the evening to not interfere with bedtime for young children.
- Publicize the Program:
- Have the religious education director promote this with families in their program, especially children preparing for Reconciliation.
- If you have a Catholic School at your parish, ask the principal to send home a flier to parents.
- Advertise in the parish bulletin and social media.
Prayer for Program Planner: Loving God, thank you for your gift of forgiveness and love. Help me to proclaim your love and your great mercy to the young children who will gather. May our time together be a gift to them and to their families. Amen.
Community Building: This program allows young adult parents an opportunity to gather with the parish community as a family to experience Reconciliation.
- Set up the craft supplies in the room you will use for the program. Hide the toy sheep somewhere in the room.
- During the Penance Service, before the Liturgy of the Word, have the presider call the children ages 4-8 to the altar, offer a blessing and instruct the parents that they can pick up their children in the designated room after they finish their individual confessions. The Catechist and volunteers then lead the children to the designated room.
- Settle the children in their seats and begin proclaiming the scriptures.
- After proclaiming the gospel, tell the children that you also have lost a sheep. He is somewhere in the room. Ask the children if they would help you look for it and bring it back.
- Give the children a few minutes to find the sheep.
- Ask the children these questions:
- “Was it easy or hard to find the sheep?”
- “How much effort did you put into finding the sheep”
- “How did you feel when we found the sheep?”
- Offer some reflections:
- In the scripture, Jesus was talking about us being the sheep. Sometimes we get lost, we wander away from God’s love, and we call that sin.
- When we sin, Jesus reminds us that he comes looking for us; he misses us and wants us to be safe and happy. Sometimes it is easy for him to find us, just like some of you thought it was easy to find my lost sheep. Sometimes it is hard, and yet, Jesus comes looking. He does not give up on us.
- You all put a lot of effort into finding my sheep, and Jesus does the same thing because he loves us.
- Think about how happy we all were when we found my sheep. We had a great celebration. Now imagine how Jesus feels when he finds us after we sinned and we have returned and said we are sorry! He is celebrating even more.
- Your families are experiencing that celebration right now as they celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation. They are saying they are sorry for the times they wandered away and sinned and now Jesus is celebrating!
- In a few weeks, we will celebrate Easter. We remember that Jesus died and rose from the dead to save us all from sin. So we are going to make some Easter cards for our families. And we are going to make Sheep cards!
- Young adults and teen volunteers will then help the children to make the fingerprint cards using the supplies and these instructions.
- You may wish to have an additional craft in case the children are still waiting for their parents to pick them up.
Ideas
- Check out these websites for other craft ideas:
Help
- For the Easter Cards: Fingerprint Sheep Craft for Kids
