Humbling Experience

Holy Week was busy, emotional and draining all at the same time.  Our Triduum activities included a Seder Meal and Holy Thursday Mass, Living Stations of the Cross, Veneration of the Cross and The Seven Last Words of Jesus on Good Friday and a day of rest on Holy Saturday.  We chose to go to Easter Sunday Mass.

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All were meaningful and beautiful but I'd like to talk about my first experience going to a prayer service called The Seven Last Words of Jesus on Good Friday.  I was unfamiliar with this prayer service and not only was it my first time, my pastor asked if I'd be willing to give a 5 minute reflection on the second word of Jesus:

"This Day You Shall Be With Me In Paradise"

Thankfully, it was a bilingual Mass and the first and third reflections were spoken in Spanish so I had no idea how different they were than mine.

I had no idea what to do.  In fact, I was quite stressed out about it.  Even though I'm a lector at Friday morning Mass, I'm not that comfortable speaking at the ambo.  Public speaking is not one of my strengths. I sought advice on how to write a reflection from parishioners, a deacon, and both our priests.  All gave good advice and basically told me it was my faith story and I should put myself into a situation where my attitude was either the first criminal or the Good Thief.  How did I respond under trials and suffering?  Who did I become?  The first criminal or the Good Thief?

So, I did just that.  And in times of trial and suffering, I am the first criminal.  It was disheartening to realize that but it's true.  Not mocking but begging, pleading and demanding of a miracle.  Putting no faith in Jesus when it counted.  I spoke about two trials when I couldn't say "Your will be done" they are the death of my mother and the events that transpired just days after my son was born.  My husband had been hospitalized for an injury to his finger and needed reconstructive surgery to save it.  The next morning, my 5 day old son was hospitalized for weight loss and jaundice.  Both were in different hospitals and both needed me.  It was a very difficult time for me.

Writing this reflection and then having to share it from the ambo made it startling real for me that in my most difficult times of pain and despair, I have little faith.  It struck me hard while I was sharing my story and I became choked up and started to cry.  On the ambo in front of 150+ people.  It was raw and emotional without any previous intention to make it so.  God spoke to me and showed me where I lacked faith but He also showed me how much He loved me.

Earlier I mentioned that I was thankful that I hadn't understood the first and the third reflections since they were told in Spanish.  It gave me time to calm myself and when the fourth reflection was shared in English, I became overwhelmed.  Her reflection and the last one done in English, were more of a preaching style and not a personal sharing of their faith.  I was dumbstruck and then quickly felt humiliated that I had done it wrong and made myself so vulnerable.  And even cried at the ambo in front of so many people.

Needless to say, when it was over, I was afraid to move and interact with my fellow parishioners. However, they were warm and welcoming and supported my baring of my soul.  On Easter Sunday morning, my pastor also spoke words of encouragement that my reflection was not an embarrassing act on my part.  That it had a meaningful impact on those present.  It was an incredibly humbling moment for me that happened in front of a lot of people.  I pray that the next time God is trying to get my attention, He does so in a much less public way!

I've shared this post at Memoir Mondays at Campfires & Cleats.

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Blessings,

Noreen

Easter Symbol Bag

I read over on Charlotte's Waltzing Matilda blog how she had created a cute Easter Symbol booklet that outlines the meaning of each symbol.  I also read her post where she made all of her Easter Symbols herself.  A.M.A.Z.I.N.G!  I then read over on Jessica's Shower of Roses blog the sweet candy she made of each symbol.  The majority of them hand crafted in candy molds with different colors. UNBELIEVABLE these ladies are! Among their many talents, they are  candy artisans too!  

Thank you Charlotte and Jessica for my inspiration!

I knew my attempt at creating these candy symbols myself would be futile.  

So instead, I looked around on the internet and found some great ideas from Lacy at Catholic Icing.  

Thank you Lacy!

The rest I found at Walgreen's for either 50 cents or $1.  I was unable to come up with alternatives for each symbol listed over at Charlotte's or Jessica's blogs but I did what I could.  

And was happy with my result.  

I also found the chocolate praying hands and included them in the symbols.  

I told my students that the hands are a symbol of us in prayer of thanksgiving to Jesus.

Here is what I put in my students Easter bags with an explanation sheet of what each symbol meant.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of my symbols so I found pictures online to show you.

 LAMB

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EGG

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BUTTERFLY

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LILY

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CROSS

Catholic Icing

PRAYING HANDS

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This was a fun and educational project to do with my students.  My fellow Catholic bloggers have been a blessing to my students once again!

Blessings,

Noreen

Easter Lesson Plan

I have found so many wonderful ideas and ways to teach about Easter that it 

gets hard to choose at times, what to do!  

This was my last class before Easter and I wanted to impress the importance of the Passion of Jesus and His Resurrection on my students.  

I wanted them to remember His Suffering and Death and His Glorious Resurrection this coming Holy Week.  And not focus so much on Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny. 

I think through our activities, they walked away with a basic understanding.

At least, I pray they did.

Here is our prayer table.  I kept the crown of thorns and purple cloth since we focused on Holy Week as well as Easter.  We will change our cloth when we return in a couple of weeks.

The St. Joseph trading card (which I left in a shape of a bookmark) came from That Resource Site.

I found both books at my local library, they are Legend of the Dogwood by Brenda Gough

& Father and Son:  A Nativity Story

(it talks more the role St. Joseph played in raising Jesus).

I have an active group of first graders who enjoy games so I started them out with a 

Stations of the Cross Scavenger Hunt.

I had 14 items that represented each station partially hidden around the room and

 sent them off to find them.

Here is an example of the one I used from Holly at Three Sided Wheel blog.  I didn't have on hand

all the items she mentioned so I changed a few of them.

You should check out her blog for many great Lenten Activities!

I downloaded a picture of  Michelangelo's Pieta &

the Shroud of Turin.  

My printer was acting up and the pictures turned out discolored :(

I'll be needing a new printer, I think.

Here is a picture of all of my Scavenger Hunt Items:

Once my students found all of the items, we put them back in my green container (Holly has a much cuter labeled container!) And gathered together in a circle.

I used Jennifer from Family in Feast and Feria blog's colored Stations of the Cross printable.

She kindly offers them to her readers for free and so much more to celebrate Lent.

Go check out her blog HERE.  Thank you Jennifer!

Here's a better view.  They're really beautiful!

What we did was I announced a station and read what it was.  Then I asked one student to find the symbol in the box and try to explain it's purpose.

They each were able to look at the picture and handle the symbol.

This was a very hands on meaningful way for the children to learn the Way of the Cross.

Then just a couple of days ago, I found this super cute Resurrection craft from Jen at Enter Under My Roof blog.  I didn't have the needed felt so we created ours from cardstock.  Not quite as cute as Jen's but it did turn out nicely.  Here is my sample:

(it doesn't show clearly in the picture but I lightly shaded the tomb with a grey colored pencil.)

The tomb opens up to reveal a stained glass announcement of 

"He is Risen!"

I pre-cut many different rectangular colored shapes for my students to pick and choose from.
The idea is to make it look like stained glass.
Jen's stands out really good with the felt, but this worked cute.

 Jen has a great step by step explanation on how to make her craft out of felt.

You can see it HERE.  Thank you Jen!

I also found a really nice coloring page of St. Joseph at Sanctus Simplicitus.

Thank you CeAnne!

I sent home a bag of Easter Symbols as a small gift to my students.

But this is long enough, so I'll make that post in a day or two.

Thank you to Holly, Jen, CeAnne and That Resource Site for sharing all of your talents and creativity with the rest of us!  I often wish that I could learn how to create my own activities and share them with others, but I don't have the skill set to do so.  And yet there are so many wonderful sharing Catholic bloggers out there that I don't have to re-invent the wheel!

I've shared this post at Jennifer's Lenten Link Up at Catholic Inspired.

Blessings,

Noreen

Lent and St. Patrick Lesson Plan

Today I had a rather ambitious project and fortunately, I had another teacher come in and help during it!  I decided to have my students make Erin's Easter Wreath that she offers for free to her readers at Wee Little Miracles.  It goes from Palm Sunday to Pentecost and each event has scripture verses printed on an Easter egg shape.  It's so cute and educational for it has the main events of the Passion of Jesus, His Resurrection and Ascension; and then Pentecost.  It's all in one place on a cute wreath for my students to hang in their homes.  Each time they walk by it, they can remember the sacrifice Jesus made for them....for us.

My sample copy was placed on our prayer table.  

It was propped up by Saint Ciaran and St. Patrick.

Here's a close up of the Easter wreath.  It's perfect for young children with pictures and scripture to tell the real story of the last week of Jesus' life on earth up until Pentecost.

I also used Jessica's St. Patrick free printables to attach to chocolate gold coins.  

You can find them at Catholic Cuisine.  Thank you Jessica!  

Holly also has cute ones that she made over at

Three Sided Wheel Blog.  Thank you Holly!

Aren't they cute?  I didn't get a picture of Holly's but hers are really sweet too.

I tend to make a few extra because a few older siblings of my students tend to stop by our
classroom to see if I have any extras!

I tried to take a side view to show the different colors of the chocolate coins.  

At this time of the year, you can get the chocolate coins in many colors over at Party City.  

They are 10 cents each!  I used gold, green and orange.

But I bought a few more in dark and light blue that I used a few weeks ago, as the coins 

that Judas' accepted to betray Jesus.

The lighting was bad but the colors are such fun!  Party City also had them in pinks and purples.  

Very colorful and fun!

Then, I went to CeAnne's blog, Sanctus Simplicitus and downloaded her St. Patrick's bookmarks.

 She has many great ideas and resources on how to celebrate this popular saint.

When I told my students that St. Patrick was a real man that loved Jesus and lived a long time ago,

they were shocked.  

They were thinking he was a leprechaun!

Even though St. Ciaran's feast day is in September, he knew St. Patrick
and is considered the first Irish Saint.

The library has a few good books about the real man, St. Patrick.  Here are the ones I found:

By Joyce Denham

                                                              

                                                                             By Ann Tompert

By Joyce Denham

St. Patrick, pray for us!

Last year, I made THIS CRAFT with my students to celebrate St. Patrick's Day and explain the Holy Trinity.

I linked up with Jennifer at Catholic Inspired Lenten Link Up.  Come on over and see what other bloggers are doing to celebrate Lent!

Blessings,

Noreen

Happy Easter!

Easter Blessings to Everyone!  

Photo Credit

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"This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad. Alleluia!" 

Easter Blessings,

Noreen

Some Easter Crafting & Decorating

I've seen so many creative and fun ideas to celebrate Easter yet they lacked any mention of Jesus, His death or resurrection.  But I liked the colorfulness of them so I did what I could to bring Jesus into them (not my idea but one I had seen over at Tiffany's from Family at the Foot of the Cross.  Here are the results:

I got this free printable from Kimberly at A Night Owl.  I realize the words are not in sequence but I thought it was very pretty and it's hanging in my kitchen!  She has them on her blog in different color schemes.

Then I saw this cute craft of spray painting a mason jar and using it as a vase over at Decorchick.  I tied a rosary ring with Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal into the ribbon.  I realize this is not tied to Easter directly but I thought it was a beautiful picture of Our Lady and it looked good on the jar!

I've seen these yarn wreaths everywhere on the blog-o-sphere and I wanted to make one too.  It was time consuming yet fun at the same time.  I tied my rosary around the ribbon to connect it to the suffering of Jesus on the Cross.

I'm still working on this one.  I'm looking for a wooden word of Joy, Faith or Love that I can paint and attach it to this lilac yarn wreath.  The inspiration came from craft blog called My Blessed Life.  Loveliness everywhere you look in her craft designs!

And the idea of the Egg topiary came from Debbie Does Creations.  This was a fun craft using fabric strips and my hot glue gun.

Easter Blessings to all!
Noreen

He's Alive!

I accidently came across this video and thought I would share it.  It's a song I've not heard before but I liked it so I'm posting it :)

     When the the women visited the tomb to anoint Jesus body, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.  As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
     "Don't be alarmed," he said.  "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified.  He has risen!  He is not here.  See the place where they laid him.  But go, tell his disciples and Peter, "He is going ahead of you into Galilee.  There you will see him, just as he told you."
     When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene.  She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping.  When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it. 
     Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country.  These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either.
     Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.
     He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.  Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.     Mark 16:4-7, 9-16.

Happy Easter!
noreen
                                                   

Ash Wednesday

Today is the beginning of Lent and we'll be going to mass.  My son and I made a Lenten Calendar from Catholic Icing and hung it in the kitchen. 



We wrote our individual goals of what we plan to do to honor God and deepen our faith (it's on the bottom portion that was cut off in the picture).  One goal is to give up diet pop...  I will need help though giving this up... it has a stronghold on me and I know it.  My son has challenged me to do it and I've accepted that challenge. 

It will be hard... very hard... so please pray for me!!

May everyone have a blessed Lenten Season!
noreen