Stories from the Field Archives - Page 24 of 61

An Umbrella of Mercy

My friend and colleague, Kathy Donnelly, sent this wonderful story along to me. According to Sr. Phyllis Schenk, O.P., the Director of Religious Education at Resurrection Parish in Illiopolis, Illinois, the parish installed an Umbrella of Mercy in the church for the Year of Mercy. Under the umbrella are Loyola Press Beatitude Cards and small wooden plaques. Parishioners are encouraged to take a Beatitude Card home and to write on the plaque a time when they were shown mercy […]

Four Ideas for Engaging Parents in Faith Formation

Eric Gurash

While there is often agreement among catechists that parental involvement in their children’s faith journey is essential, it can often be quite challenging to actually encourage and engage parents in the process. The business of family life, the idea that the teaching of the faith is a role reserved for the classroom teacher, DRE, or pastor, and the fact that this level of involvement may not have been required in parish programs in the past […]

Teaching Second-Graders the Beauty of Lent

Lisa Brown

The beauty of Lent offers a time for the Church to relive salvation history. By practicing the penitential disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, many adults savor this transformative season. But how does an untrained teacher who meets only briefly with her wiggly second-grade faith formation class communicate the beauty and relevancy of Lent in language they can understand? The short answer: by acting out Christ’s desert experience in a way that highlights how fasting, […]

Honesty and the Gift of Reconciliation

Denise Gorss

Among my group of seventh graders, I have several who are preparing to receive the Sacraments of First Reconciliation and First Eucharist this year. Because of this, I spent more time in a recent session on Reconciliation talking about the steps of receiving the sacrament than I otherwise would. And that led to a surprising moment of honesty. Finding God, Grade 7, Session 14 formed the basis of the lesson for the evening, but we […]

young girl celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation

Apologies and Forgiveness

Lisa Jones

We were created for love, and we naturally seek forgiveness. This is one reason children naturally take to lessons on the Sacrament of Reconciliation. In their young lives, the kids in my third-grade class have made mistakes and gotten in trouble, all the while being continuously loved and constantly forgiven by a parent. In our lesson about Reconciliation, I included a discussion of the difference between what is a sin versus what is an accident. […]

God Provides! Small Faith Groups Update

Joe Paprocki

As I reported a couple of weeks ago, I am assisting Christ the King Parish in Chicago in implementing small faith groups for the Lenten season. We did many preparations to get this initiative off the ground, including the following: recruiting small-group leaders displaying posters and signs on parish grounds training leaders advertising with bulletin announcements for the month of January having priests speak at all the Masses on January 17 hosting Sign-Up Sunday on […]

A Magnificent Banquet

Lisa Brown

During the “Christmas honeymoon”—those few weeks of Ordinary Time between Christmas and Lent—I found that I had been lulled into a sense of complacency. My second-grade class had covered a lot of material during the fall, and I felt good about their grasp of the material. But then reality hit me—their First Reconciliation and First Holy Communion were only weeks away! I started to panic, and I wondered if my students were really prepared for […]

Kicking Off Small Faith Groups at Christ the King Parish

Joe Paprocki

This year, I have been dedicating my efforts to building up adult faith formation at Christ the King Parish in Chicago. Our first foray into this area is forming small faith groups for the season of Lent, and I am happy to say that they are getting off the ground as I write this! Over the past five months or so, I have been meeting with the pastor, Fr. Larry Sullivan, and his staff to […]

Lenten AWE: Reaching Out to Young Adults

Julianne Stanz

Research indicates that young adults are highly likely to be present at Ash Wednesday services and to engage in Lenten practices such as abstaining from meat on Fridays and fasting. When I worked in parish young adult ministry we were especially attentive to those young adults who would come to Ash Wednesday services but were rarely seen at other times of the year. To reach out to this group, we started a Lenten initiative called […]

Facilitating Small Faith Groups for Lent

Reflecting on the Lenten Scriptures Cycle C Video Options

Joe Paprocki

Last year I offered handouts for Reflecting on the Lenten Scriptures, to be used in parish small faith groups. Year C materials for 2016 are now available. This year, I selected some options for online videos for further reflection on each week’s theme. Always remember to preview videos before showing to your group, to determine appropriateness for your setting and be sure things work as expected. First Sunday of Lent, Cycle C Temptation: What Is […]