+ Generations Together
Go and Do Likewise
Here is an intergenerational session for all members of the congregation exploring how the life stories of John the Baptist and Dorothy Day call each of us to invite others to prepare their hearts for Jesus and to care for our neighbor in need. Using current faith-forming activities on Vibrant Faith @ Home, this session is designed to be conducted in about 90 minutes, and can be adapted for a shorter or longer timeframe.
Introduction
This session will help children, teens, and adults understand that when we step back from our desire to be number one, even our desire to be a saint, we are free to serve other’s needs and point the way to Jesus. For this session, our models are John the Baptist and Dorothy Day.
Prepare in Advance
1. Gather all the necessary items as listed in each section of the session below—Gather, Grow, Go Forth.
2. Contact a homeless or emergency shelter or soup kitchen in your area to make sure they will accept a home-cooked food donation. Set a date and time for your intergenerational program to coincide with delivering soup to this facility.
I. Gather
[Use the following adaptation of the first part of the Vibrant Faith @ Home activity The Great Stone Soup Adventure. The second part of this activity will be used at the end of the session.]
Needed
Children’s book telling the traditional folk story Stone Soup or text from Story of Stone Soup (see pg.12), easy soup recipe
Activity Plan
1. Ask participants to form family groups or small groups of no more than six persons.
2. Say this prayer aloud to begin.
Generous God, thank you for providing for our every need. Help us to be loving and generous also. Amen.
3. Read aloud the story, Stone Soup. Talk about how sharing made enough soup for everyone. Recall times when sharing has led to good things in your lives.
4. Assign tasks for making the soup recipe you’ve chosen, such as chopping vegetables, browning meat, or opening cans. Be sure to observe safety rules for children around hot cooking surfaces.
5. Finish making the soup according to the recipe and transfer half of it to containers to transport to the place you have chosen. Leave the other half of the soup behind to eat when you return.
6. Plan for bread or crackers to accompany the soup you and your guests will eat.
II. Grow
Ask participants to form two large groups:
1. Families with young children
2. Families with teens, along with young adults and adults
Young Family Activity
[use the following adaptation of the Vibrant Faith @ Home activity Honey Time]
Needed:
Copy of the Smoothie recipe, one for each family.
Activity Plan
1. Ask participants to form family groups or small groups of no more than six persons.
2. Prayer reminds us that we have a relationship with God, and that God is connected to every part of our lives. Begin this activity by praying the prayer below.
God of my heart, you have work for me to do in this world. Help me to learn what that work is, and to do it with all my heart, no matter how big or how small. Thank you for John the Baptist, who faithfully pointed others to your son Jesus. Amen.
3. Read aloud the story of John the Baptist below.
Living on the Sidelines for God
Have you ever wanted to be number one, the head honcho, the big cheese? Have you ever wanted to play the starring role? It’s pretty normal to have those feelings. And some people really do get to be number one at something. Some people do get to play a starring role in life. But a lot of us don’t. A lot of us simply play what are called “supporting parts.”
My life was about getting other people to focus on Jesus. If you think I only started to do this when I was an adult, you’re in for a surprise! My mother, Elizabeth, told me that when she was pregnant with me, she received a visit from Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus. When Mary arrived at my mother’s house, I started kicking. When my mother shared this story with me, she laughed and said, “Even before you were born, John, you wanted others to pay attention to Jesus. You gave a big kick inside my womb to make sure we noticed Jesus!”
As I grew older, I knew in my heart that God wanted me to tell people to get ready to follow Jesus. But there were so many other voices trying to get people’s attention. And so I left the towns and the cities and I went out into the wilderness. Perhaps people would listen to me there. A river called Jordan flowed through that wilderness. There in that wilderness, near the Jordan River, I called out, “Get ready! Jesus has come to show us how to live with God and one another. Get ready! Come into the water. Let the water wash away everything that separates you from God’s love.”
I lived very simply in that wilderness, like the prophets of old. For clothing I wore animal skins. And for food, I ate locusts and honey. The locusts provided me with protein. And man, I sure did love that honey! As I did my work, some people looked at me and whispered about how I looked, and then they walked away. Others listened to my words, raised their eyebrows and said, “Hmm. Isn’t that interesting?” and waited to see what others would do. But some people heard the words I spoke, and felt God speaking to them. They went into the water, and I baptized them. They wanted to be ready for whatever God wanted to do in their lives.
One day, Jesus came to be baptized, too. He wanted to show that he was ready to say “yes” to whatever God wanted for him. After his baptism, Jesus began to call people to follow him, and his popularity began to grow. One day some people came to me. They were very upset as they said, “John, more and more people are going to Jesus. They are following him and not you!” I said to them, “That’s how it’s supposed to be. My job is to help people get ready to follow Jesus. He must move to the center, while I must move to the sidelines.”
I continued to speak boldly day in and day out, calling people to make their hearts and lives ready for God. Some people didn’t like this. The king, for instance, had a brother who was married, and the king took his brother’s wife and married her himself. I told the king that this was wrong. I said that this was not how God wanted people to treat one another. This made the king very angry, and he threw me into prison. In prison I began to feel quite depressed. One day some of my friends came to visit me and I said to them, “Please, go to Jesus and ask him, ‘Are you really the One? Are you the One who has come from God to show us what true life is, and to lead us in the ways of peace? Or should we be waiting for someone else?’”
My friends found Jesus, and he said to them, “Tell my friend John: blind people are seeing, deaf people are hearing, dead people are being raised to life, and those who felt forgotten now know that God loves them.” When my friends shared these words with me, my heart felt glad. Do you understand what Jesus was saying? He was saying that things in the world that can feel sad or that can seem like dead-ends aren’t dead-ends for God. Jesus was telling me that God is busy turning things around in this world, and that God won’t stop until everything is right. I knew then that Jesus was the One sent by God to show us that world was in God’s hands, and that God’s hands are hands of love.
I had heard from a prison guard that I was going to be killed. Yes, I felt scared, and I felt sad. I didn’t want to die. But it made me so happy to know that Jesus had stepped into his role at the center, and that I had done my job on the sidelines. I don’t know if your work in the world is more in the center or more on the sidelines. Whatever your work is, do it for God, and do it with God. I learned that that’s really all that matters. Thank you for listening to my story.
4. Invite family groups to discuss the following questions:
· What inspired you about this story?
· In what ways could you be like John the Baptist?
5. At the conclusion of this segment, give each family a copy of the Smoothie recipe, and encourage them to make a smoothie to remember John the Baptist.
Teen Family / Adult Activity
[use the following adaptation of the Vibrant Faith @ Home activity Servant of God]
Needed:
Internet-connected device, Poverty: Myth or Reality worksheet, Debunking the Myths about Poverty worksheet. Copy both worksheets, one for each person
Activity Plan
1. Ask participants to form family groups or small groups of no more than six persons.
2. Gather the family and say this prayer aloud to begin:
God our Creator,
your servant Dorothy Day exemplified the
Christian faith by her conversion,
life of prayer and voluntary poverty,
works of mercy, and
witness to the justice and peace
of the Gospel.
May her life inspire us
to turn to Christ as our Savior and guide,
to see his face in the world’s poor and
to raise their voices for the justice
of God’s kingdom.
Help us to see your face, God, in the
poor, the broken, the prisoner, and in those
who we find difficult to be with.
Let our time together as a family be
inspired by her life and witness.
Amen.
(Prayer adapted from Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, Executive Director of
The Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York)
3. Watch the short YouTube video about Dorothy Day (About Dorothy Day).
4. In family/small groups, discuss your reaction to hearing about Dorothy Day and the life she led. Are you inspired? Challenged? Overwhelmed? What might change in your life if you were able to see Jesus in every person you encountered?
5. Take a moment for each person to mark his or her responses on the Poverty: Myth or Reality worksheet.
6. Discuss the information on the Debunking the Myths about Poverty worksheet.
7. Close your time by reading this “easy essay” written by Catholic Worker co-founder, Peter Maurin:
“Easy Essay”
by: Peter Maurin
God wants us to be our brother's keeper. To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, to instruct the ignorant, at a personal sacrifice, is what God wants us to do. What we give to the poor for Christ's sake is what we carry with us when we die. As Jean Jacques Rousseau says: "When man dies he carries in his clutched hands only that which he has given away.”
III. Go Forth
[Here you will conclude the activity called The Great Stone Soup Adventure.]
Activity Plan
1. Invite participants to gather at tables that have been set for your simple soup supper.
2. Read aloud Luke 10:25-37 “The Parable of the Good Samaritan”
3. Involve participants in serving soup (and crackers or bread) to one another. Enjoy the simple meal.
4. For those who can, travel together to the pre-arranged shelter or soup kitchen and deliver and serve the soup to patrons and guests.
5. Before departing for home, say this prayer to end your time together:
Thank you, God, for friends who are loving and generous. Help us to remember that someone else can always use our help. Amen.
Smoothie Recipe
Do you remember how John the Baptist ate locusts and honey? This smoothie recipe uses two tablespoons of honey, although you could use more or less depending on your taste. The recipe calls for making the smoothie in a blender. If you don’t have a blender, you could mix everything by hand. If you mix everything by hand, add the orange juice slowly to the rest of the ingredients, so that you can evenly blend the orange juice into the yogurt mixture. (And, if you mix by hand, you might want to mix the ingredients in a pitcher, so that the smoothies are easier to pour into glasses.)
YIELDS: 2 smoothies
INGREDIENTS:
· 1 cup plain yogurt (Greek yogurt or regular yogurt)
· 1 banana
· 1 cup orange juice
· 2 T. honey
· pinch of nutmeg (optional)
DIRECTIONS: Mix the yogurt, banana, orange juice, and honey in a blender until foamy. Pour immediately into two glasses. Sprinkle nutmeg on top of each smoothie. Enjoy!
Poverty: Myth or Reality?
Read each statement below. Mark it with “M” if you think it’s a myth and “R” if you think it’s reality.
___ People who are poor don’t have a good work ethic, which keeps them from getting ahead.
___ The U.S. government spends most of its tax revenue on assistance programs for people who are living in poverty.
___ Most people who begin to receive assistance benefits end up receiving such benefits for their entire lives.
___ In our nation, it is easy for a person to move from living in poverty to being part of the middle or upper class.
___ Parents who are poor are not as involved in their children’s education as middle class or wealthy parents are.
___ Living in poverty doesn’t have a lasting impact on children.
___ Most people living in poverty are from the minority ethnic groups in a community.
___ People living in poverty are more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol.