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.

The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Gospel reflection: What do you remember about the gospel reading that we heard today?  

After a long day listening to Jesus, the disciples want to send the crowd away to find food and shelter. But Jesus says that the disciples have to feed the people themselves. Why does Jesus want the disciples to feed the people?

Jesus wants the disciples to care about the people that they meet and whether they are hungry or not. He wants God’s love to be shown through the disciples. So, what happens next? What does Jesus say and do? Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, blessed them, broke them up and asked the disciples to share them around.

In the gospel, through God’s grace, everyone, all 5,000 people, eat the bread and the fish, and there is plenty left over. Twelve baskets full! What do you think the disciples and the other people said to each other when this happened? Imagine you are in the crowd of people who have come to Jesus. You were hungry and had no idea where you would find food. But then because of Jesus’ miracle you get given something to eat by the disciples. How do you feel? What would you like to say to Jesus after you’ve eaten some bread and fish?

Do you remember to thank God for the food that you eat every day? And what about the people who grow, harvest, prepare, sell and cook your food? Do you thank them?

Even though there is enough food produced in the world to feed everyone there are many people who go without food every day – both here in the UK and in other countries. How does it make you feel to hear that? Do you think it is fair? We are all members of one global family. We are all parts of one body – the body of Christ. So if one person is hungry, it is like we are all hungry.

Just like Jesus asks the disciples to feed the crowd in today’s reading, we are also asked to do whatever we can to make sure that everyone has enough to eat. What do you think we can do to help make sure everyone can get enough food? One of the things we can do is to ask the government to support the people around the world who grow food, not the big companies. Another thing we can do is to share whatever we can with one another.

This week let’s give thanks for the food that we have. Let us remember to thank God for all that we have been given, as well as thanking and praying for all the people who are involved in getting the food we eat from the farm to our table.

Let us also try to do one thing this week to help make the world a fairer place, so that everyone has enough to eat.

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