Faith To Go Podcast: Implicated in 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: Planting Goodness
Supplies: plant, fertilizer, shovel, gloves, stake.
Plant a plant with your children! Let children dig the hole, water, fertilize, and plant something together. Let children put their name on the stake in the ground by their plant.
Explain that planting the plant isn’t the end. The plant needs love in the form of fertilizer, water, and sunlight to help it grow and be strong. Sometimes these happen naturally where the plant is, but sometimes we need to be intentionally if we see the need for us to act and tend to the plant.
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) I wonder what is a parable?
2) I wonder what the farmer did?
3) I wonder where did the seeds end up?
4) I wonder what was the best spot for seeds?
5) I wonder how are we supposed to plant seeds of our faith?
Dinner Time: Creating Good
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-
Forgiving God, stay with me
As I walk through Lent
For these next forty days.
Help me to learn more about myself
During this time you have given me for
Prayer and discernment.
Open my eyes as I walk with Jesus at my side,
So that I can see any
new path you want me to follow.
Open my ears to what you are saying
When I read and
study the Bible.
More than anything, know that I’m sorry
To have forgotten you this past year.
I seek to return to you more fully in the coming days.
This I pray in the name of
My guide,
Your Son, Jesus.
Questions:
1. I wonder if anything bad happened this week?
2. I wonder how it made you feel?
3. I wonder where did you see God in that situation?
4. I wonder how did you help bring joy and goodness to the situation?
5. I wonder what does Jesus do to teach us that example?
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.
Luke 13:1-9
Jesus heard about some people who had been murdered. He asked his disciples if these people were bad people because of what happened to them. Then he answered his own question: “No, they weren’t, but you’d best change your ways so you wont end up like them. And then there were people who died because a tower of bricks fell on them. Did that happen because they were sinful?” Jesus asked. “No. It doesn’t work like that. But pay attention and turn your lives around for the good anyway.”
Then he told them this story: “A man had a fig tree that didn’t produce any figs for three years in a row. He told the gardener to cut the tree down. ‘Why should I waste the soil on this tree anyway?’ The gardener said, ‘I think we should give it another change. Let’s see if it will grow us some first next year. If not, then go ahead and cut it down.’
“You’ve got a chance to turn your ways around,” says Jesus. “Take that chance and do something productive with your lives”
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: