Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Year B

Twenty-fourth Ordinary Sunday

Images

 

The Pope and his election

Points to note

 

There is a board inside the Westminster Catholic Cathedral in London, which lists down the names of all the Popes and next to them, the list of the leading bishops in England at that time.  There are two ideas here that are important.  Each bishop is consecrated a bishop by another bishop, who has been consecrated by another bishop, who has been consecrated by another bishop, and so on, until you reach a bishop, who has been consecrated by one of the Apostles. This is known as the Apostolic Succession, the principle that every Catholic bishop traces his lineage back to the Apostles and we have the list of bishops to prove it.  Every diocese in the world keeps such a list of its own line of bishops.  This list that traces back to the Apostles is our proof that what our bishops teach is the same as what the Apostles, and Jesus, taught.

The other is one of communion.  Every Catholic owes allegiance to his or her local bishop.  We are said to be in communion with our bishop.  Each bishop is in turn in communion with the Pope. Therefore, each Catholic is communion with each other through his or her communion with the local bishop who is in communion with other bishops through his communion with the Pope.

In Year A, we discuss the structure of the Church while, in Year B, we explain how the Pope is elected and, in Year C, we discuss the Apostolic Succession.  You can refer to the leaflet for Sunday 21 Year A for the structure of the Church.

Liturgy

Acclamation

Alleluia!  Alleluia!

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, says the Lord;

no one can come to the Father except through me.

Alleluia!

Gospel

Explain that Jesus is travelling around some areas outside of Israel on the way to Jerusalem and has reached a place where people there worship many other gods.  So, with so many gods around, Jesus wants to know who his disciples think he is.

The Lord be with you.

All:   And also with you.

A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St Mark

(Mk 8:27-35)

Jesus and his disciples left for the village round Caesarea Philippi.  On the way he put this question to his disciples, “Who do people say I am?”  And they told him.  “John the Baptist.” They said, “others Elijah; others again, one of the prophets.” But you, “he asked, “who do you say I am?”  Peter spoke up and said to him, “You are the Christ.”  And he gave them strict orders not to tell anyone about him.

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man was destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and to be put to death, and after three days to rise again; and he said all this quite openly. Then taking him aside, Peter started to remonstrate with him.  But, turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said to him, “Get behind me, Satan!  Because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.”

He called the people and his disciples to him and said, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

This is the Gospel of the Lord

Discussion

Who is the head of the Church?  Jesus.  Explain that Jesus does not want to take care of the entire Church by himself and so he has a lot of people to help him.  He has the Pope to help him.  The Pope helps Jesus to take care of all Catholics throughout the world, all 1.1 billion of us.  The Pope wears white and lives in Rome.  He has a huge church called St Peter’s Basilica.  This is because the first Pope was St Peter.

The Pope could not possibly take care of all Catholics, too.  So he has over 3,000 bishops to help him.  Most of these bishops take care of an area called a diocese.  Some dioceses are larger than others and are called archdioceses.  Bishops wear purple.  Find out which areas/regions/districts your diocese covers and how many Catholics are there in it.  Ask the children if they know the name fo the bishop and where his church is (ie., the cathedral).

Even our bishop needs help to take care of so many Catholics.  So, there are over [find out how many priests there are in your diocese] priests to help him.  There are 400,000 priests helping bishops throughout the world.  Many of these priests help take care of a parish. Priests normally wear black except in hot countries.  Introduce the name of your parish and how many parishioners there are.  All these information can be obtained from your church office and diocesan directory.

Sometimes, priests may have religious brothers and sisters (not siblings at home) to help them do God’s work.  These brothers and sisters run schools, orphanages and hospitals or they may do other work like praying for us in monasteries.  There are about one million of them throughout the world.

Explain how the Pope is elected.  When a Pope dies, cardinals from all over the world meet in St Peter’s Basilica within three weeks to vote for the next Pope.  Cardinals are very important bishops who represent almost every country in the world.  Many of the cardinals run dioceses all over the world while others act like ministers in the Vatican government.  Only cardinals below the age of 80 may vote and there can only be a maximum of 120 of such voting cardinals at any one time.  Cardinals wear red.

When a Pope dies, the cardinal who heads the Pope’s household staff, known as the camerlengo, calls out the Pope’s baptismal name three times.  He also taps the forehead of the dead Pope with a silver hammer.  This will confirm the Pope’s death.  The body of the Pope is taken away to be embalmed so that it could last until the funeral and the dead Pope’s apartment is sealed up.  The ring of the Pope will be smashed up to prevent anyone using the ring as a seal for any official documents.

The eligible cardinals are locked up (literally!!) in the Vatican for duration of the conclave to elect the Pope.  No one or any communication is allowed in or out and the cardinals are only allowed doctors for those who need one.  Food goes in and out through a window.  They will hold voting sessions twice a day with very strict rules as to how the voting should be conducted.  If no candidate gets a majority, the voting papers are burnt with powder to give black smoke.  If the voting is successful, the papers are burnt to give white smoke.

The new Pope will be asked if he consent to be Pope and then asked what name he will adopt as Pope. He will then put on one of the three sets of new papal vestments (S/M/L) and is introduced to the world.  He will also be given a new papal ring with the insignia of a fisherman as he is now a successor of St Peter, who was a fisherman.

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Year A

Twenty-fourth Ordinary Sunday

Images

Forgiving others

Points to note

Every child loves a story.  So, tell this story well.  If necessary, embellish it with details.  To do this, though, you will have to prepare well for it.  Take your time with the story.  It is dramatic.  Tell it with drama. 

You may want to dramatise the actions, perhaps, even get the children to act out the roles.  Be careful with the choice for the roles.  A sensitive child should not play the role of the first servant. 

The reading should be able to lead the children on to something very close to them, the Our Father.  The parable isn’t just a fun story or even a moralising one.  It deals very much with the Christian love triangle between God, our neighbour and ourselves.  It is important to emphasise the words of the prayer that we pray every day; and the concept that we should not expect forgiveness from God if we do not forgive in our turn.

Introduce the concept of justice to the children.  This concept however may be a little too abstract for some but you can tackle it through the concept of fairness.  Children normally have a keen sense of fairness and it would be expected for them to react as the other servants had in the story.

Liturgy

Acclamation before the Gospel

Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Speak, Lord, your servant is listening:

you have the message of eternal life.

Alleluia!

Gospel

The Lord be with you.

All:   And also with you.

A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St Matthew

All:   Glory to you O Lord

 (Mt 18: 21-35)

Peter went up to Jesus and said, “Lord, how often must I forgive my brothers if he does something wrong to me?  As often as seven times?”  Jesus answered, “Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times.

“And so the kingdom of heaven is like a king who decided to his servants to settle what they owed him.  When the counting began, they brought him a man who owed him $10 million; but he had no means of paying, so his master gave orders that he should be sold, together with his wife and children and all that he owned, to meet the debt.

At this, the servant threw himself down at his master’s feet.  “Give me time,” he said, “and I will pay you the whole sum.”  And the servant’s master felt so sorry for him that he let him go and cancelled the debt.

Now, as the servant went out, he happened to meet a fellow servant who owed him $10; and he seized him by the throat and began to throttle him.  “Pay what you owe me,” he said.  His fellow servant fell at his feet and implored him, saying, “Give me time and I will pay you.”  But the other would not agree; instead, he had him thrown into prison until he paid the debt.

His fellow servants were upset when they saw what had happened, and they went to their master and reported it to him.  Then the master sent for him.  “You wicked servant,” he said, “I cancelled all that debt of yours when you appealed to me.  Should you not, then, have pity on your fellow servant just as I had pity on you?”  And in his anger, the master handed him over to the torturers till he should pay all his debt.  And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive your brother from your heart.”

This is the Gospel of the Lord

Discussion

Go through the story with the children again.  Discuss how the various persons in the story would have felt:  the king on seeing the first servant pleading at his feet; the servant on being told of his debts and then, that his debts are cancelled;  the second servant of being told of his debt and then, being thrown into prison;  the other servants and the king on hearing that the second servant has been thrown into prison.  In the discussion, the fairness and justice of the affair should be questioned.

Draw the analogy of the story with ourselves, that God is the king and we are the servants.  God watches over us in our actions to forgive us our wrongs.  But he also watches over us to ensure that we forgive our neighbours.

Discuss also the role of the other servants.  They didn't stand aside when they saw the injustice.  Instead, they reported to their employer.  So, do we stand aside or do we do something when we see something wrong.

Finish off by bringing up the Our Father.  Discuss the significance of the line Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.  Note that we are effectively asking God not to forgive us if we do not forgive others. 

Do not recite the Our Father during the LSW.  Liturgically, the place for the Our Father is during the communion rite - you are still in the Liturgy of the Word.  But explain to the children that you expect them to reflect carefully.  Ask the children to remember that line in the Our Father the next time they pray the prayer, which is soon at the mass.

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Year C

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Images

Reconciliation

Points to note

This is actually a very long reading and there are actually three parables in this reading.  I have, however, cut it down to the one we all know best and love.  I have also left out the second part of the parable:  the part about reconciliation with the elder brother.  You could include it in as well if there is something to share on it.  The truth is that this parable is one of the richest in the Bible and that is no cliché.  In this leaflet, we can only provide a glimpse of what we could share.

The idea of reconciliation is sometimes seen as a difficult concept to get across.  Sometimes, we think of the sacrament and all the fear we associated with it when we were young.  Often, it is because we, as adults, find it harder to reconcile with one another and we project on the children our own anxieties about how our egos get bruised and how we will be received when we seek reconciliation.

Children, on the whole, reconcile much more easily than adults and reconciliation is frequent and, often, part of daily lives, even if unknowingly.  Again as always, the trick here is to bring ourselves into the children’s daily lives and draw examples from there.

Liturgy

Acclamation before the Gospel

Alleluia!  Alleluia!

God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself,

And he entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled.

Alleluia!

Gospel

Explain what a Pharisee is.  They are members of a sect within Judaism who believe that salvation lies in being faithful to God and by scrupulously following the Law to the letter and that anyone who does not follow the exact wording of the law is condemned.  A tax collector, on the other hand, is treated as an outcast of society because they work for the Romans, who are foreigners and because they tend to collect more than their due.

The Lord be with you.

All:   And with your spirit.

A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St Luke

All:   Glory to you O Lord

 (Lk 15:1-32)

The tax collectors and sinners were all seeking the company of Jesus to hear what he had to say, and the Pharisees and the scribes complained.  “This man,“ they said, “welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  So he spoke this parable to them:

“A man had two sons.  The younger said to his father, ‘Father, let me have the share of the estate that would come to me.’  So the father divided the property between them.  A few days later, the younger son got together everything he had and left for a distant country where he wasted his money on a life of fun and sin.

“When he had spent it all, that country had a severe famine, and now he felt some hardship over being poor, he hired himself out the one of the local farmers who put him on his farm to feed the pigs.  And he would willingly have filled his belly with the husks the pigs were eating, but no one offered him anything.  Then he came to his senses and said, ‘How many of my father’s paid servants have more food than they want, and here I am dying of hunger!  I will leave this place and go to my father and say:  Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your paid servants.’  So he left the place and went back to his father.

“While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity.  He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly.  Then his son said, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I no longer deserve to be called your son.’  But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Bring the fattened calf we have been fattening, and kill it; we are going to have a feast, a celebration, because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found.’  And they began to celebrate.”

This is the Gospel of the Lord

Dialogue

Anyone been in a fight at home before?  With whom?  Be ready for a long list of grievances against siblings and about why they fought!!  Just cut it short.  Who gets upset?  The person we fought with.  Do you stay angry forever? No, eventually we make up.  Explain that the word reconciliation means to bring two persons or two things together.  So, when our adversary and we are brought together to make up after a fight, we are said to have been reconciled.  How do we make up after such a fight?

When we fight at home, is it only our brother and sister who got upset?  Who else? Our parents.  How do we make up with our parents after such a fight?  How do we reconcile with our parents?

Explain that so it is with God.  When we fight among ourselves and when we get upset with one another, we also make God unhappy.  That is why the son in the story wanted to say, I have sinned against my father and against God.

That is why we need to reconcile with God.  We need to be brought together with God.  Because before we were reconciled with God, we are far away from him.  Notice how miserable the son was before he returned to the father.  We will be similarly miserable before we reconcile ourselves with God.

Take care that the children do not get the idea that God gets angry with us and keep us far away from him.  The son in the story was kept far away from his father, not because his father threw him out but by his own actions.

Coming back to our parents, when they get angry with us, do they stay angry with us forever?  Is there any way we can help our parents get over their anger?

Likewise with God, He does not stay angry with us for long.  I doubt if there is a time when he is angry with us.  The most touching part of the story for me was when the father asked his servant to get the fattened calf.  I used to wonder much about that line.  I have realised why:  the father has been getting a fattened calf ready for quite some time.  He did not forgive the son when the son came back.  He forgave the son before the son came back.  He must have forgiven the son before the son showed any remorse.  He must have forgiven the son even before ……

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Year B

Twenty-fourth Ordinary Sunday

Images

 

The Pope and his election

Points to note

 

There is a board inside the Westminster Catholic Cathedral in London, which lists down the names of all the Popes and next to them, the list of the leading bishops in England at that time.  There are two ideas here that are important.  Each bishop is consecrated a bishop by another bishop, who has been consecrated by another bishop, who has been consecrated by another bishop, and so on, until you reach a bishop, who has been consecrated by one of the Apostles.  This is known as the Apostolic Succession, the principle that every Catholic bishop traces his lineage back to the Apostles and we have the list of bishops to prove it.  Every diocese in the world keeps such a list of its own line of bishops.  This list that traces back to the Apostles is our proof that what our bishops teach is the same as what the Apostles, and Jesus, taught.

The other is one of communion.  Every Catholic owes allegiance to his or her local bishop.  We are said to be in communion with our bishop.  Each bishop is in turn in communion with the Pope.  Therefore, each Catholic is communion with each other through his or her communion with the local bishop who is in communion with other bishops through his communion with the Pope.

In Year A, we discuss the structure of the Church while, in Year B, we explain how the Pope is elected and, in Year C, we discuss the Apostolic Succession.  You can refer to the leaflet for Sunday 21 Year A for the structure of the Church.

Before this session, there are a fair bit of preparation to be done.  Run through the dialogue below and do your research to fill up those bits in square brackets.  You should know most of these but may need to check your diocesan directories for the others.  You could learn a thing or two!!

Liturgy

Acclamation

Alleluia!  Alleluia!

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, says the Lord;

no one can come to the Father except through me.

Alleluia!

Gospel

Explain that Jesus is travelling around some areas outside of Israel on the way to Jerusalem and has reached a place where people there worship many other gods.  So, with so many gods around, Jesus wants to know who his disciples think he is.

The Lord be with you.

All:   And also with you.

A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St Mark

(Mk 8:27-35)

Jesus and his disciples left for the village round Caesarea Philippi.  On the way he put this question to his disciples, “Who do people say I am?”  And they told him.  “John the Baptist.” They said, “others Elijah; others again, one of the prophets.”  But you, “he asked, “who do you say I am?”  Peter spoke up and said to him, “You are the Christ.”  And he gave them strict orders not to tell anyone about him.

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man was destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and to be put to death, and after three days to rise again; and he said all this quite openly.  Then taking him aside, Peter started to remonstrate with him.  But, turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said to him, “Get behind me, Satan!  Because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.”

He called the people and his disciples to him and said, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

This is the Gospel of the Lord

Discussion

Who is the head of the Church?  Jesus.  Explain that Jesus does not want to take care of the entire Church by himself and so he has a lot of people to help him.  He has the Pope to help him.  The Pope helps Jesus to take care of all Catholics throughout the world, all 1.1 billion of us.  The Pope wears white and lives in Rome.  He has a huge church called St Peter’s Basilica.  This is because the first Pope was St Peter.

The Pope could not possibly take care of all Catholics, too.  So he has over 5,000 bishops to help him.  Most of these bishops take care of an area called a diocese.  Some dioceses are larger than others and are called archdioceses.  We are in the Diocese of [name of diocese], which includes [the areas under the diocese}.  There are more than [xx],000 Catholics in our diocese.  The bishop who is appointed to help the Pope take care of all Catholics in our diocese is Bishop [name of bishop].  Bishops wear purple.  Bishop [name of bishop]’s church is called [name of cathedral] Cathedral.

Even Bishop [name of bishop] needs help to take care of so many Catholics in the diocese.  So, there are over [xx] priests to help him.  There are 400,000 priests helping bishops throughout the world.  Many of these priests help take care of a parish.  We are in the parish of [name of parish] and there are [x],000 people in our parish who comes to our church for mass.  Priests normally wear black except in hot countries where they wear white.

Sometimes, priests may have religious brothers and sisters (not siblings at home) to help them do God’s work.  These brothers and sisters run schools, orphanages and hospitals or they may do other work like praying for us in monasteries.  There are about 800,000 of them throughout the world.

Explain how the Pope is elected.  When a Pope dies, cardinals from all over the world meet in St Peter’s Basilica within three weeks to vote for the next Pope.  Cardinals are very important bishops who represent almost every country in the world.  Many of the cardinals run dioceses all over the world while others act like ministers in the Vatican government.  Only cardinals below the age of 80 may vote and there can only be a maximum of 120 of such voting cardinals at any one time.  Cardinals wear red.

When a Pope dies, the cardinal who heads the Pope’s household staff, known as the camerlengo, calls out the Pope’s baptismal name three times.  He also taps the forehead of the dead Pope with a silver hammer.  This will confirm the Pope’s death.  The body of the Pope is taken away to be embalmed so that it could last until the funeral and the dead Pope’s apartment is sealed up.  The ring of the Pope will be smashed up to prevent anyone using the ring as a seal for any official documents.

The eligible cardinals are locked up (literally!!) in the Vatican for duration of the conclave to elect the Pope.  No one or any communication is allowed in or out and the cardinals are only allowed doctors for those who need one.  Food goes in and out through a window.  They will hold voting sessions twice a day with very strict rules as to how the voting should be conducted.  If no candidate gets a majority, the voting papers are burnt with powder to give black smoke.  If the voting is successful, the papers are burnt to give white smoke.

The new Pope will be asked if he consent to be Pope and then asked what name he will adopt as Pope.  He will then put on one of the three sets of new papal vestments (S/M/L) and is introduced to the world.  He will also be given a new papal ring with the insignia of a fisherman as he is now a successor of St Peter, who was a fisherman.