Exaltation of the Cross

Note: we begin each Sunday School this way:

1. We remind the kids of the Jesus Prayer is:
Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.
We take the blue bag of prayer ropes and hand one out to each child.
We say the prayer together about 7 times or so.
2. If there are any new children we write down their names, 
birthday, names day and date of names day.
About this time we pass out the first cracker, of which they will be quite excited about.
3. Then we begin the lesson.
We can begin by asking them if they remember the icon that is the middle of church today,

What is it? What Feast day is today?
Did you see the Cross?
Did we bow before it and kiss it?
Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross!
Show them/pass around the laminate icon of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.
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Information for the Sunday School Teacher on today:


Two events in connection with the Honorable Cross of Christ are commemorated on this day: first, the finding of the Honorable Cross on Golgotha and second, the return of the Honorable Cross from Persia to Jerusalem. Visiting the Holy Land, the holy Empress Helena decided to find the Honorable Cross of Christ. An old Jewish man named Judah was the only one who knew where the Cross was located, and, constrained by the empress, he revealed that the Cross was buried under the temple of Venus that Emperor Hadrian had built on Golgotha. The empress ordered that this idolatrous temple be razed and, having dug deep below it, found three crosses. While the empress pondered on how to recognize which of these was the Cross of Christ, a funeral procession passed by. Patriarch Macarius told them to place the crosses, one by one, on the dead man. When they placed the first and second cross on the dead man, the dead man lay unchanged. When they placed the third cross on him, the dead man came back to life. By this they knew that this was the Precious and Life-giving Cross of Christ. They then placed the Cross on a sick woman, and she became well. The patriarch elevated the Cross for all the people to see, and the people sang with tears: "Lord, have mercy!'' Empress Helena had a silver case made and set the Honorable Cross in it. Later, the Persian Emperor Chozroes conquered Jerusalem, enslaved many people, and took the Lord's Cross to Persia. The Cross remained in Persia for fourteen years. In the year 628 the Greek Emperor Heraclius defeated Chozroes and, with much ceremony, returned the Cross to Jerusalem. As he entered the city Emperor Heraclius carried the Cross on his back, but suddenly was unable to take another step. Patriarch Zacharias saw an angel preventing the emperor from bearing the Cross on the same path that the Lord had walked barefoot and humiliated. The patriarch communicated this vision to the emperor. The emperor removed his raiment and, in ragged attire and barefoot, took up the Cross, carried it to Golgotha, and placed it in the Church of the Resurrection, to the joy and consolation of the whole Christian world.

From here 

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Read the children this book:

Talk about it as seems fit.

Talk about how we wear Crosses and have them blessed in church.

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Craft Idea:

Have them draw their own Cross for the Feast.

Blessed Feast Day!
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Be sure to recollect the prayer ropes at the end of class and put them

in the blue drawstring bag! 

Nativity of the Theotokos ~ the Birthday that Began It All!

Note: we begin each Sunday School this way:

1. We remind the kids of the Jesus Prayer is:
Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.
We take the blue bag of prayer ropes and hand one out to each child.
We say the prayer together about 7 times or so.
2. If there are any new children we write down their names, birthday, names day and date of names day.
About this time we pass out the first cracker, of which they will be quite excited about.
3. Then we begin the lesson.
We can begin by asking them if they remember the icon that is the middle of church today,
what is it? What Feast day is today?
Today is the Nativity of the Theotokos!
What does Nativity Mean?
Who is the Theotokos?
Pass out this icon around for each of the kids to see:

The first thing I want the children to understand

is that without the birth of the Theotokos

there can be no Christmas.

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The goal is to be able to tell them how
St. Anna and Joachim are the parents to the Theotokos,
Grandparents to our Lord Jesus Christ,
that they are holy, loving and are always remembered in
the church because they are so important.
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Background information for the Sunday School teacher to know:
From the Prologue of Ohrid:

The Holy Virgin Mary was born of aged parents, Joachim and Anna. Her father was of the lineage of David, and her mother of the lineage of Aaron. Thus, she was of royal birth by her father, and of priestly birth by her mother. In this, she foreshadowed Him Who would be born of her as King and High Priest. Her parents were quite old and had no children. Because of this they were ashamed before men and humble before God. In their humility they prayed to God with tears, to bring them joy in their old age by giving them a child, as He had once given joy to the aged Abraham and his wife Sarah by giving them Isaac. The Almighty and All-seeing God rewarded them with a joy that surpassed all their expectations and all their most beautiful dreams. For He gave them not just a daughter, but the Mother of God. He illumined them not only with temporal joy, but with eternal joy as well. God gave them just one daughter, and she would later give them just one grandson-but what a daughter and what a Grandson! Mary, Full of grace, Blessed among women, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Altar of the Living God, the Table of the Heavenly Bread, the Ark of God's Holiness, the Tree of the Sweetest Fruit, the Glory of the race of man, the Praise of womanhood, the Fount of virginity and purity-this was the daughter given by God to Joachim and Anna. She was born in Nazareth, and at the age of three, was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem. In her young womanhood she returned again to Nazareth, and shortly thereafter heard the Annunciation of the Holy Archangel Gabriel concerning the birth of the Son of God, the Savior of the world, from her most-pure virgin body. (Source here).
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For the kids I am going to read them this short book:

I will also have these icons, that I got laminated,
to show them:
St. Joachim and St. Anna after they both heard from the 
Archangel Gabriel that they would be given a child:



They were so happy that their prayers for a
child were about to be answered!
And the child they were given was the a baby girl,
who is the Mother of God, Jesus' Mother!



And today we celebrate the birth of the Mother of God!
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When passing out the icon of St. Anna make sure to communicate:
Saint Anna is a very loving Mother to the Mother of God
and is the Grandmother of Jesus.
She is very loving and wants us to know that we can
ask her prayers to take care of us too!
Our church has a copy of this icon in our window in a frame
and we can all go to her to pray and to kiss her icon too!
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The other theme to talk about is that:
This day is one of the days that is the beginning of our salvation
for Jesus when the baby Mary grows up will be born of her!
This day is why we can have Christmas!
The best news ever is that
Christ is Risen
and for Christ to Rise He first had to be born on Christmas day
and for Christ to be born his Mother had to be born
and so today is a day to be very glad!
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Craft Idea:
Have the children draw the Mother of God as a baby
with her parents, St. Joachim and Anna.
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Be sure to recollect the prayer ropes at the end of class and put them
in the blue drawstring bag! 

Lesson # 2 ~ how it went....

The kids are just loving their

time doing the Jesus Prayer,

esp. as they get to have the prayer ropes to hold and use.

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Most of them have not heard of the Jesus prayer

and all of them love the book we read on it,

that we still have not gotten all the way through

and will keep working on as we go forward.

One of the challenges of my particular class is that I can have kids

from age nearly 4 to even age 11.

A really wide range.

One of the neat things of this book is that it has illustrations of 

all ages of kids, from about age 3 to teenager all praying

the Jesus Prayer.

So every time we read some of it, I talk about what I am reading

and show them that age differences in the pictures:

the Jesus Prayer is for everyone at any age.

We say the prayer together

Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me 

about seven or so times together, holding our prayer ropes.

The point of doing the Jesus Prayer together is to 

get them familiar with it,

get them in time to remember it and to use it outside of class.

It will take time and a lot of repetition.

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The lesson for the day was on the church new year

and what Christ did on the day that began the new year:

Mr. Husband printed this icon for me at work in colour

from an email I sent so it was big enough (the actual file was too small)

and I had it on my clip board.

Very rudimentary, simple use of the icon.

Eventually I would like to get a laminator so that I can 

laminate some icons myself.

But we are dealing with reality here and that building and 

starting anything takes time and a lot of effort.

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I showed them all the icon,

I read them the words from Isaiah that you see in my 

Lesson Notes.

They were a larger group that day and a bit fidgety...

(I have lots of wonderful boys in my class!)

They had a harder time tracking the sequence of

Jesus reading the words from Isaiah

and remembering what I just read.

I was not at all deterred and kept circling back to it.

I would ask them,

what did Jesus do on this day? 

Showing them the icon.

I explained about Israel

(I then got a story from one of them about the walls of

Jericho falling down which another boy then

incorporated into the lesson)

and how they sinned and were thus brokenhearted.

I talked about how Christ said 

He has now come to do heal the brokenhearted.

I talked about big words like fulfilled and 

about ways that we can have Christ dwell in us.

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I talked about the word Gospel and that it means Good News.

One of the best parts of this process was when I asked them

what is the Good News? and a bunch of them all said or thought:

Christ is Risen!

and one of the boys said, yes and we say Christ is Risen! for 40 days.

So clearly they are getting the most important things 

through church and home...which is great.

But the kids are all at different levels and situations.

So I teach and seek to enthusiastically tell them how God loves them,

how Christ came to heal our broken hearts.

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I love how many of them are excited to answer the questions I ask.

I never am bothered if they don't know the answer or

do on a small rabbit trail.

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One thing I think that my friend who graciously stayed with me again

told me after is that it may have helped 

with the 'wiggles' if they had a chance to do a small craft time

and draw Jesus healing their broken heart.

I am hoping to do this in the future.

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Really the lesson incorporates a lot of what the Orthodox church 

teaches very quickly:

Salvation; how we are to acquire the Holy Spirit and be

dwelling places of God, what Christ came to do.

So these are all themes I hope to reiterate through out the class.

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They are thrilled to have crackers by the way.

This week was graham crackers, 

bought by Mr. Husband the day before.

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I am seeing that this schedule may work well for our class:

~prayer time at beginning with Jesus Prayer

~going over the names of everyone to be sure not missing someone new

and make sure to not miss a birthday or name day ... while doing this is

cracker time

~doing the lesson ... lots of conversation time here

~doing a small drawing or reading a story

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Overall it was a great second class and I am so glad 

to be doing it.

I am learning a lot and am excited for next week!

I hope to write about some of the challenges I see

that are merely situational and how we are 

doing things from a logistical, practical standpoint... 

Church New Year and Dwelling Places of God

(image source)

September 1/14 is the beginning of the Church New Year.  

The church year show us how much God loves us and how the life He wants to give us is the doorway to life with Christ where we are loved, where we can be glad and always be with God.

Question to ask the kids:

Did you know that this day Jesus began His ministry? Does anyone know how He began it? 

We read about this beginning in St. Nikolai's Prologue of Ohrid.  The church new year is when Christ reads these words:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Isaiah 6:1-2

and then Christ says, after reading this:

And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (see Luke 4: 16-21 NKJV).

So the beginning of the Church Year is when Christ Himself announces not only who He is but begins His ministry and defines it.

When looking further at Luke in what the Blessed Theophylact says we understand who Christ's ministry is to us and the healing He speaks of is what we also need.

Saint Theophylact says that the Israelites (who the prophet Isaiah was talking to), were at first "the dwelling place of God" but later "their hearts were broken and crushed" because they "committed many sins" and then were no longer the dwelling place of God.

So Jesus came so that our hearts can be healed so we can be the dwelling place of God.  As baptised Christians we have the Holy Spirit in us and Christ came to heal our hearts so that Christ through the Holy Spirit can dwell more and more with us.

Do you know the story of Saint Simeon the Stylite? His day is also today! When he was a young man, 18 years old, he was told "you will not go anywhere without effort"

So to have our hearts become a beautiful dwelling place of God effort is needed!

Question:

What are ways that you can make an effort to grow to love Christ more so you can be a dwelling place of God?

Possible answers:

• Pray ~ talk to God
• Be nice to others
• Share
• Listen to your parents 
• Forgive quickly
• Read the Bible and Saint stories
• Pray to God or His Mother or your Saint Icon
• Pray the Jesus Prayer 

How Introduction to Sunday School Went

The children loved picking their own prayer rope

to hold and use.

We went over how to use them with our finger,

what the prayer could be like

Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me

or 

Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner

or 

Lord Jesus have mercy on me.

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We said the prayer together after this.

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Then we got everyone's names, birthdays, 

name's Saint and names day.

During this time my very wonderful Mom-helper

passed out crackers,

which was a great excitement to all :).

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We had 5 kids today, two were unable to come.

I am guessing we will normally have between 5-10 

or so kids this year.

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Then we read most of the book on the Jesus Prayer.

Everyone enjoyed the book and while I was telling it

I talked a little about what the book meant

and how the Jesus prayer is for all ages.

The kids really liked this book a lot and it had great pictures.

One thing I like about this book is how it shows

kids of all ages, from about 3 or so to older/teenager, 

loving God and doing the Jesus prayer.

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Everyone was happy to be there

and it was a really enjoyable time!

I am looking forward to next week's class,

on the church new year! 

Introduction to Sunday School 2014

Order for today:

I will introduce myself as Mrs. Elizabeth

and tell them how excited I am to be teaching them,

that we will learn lots together about the Lord, the 

Church Feasts and Saints.  I will make clear

that this is not exactly like a school class because 

we will have lots of different activities depending

on the week and that I want to have time to

just talk about things with them and not 

miss their questions.

Our church loves them and we are hear together to

see how God gave us the church for

us out of His deep love for us and that the 

life with peace, true joy and true life is found here in church.

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1. Introduce the Jesus Prayer and pass out prayer ropes.

2. Practice saying Jesus prayer together.

3. Practice saying the prayer silently in your seat.

Note: We are going to begin each Sunday School class

with handing out prayer ropes to each child.  We will then sit quietly

 and do some Jesus prayers (for the youngest kids it will be

"Lord have mercies") together.  The prayer ropes will be collected

again at the end of class for next time.

  I was told about this at the 

Sunday School conference I was at, of another church

that begins Sunday School this way. Not only does this

help us focus on Christ at the very outset but it 

teaches us about prayer by doing prayer, calms and quiets us,

and hopefully instills in all of us the desire and habit of 

doing the Jesus prayer in our lives.

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Check time after this (1-3) is done.

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Possibly get juice and crackers out during this time for the kids

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2. Get everyone's name, birthday, Saint and Name's day written down

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Possibilities for teaching: 

Read this book: The Jesus Prayer and Me

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Discuss the Jesus prayer:

Do you know where the Jesus prayer is from?

Ask kids and see what they say.

Then tell them about this:

The words of the Jesus Prayer are themselves based on Scriptural texts: the cry of the blind man sitting at the side of the road near Jericho, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me" (Luke 18:38); the ten lepers who "called to him,  Jesus, Master, take pity on us' " (Luke 17:13); and the cry for mercy of the publican, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner" (Luke 18:14). 

Source

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3. If there is more time, hand out paper and have them draw 

either something about the people in the New Testament asking 

Christ for mercy OR draw something about where you think

you can do "Lord have mercy's" OR draw something you like

about church - could be your names day, Christmas, Pascha,

or something else.

4. If there is still more time, read a story that I have brought with me:

The Hidden Garden

Note: this story goes well with learning about the Jesus Prayer

as it speaks of how we need to nurture the Garden of our Soul so

that Christ can be more and more within,

making beauty and spreading life. 

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Be sure to remember to collect prayer ropes from

all children by the end of the time together.

If it seems that the prayer ropes are in danger of getting dirty 

or being dropped on the ground, they can be collected earlier. 

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The main goal for today is to get comfortable with 

the routine of Sunday school, understand how 

we are going to start the time together with 

doing Jesus prayers, 

and get the information in #2.

 This means that if we do not get to any more 

"teaching" today that is listed here, that's OK.

If the children know they are loved at our church,

in our Sunday School Program and understand the

structure of it.

Meet & Greet ~ Introduction to our Sunday School Program

~September 7, 2014~

Dear Ones who care for our Children:

I am so excited to be heading up the Sunday School program this year! Most of you know me from church itself and times I have interacted with your children.  I thought I would let you know a little more about myself as I will be directing the Sunday school program and teaching your children.   

I converted to the Orthodox church over 10 years ago, after a friend brought me to the Orthodox church and gave me Courage to Pray by Met. Anthony Bloom to read.  I knew immediately that I had found something I was looking for my entire life.  Within a year I was chrismated into the Orthodox church and have never looked back!  

Before becoming Orthodox, I worked at a Christian Bible Camp for 6 consecutive summers, working with children ages between 7-16.  I have worked with children for over 20 years and am a proud Auntie to 15 nieces and nephews.  Many other children are in my life who I have enjoyed caring for in various ways.  I have a Masters in Library Science and took two children's classes (storytelling and children's literature).  As the director of our bookstore, I have become well acquainted with the excellent Orthodox Christian Children and Teen literature, many of which we have sold through our book kiosk.  

I love working with children and seeking God with them.  Encouraging children to grow in their awareness of God, the Orthodox faith and the Saints is a great joy to me.  In this first year of Sunday school we will be focusing on these three things:

~Growing in our awareness of God in our lives and how we can pray to Him

~Understanding the church year - the Feasts, Fasts and Saint days

~Learning how God and the Faith is personally for us and to understand:

• Why the Fasts help us
• How we can, at any age, celebrate the Feasts
• What a name day means for us personally
• How prayer is something we can all do

The Christian life we live as Orthodox Christians is where true life is found, where joy, peace and love are deeply rooted for each of us.  It can be an exciting life, one with Feasts and one with Fasts to give each of us wings in prayer, it is a life to be lived and celebrated!  I am excited to be sharing this joy and excitement with each one of your children and welcome any questions you may have.

in Christ's mercy and love,

Mrs. Elizabeth