Fuel Your Faith: A Walk with the Lord

I teach in a Catholic school; however, this year my class has only eight Catholic students in a total of 22 students. As a result some of the customs and prayers that we do are unfamiliar to most of my students and their families. I've enjoyed teaching about our traditions and finding new activities to help my students understand our customs and feel a part of our worship.

During Lent we have been learning about the Stations of the Cross, a set of fourteen events that recall the final hours of Our Lord's life. I've even created a few classroom games to accompany our lessons. Most Catholic Churches have images of these 14 events displayed around the worship space. Here is a photo of Station 12 (Jesus dies on the cross) being blessed during a prayer service at my parish. The images had recently been removed to be refitted with new crosses and had just been returned to use.

My students colored a set of the stations while they learned about each of the events:

1. Jesus is arrested and condemned to death.
2. Jesus is given his cross.
3. Jesus falls the first time.
4. Jesus meets his mother.
5. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry his cross.
6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.
7. Jesus falls a second time.
8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem.
9. Jesus falls a third time.
10. Jesus' clothes are taken away.
11. Jesus is nailed to the cross.
12. Jesus dies on the cross.
13. Jesus is taken down from the cross.
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb.

This week we began to pray the stations using a set of candle stations that I created from an idea that I found on a blog. We broke them into two sets for our first time doing 1-7 on Wednesday morning and 8-14 on Friday morning. I forgot to take pictures during the simple service; I was so moved and involved in the prayer.

All my students were rapt, too! You could've heard a pin drop in the room. This is a miracle; my kiddos are NEVER quiet for more than a moment. I was pleasantly surprised by their reactions. Although these events had occurred nearly two thousand years ago, they felt like they were walking with Our Lord on his way to Calvary. Students who were new to this Lenten devotional said they liked this the BEST of everything we had done in religion class all year... they felt so close to Jesus.

We are on our Spring break next week, but when we return the following week we will pray all 14 Stations during Monday morning prayer. I'll add a little music to this experience, a song that I learned when I was a child, a song that we sang during the Stations of the Cross... a song about walking with the Lord, carrying our own cross, finding our freedom! I love this music clip. The singers are not professional, there are no fancy video effects, just the voices of school children singing earnestly during Mass about their walk with Lord.



Lenten practices like Stations of the Cross and songs like "Lord, Let me Walk" really Fuel my Faith so I'm joining my friend Jessica's weekly linky party.

Be sure to visit Jessica's blog, Joy in the Journey, to read more Fuel Your Faith posts.