Autumn 2006
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Children's Liturgy Sunday October 1st 2006
| God wants us to rejoice in everyone who loves and looks after other people. He wants us to live good lives so that other people can see his spirit in us. |
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are lucky to know about God's love, and when we do good, and when we are
glad, we share his gift to us with other people. We think about the riches in our lives that we can share. |
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Children's Liturgy Sunday October 8th 2006
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At this time of the year, we celebrate the harvest- the gathering in of
all the food we have grown. We thank God for all that we are given. We
realise we have such a wide choice of many foods, such as fruit, because
we are able to buy things from other countries. Some of our food comes from far off countries, where sometimes children have to work in order to make sure their families have enough to eat. Our world would have enough food if we all shared fairly. We have drawn pictures of children with the food that has been grown. We hope we share fairly with people who come to this country. |
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| When we are kind, we are giving back to God his harvest of love. We put our harvest baskets of our drawings on to the altar. |
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| This week in France, Frankie saw a display which told us how important it is to share the good things on our earth in a way which makes sure every single person is thought about and kept safe. This includes things we all take for granted, such as petrol, which comes from oil we get from certain places. Sometimes rich countries fight to make sure they get what they need .Many people get hurt, and the rich seem not to care whether there will be enough left for other people who will live after us. |
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| Last Sunday was the feast of St. Theresa. Whilst he was in France this week, Frankie went to visit Lisieux, the town where she lived. He went to the house where she lived when she was a little girl. Here is a picture of her garden. You can see the statue of her asking her father if she could become a nun and give her life to God. |
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| St.
Theresa gave a harvest of love back to God. She realised she could not
be a priest or a missionary, doing important work which was easily seen.
Then she had the wonderful idea that she would spend her life doing little
acts of love and kindness. She would also pray for other people to save
souls, which would be a harvest for God. |
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| You can see the Christmas crib she made up and used for years. |
Children's liturgy Sunday October 15th 2006
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In the Gospel today, Jesus asks the rich man to go to sell everything
he had and give it to the poor. The man becomes sad, as he does not want to give up his wealth. When the disciples question him further, Jesus says it is very hard for someone rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven. He adds that God can do anything; in any case, people are not saved by their own efforts, but because God loves them. We will try to give and pray that God makes our giving perfect. |
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We
thought about ways that we can give things we have to the poor.Here
are some of our ideas: -give some of our pocket money; -give our clothes that do not fit any more; -give toys that we do not play with; -remember people in our prayers. |
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Children's Liturgy Sunday October 22nd 2006
| In today's Gospel, the disciples were arguing about which of them would be the most important and get to sit next to Jesus in his kingdom.Jesus told them that in order to be great, they had to serve everyone else. They must be prepared to come last themselves. |
| We talked about being great. You don't always have to be famous to be great. First of all, we talked about people such as famous footballers and singers; but then we thought about people who have also done great things who are not well-known. |
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Our
collages show people whom we believe are great: 1) celebrities; 2) people who do great things for others. |
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Jesus,
You are our great God. Help us to see that the people around us are
great too and worth serving as you did. |
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Children's Liturgy Sunday October 29th 2006
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In today's Gospel, Bartimaeus was cured of his blindness because he had
faith. God must have given him the good idea to cry out to Jesus, calling
him 'Son of David', because this links Jesus to the line of kingship.
Bartimaeus was prepared to listen, trust and be guided. In his heart, he could see the truth that Jesus was sent by God as the Messiah, even before his eyes were cured. We talked about what it must be like to be blind and need to rely on others. We looked at the model we had made of Frankie the guide dog we all know, including the writing on his coat/bag, which says 'Trust' in both everyday lettering and in Braille, the alphabet used by blind people. |
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We
played a game, searching for things with our eyes closed, whilst a friend
tried to guide us. When we could not see, we felt puzzled, confused, unstable and frightened. Other people can make mistakes. When we tried to guide our friends, it was hard work and scary, because we did not want our friends to hurt themselves. We also make mistakes sometimes. We realised how trusting we need to be to be led by other people, by a guide dog, by God. Guide dogs are only trained to look after people; God loves us all the time and always has. We are sure God does not want us to hurt ourselves. |
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thought about times in our lives when we feel we cannot see the way things
are going to turn out, or we don't know which choices to make. We concentrated on how each object has a different texture, which means its surface feels different to touch. We looked at the Braille alphabet, thinking how hard it must be to learn to read in a new way. We realise we have to learn and be open-minded so we can read God's love in our hearts. We read and felt our 'Touchy/Feely' prayer. Each letter has a different texture. Some letters use raised dots in the Braille alphabet. |
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| When we walked back into church, to the music, 'How much is that doggie in the window', our guide dog, Frankie, led the way. Frankie took our prayers, in the shape of the objects we have found and placed in his coat/bag. |
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Children's Liturgy Sunday November 5th 2006
| In today's Gospel, Jesus tells us that the most important rules for living are to love God and to love each other. | ||||||
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heard a story about a group of people who helped each other in may ways.
Some shared a picnic, others visited someone who was ill, some worked
in a hospital, some were priests, someone made a cup of tea. By the end
of the story, each person had helped in some way and everyone had received
help. We thought about the way love works through ordinary little acts. |
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Children's Liturgy Sunday November 12th Remembrance Sunday
| Because today is Remembrance Sunday, we made a Memory tree. | |||||
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| We wrote on leaves the names of people or pets we love who have died. To help us remember, we chose a leaf the colour, shape and size to suit each person. If we felt like it, we told each other about our memories. | |||||
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| We placed our tree on the altar. Around it, we placed other leaves in memory of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, all the women who served with them and all people who have died in wars and fighting around the world. | |||||
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When
Frankie was in France a few weeks ago, he saw the place near Caen where
many British soldiers and sailors were buried. He noticed that the men
who died were very young, often aged only 19 or in their early twenties.
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| Today's
Gospel tells us that Jesus said the widow's gift of a small amount that
mattered very much was worth much more than the large gifts from people
who had lots of money. We asked ourselves what we would give that would really matter to us; someone said their whole teddy bear collection, if they gave it to children who had no toys and if they didn't keep back a single one. We honour the people who stood up for the good of others, although it cost them everything, even their lives. |
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| We remember all widows, left to go through life alone after wars, and children who grow up without parents. | |||||
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pray for peace in this country and in the world. Dear God, help us pass on your gift of love. Help us stand up for people who are less able to speak for themselves. Help us to find ways to do this in peace. We remember those suffering in places where there is war or fighting today. Amen |
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| Nobody
has anwered Frankie's question for last week! This week's music in church, as we placed our leaves on the altar, was 'Hymn for the Fallen', from the film, 'Saving Private Ryan'. |
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Children's Liturgy Sunday November 19th 2006
| Today in our liturgy, we have talked about people who help us in times of need, as we make our journey through life. | |||||
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| This reminded us of a famous story called 'FOOTSTEPS'. | |||||
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| One night, a man had a dream. He dreamt he was walking along a beach with the Lord. | |||||
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from his life flashed across the sky. He noticed two sets of footprints, one belonging to him and one to the Lord. At difficult times in his life, he noticed only one set of footprints. This bothered him and he asked the Lord why this was. The Lord replied, "I love you and would never leave you. At the most difficult times of your life, it was then that I carried you." |
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We
have made our own footsteps, which show times when we put our trust
in God, family and friends. |
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Children's Liturgy Sunday November 26th 2006
Christ the King. World Youth Day. Happy Birthday to Us! |
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Today
is World Youth Day and it is also nearly a year since we started Saint
Joseph's Children's Website. As you know, our mascot is Frankie the
guide dog- a real dog in our parish who brings his owner, Paul, to mass
nearly every day- so we say 'Happy Birthday Frankie'. |
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We
had a party with crackers and we played 'Pass the Bone'. |
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Inside
each layer of the parcel was a card the shape of a bone, with the word,
hello, in a different language. |
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At
the centre of the parcel was a present for the real Frankie, which we
took to the altar. Thank you, Paul, for letting us use Frankie for our
site. |
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On
the children's web pages, we can talk to each other and to new friends
across the world. Children as far away as New Zealand have looked at
our pages. |
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It
is world Youth Day and the feast of Christ the King.We heard in the
Gospel that the Romans were worried when they heard Jesus talking about
his kingdom, because they thought he would try to take away some of
their power. They wanted to continue to rule all the places they had
conquered. Jesus tried to tell people his kingdom was not of this world;
he was talking about Heaven, but they did not understand. We celebrate Jesus in glory in Heaven. The nearest we can get to heaven on Earth is by creating Peace and Joy here. We need to listen to each other, in the hope that today's young people will work together in the future. |
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The children of Saint Joseph's greet the world. From the altar we said 'hello' in as many languages as we could.
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