Children’s Liturgy

Children’s Liturgy of the Word

The children of the parish are invited to celebrate the Liturgy of The Word with their own catechists at Sunday morning Mass. Offering the children a Liturgy of The Word, which is suited to their age and adapted to their stage of development, can become one of the key ways of helping them grow in faith.

The children gather in the church and begin the Mass with everyone else. After the Sign of the Cross and the Greeting, the Priest calls the children forward, presents them with a Bible and the adult leaders process with the children to the “upper room”. The children come back into church at the offertory, where they display what they have done and then some of them take part in the Offertory procession.
This is not a closed group – all primary school age children in the church are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

Gospel reflection: What do you remember from today’s reading?

Jesus arrived in Jerusalem for a feast called Passover and went to the Temple. There he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, which were used as offerings to God. There were also many money-changers, so that pilgrims from different lands could change their money and buy the offerings.

Why do you think that seeing all this made Jesus angry?

The Temple was where people went to pray, but some people were buying and selling things instead. They were trying to make money from people’s faith in God. They stopped the Temple being a quiet place where people could talk to God and turned it into a market.

Jesus drove the traders all out of the Temple. How do you think all the people felt when they saw this?

Jesus was standing up for what he believed in. He saw something that he did not think was fair or right and so he acted to change the situation. He wanted the Temple to be a special place, where people could draw closer to God and get to know God better. How could they do that if they were distracted by a market or if they were worrying about having enough money to pay for the offering?

Where do you go or what do you do when you want to spend time with God?

Sometimes we come to church. Sometimes you might pray at home or at school, with others or alone. But each time we pray, we try not to get distracted. We close our eyes. We put our hands together. We stop doing anything else so that we can concentrate on God.

When we do this, we are able to pay attention to what God is asking of us.

Just like Jesus stood up for what was right, when he saw something he disagreed with in the Temple, we are called to do the same. Can you think of some things that you have seen that are unfair or which are not right? For example, have you seen people being unkind to others or not treating people as they should? What did you do about it?

Do you think it is fair that some people work very hard but do not earn enough money for the things that they need? Or that some people do not have enough to eat?

What do you do when you see something that you know is wrong or unfair? What can you do to change things that you know are unfair?

It is not always easy, but God is always with us. We can spend some time in quiet prayer so that God can guide us and give us the courage to make our voice heard.

Do you think you can make some special time for prayer this week and try to stand up for what is right?

Parents, grandparents and guardians, please feel free to share today’s Gospel with your children and grandchildren alongside the activities.

Look below for fun colouring pages and puzzles