This Lenten activity is an opportunity for catechists to connect Holy Week and the end of Lent to the celebration of Easter.
Holy Week Basket
- We are all familiar with Easter Baskets. This activity takes the Easter Basket and transforms it into a Holy Week Basket in preparation for the celebration of Easter.
- Place a traditional Easter Basket (filled with that fake green grass!) in the center of the room.
- In the basket, place a number of plastic eggs that you have filled with slips of paper that have suggestions for how to make Holy Week more holy. Suggestions:
- each day of Holy Week, read the Gospel for the day
- spend 15 minutes in silence each day
- pray the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary
- Get to church early for each of the Holy Week services and spend some quiet time in prayer
- rent an inspirational film such as Jesus of Nazareth, King of Kings, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Passion of the Christ, Fr. Barron’s Catholicism, etc.
- listen to some inspirational music
- fast from one meal each day
- fast from watching TV
- fast from surfing the Internet, spending time on Facebook, etc.
- fast from your iPod
- gather up loose change and donate it to a charity
- volunteer to work at a soup kitchen or shelter
- volunteer to help at a parish activity
- volunteer to participate in a special role at one of the Holy Week services
- go through your closet and drawers and gather up some clothes to donate to charity
- begin some spring cleaning in and around the house, starting with your own room
- make Easter cards for your family and godparents and for anyone you know who is ill
- visit someone who is sick or lonely
- plant some flowers
- help your parents do the Easter food shopping and preparation of Easter meals
- keep a quiet atmosphere on Good Friday: no TV, radio, or computer for a few hours in the afternoon.
- pray the Stations of the Cross
- other ideas? PLEASE SHARE THEM!
- Have each young person take one of the eggs and open it to get their Holy Week suggestion.
- Go around the group and ask them to read aloud the Holy Week suggestion they received.
- Announce the times of Holy Week services at your parish and encourage the young people to attend and participate.
- Play some quiet instrumental music and invite the young people to come forward one at a time to place their egg back in the basket in preparation for the celebration of Easter.
- Remind them that the egg is a symbol of the tomb of Jesus from which he arose.
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This is the world’s stupidest questions, but here goes! How do I read the whole post? I went to Lenten Activities under Liturgical Seasons and Feasts, then clicked on several of the titles, but I still can’t read anything but the first few words.
Karen, give me an example of one so I can make sure that there’s not a problem with the links.
HI! I love your ideas…going to try this today with our Sunday Children’s liturgy of the Word group…big age range. We have 4 year olds and 6th graders. I am planning to have the bigs help the littles read and understand the messages after from the eggs after we do a Reader’s Theater of today’s gospel.