Lent Resources

I'm a bit slow on the ball here. I guess I should have saved sex for later.

Haha. Get it?

*sigh -hello, is this thing on? (taptap)*

Ok, Lent Resources. I'm a little sad to say that I have not found very good resources in this area. There are a few prayer resources for Youth Ministry, but I found them to be "of middle ground" so to speak.

Speaking of middle ground, the "Pastoral Associate" , "Sister Joan" wrote in the bulletin at my brothers' parish "If for some reason you cannot make it to Mass on Ash Wednesday, do not let this keep you from experiencing this ancient medicine. All of the earth is holy land and it's soil is blessed. So take some dirt or dust in the palm of your hand and mark yourself with the sign of the cross, thanking God..." Ahem. Ok. I thought the ashes were burned palms blessed by a priest but what do I know?

Anyway, last year I incorporated the kids who were in their schools' drama clubs to help with the Stations of the Cross. At first I was a tad worried because the lead girl is quite decisive and a little bit of a rebel when it comes to the Church. However, they did a brilliant job-and maybe this is an idea that you could use.

Instead of going around to each station, she organized the kids to act out each station. The twist was that we did it "shadow" style. We hung a wide cloth across two poles, turned off all of the lights and pointed a light at it so that all the people could see where the shadows of the actors.

We would turn off the light between stations, and reset each scene. Each scene was "frozen", that is, there wasn't any movement of the actors, but my high school girl director incorporated a lot into the picture. She was quite inventive and it came out great.

For each station we also had a few readers who read by candle light as well, though they probably should have practiced the readings a few more times.

All in all the kids did a great job. My favorite outcome of this was that the kid playing Jesus said that he found himself relating to Christ and what he was going through. This was a powerful statement from a kid who had been having a great deal of difficulty in his life at the time.

Not only did this prayerful presentation bless those who came to pray (they were quite impressed that "teens could be so prayerful") but how God worked in each of the teens' hearts as they presented AND joined in the prayer of the Stations.