Faith To Go Podcast: The Joy of Sin and 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: Hide and Seek
Supplies: objects around the house
Let the children play hide and seek with a small object that you will hide in a designated. As soon as a child has found the object that you told them to find, then another object will be suggested to find and children will attempt to find that one; continue to play with various objects to be found as time allows or for the number of objects that you have hidden.
-Adapted from Sermons4Kids
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) What did the younger son do?
2)How do you think the younger son felt?
3)How do you think the older son felt?
4) How do you think the father felt when his younger son returned home?
5) How do you feel when your family is all home together?
Dinner Time: Feelings
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. Which brother do you think is right?
2. Is it possible both brothers feelings and thoughts are important?
3. How does the father love both brothers?
4. How are you different from your siblings?
5. Why is it important to remember that God always loves us, even when we are lost, or frustrated at God’s love for others when they make mistakes?
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 15:1-3, 11b-32
Sinners who wanted to hear what he had to say constantly surrounded Jesus. That made the authorities grumble and say, “Look at this guy—eating with sinners. It even looks as if he likes them!”
So Jesus told them this story: “Once there was a man who had two sons. The younger one asked his father for his inheritance early. So the father divided his property and gave it to his sons. The youngest son packed up everything he had along with the money and hit the road. He wasted his money on things that don’t last. When he’d spent everything, he found himself with no money, no feed, no job, and no family. He found work slopping pigs. He’d have been happy to eat the food the pigs were eating. It hit him one day that his father’s servants were a lot better off than he was. He decided to go back home, tell his father he was sorry, and ask to become his servant. So he went home. When he was still a ways home, his father could see him in the distance and his heart was overjoyed. He ran to his son, hugged him tight, and kissed his face.
“Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have made wreck of myself. I am no longer worth to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Go get the best robe you can find for my son and put rings on his fingers and shoes on his sore feet. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. Because I thought my son was dead, but he’s alive. He was lost to me, and now he’s been found.’
“The older son came back from the field and heard music and dancing. A servant told him that his brother had come back so his father was throwing a big party to celebrate. That made the older son really angry and he refused to go see his brother. The father tried to talk him into coming into the party. The son said, ‘I have been here working hard for you all these years, never giving you any trouble and you’ve never given me any party. Then this son who ran away from you, who has thrown away good money comes back, you go all out for him.’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”
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: