Faith To Go Podcast: Engaging With Suffering
Hosted each week by the Faith Formation team at St. Paul's Cathedral in San Diego, David Tremaine, Maya Little-Sana and Jackie Pippin, the Faith To Go Podcast highlight themes from the Sunday Gospel reading for you to take into your conversations throughout the week.
Activity Time: Footsteps Mobile
Supplies: Wire clothes hanger, construction paper, string, tape, markers
Help your children to trace and cut out tracings of their feet. Help them to cut out the feet and write on them ways that they can follow Jesus. Attach the tracings to the coat hanger to make a mobile.
We always fail in our attempt to follow Jesus perfectly, but we always have the chance to try again. A new school year is a great time to try again and make a new start. This mobile can help remind you of ways you can follow Jesus as you settle into your new routine.
Story Time: Gospel Reading and Reflection
Watch this video together and then use the discussion questions below to reflect as a family.
Discussion Questions:
1) How do you want to be more awesome?
2) What does it mean to make history?
3) How do you want to treat your teachers and friends this year at school?
4)Are you a teacher?
5) What do you want to teach them?
6) How does Jesus teach us to treat our friends?
Dinner Time: Tasks Before Us
Below is a prayer with which to start your meal and then discussion questions to explore this week’s topic with your family while you eat.
Prayer- God, you were present at the beginning. Be with me as I begin (a new school year, new job, new sport, new extracurricular). Comfort me when I am unsure of my new surroundings. Strengthen me when I stumble, and help me remember that your light shines in all places. All this I ask through you, my Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
Amen.
Questions:
Do you know how to tie your shoes? Ride your bike with/without training wheels?
What are other things that you know how to do?
Were these tasks hard when you did them for the first time?
What did Jesus ask of his followers and friends?
What seemed really hard to Jesus’ followers and friends about what he asked of them?
Bedtime: Reflections for Children at the End of the Day
During your bedtime routine, invite your children into a time of reflection about their day, maybe by saying, "Did you know that God really wants to know what happened in your day today, and that God is always listening whenever you need to tell God something?" Then continue with these questions:
1) What are some things that happened today that you want to tell God about?
2) What is one happy thing that happened today? What is one sad thing that happened today?
3) Did you see God or feel God with you when those things were happening? Where did you see or feel God when those things happened today?
4) Read to your children this week’s scripture selection, then ask the questions that follows.
John 6:56-69
Jesus kept talking about his body as bread. “Remember that your ancestors who were hungry in the desert were given manna, a form of bread God sent from heaven? They ate that bread, but they died eventually like everyone else. But I am the bread from heaven that you will eat, and you will never die. Just as the living father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.”
When he said these things in the synagogue, his disciples had a hard time hearing it. They didn’t like Jesus talking about eating his flesh and blood. Jesus asked them, “Am I upsetting you? Would it upset you to see me ascend into heaven? I’m not talking about blood and flesh, you know. I’m talking about spirit and life! Think about that. Still, some of you won’t believe. I know that God the Father has to open your heart before you come to me, believing.”
Some of the disciples gave up on Jesus because they just couldn’t understand. Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you want to leave me as well?” Peter said to him, “Jesus, where would we go? Whom would we follow? You are the one with the words of eternal life. It may not seem like it sometimes, but we have come to know that you are God’s Holy One.”
Did the story remind you of anything that happened in your day today?
5) What are some things that you want to tell God that you are grateful for today?
Share some of your conversations in the comments below: