‘There are many rooms in my Father’s house’. This is ‘The Family Room’. We hope you find plenty here to do together as a family. Welcome!
We encourage you to use this time to pray as a family by:
-
- Praying for specific family and friends, and all key workers who are working so hard across the world at this time
- Encouraging your children to consider something they can be grateful to God for each day,
- Praying to our Guardian Angels (see prayer example attached)
14th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 7 July – Relying on Jesus
Why is this our Family Room activity today? In our Second Reading today, Saint Paul shares with the people of Corinth (the Corinthians) that he asked God 3 times to remove a “thorn” from him but God told Saint Paul ‘My grace is enough for you: my power is at its best in weakness.’
What does this mean? We don’t know what Saint Paul asked God to remove from him but think of it as a real difficulty or hurt. The reply he got is one that all of us need to remember in our lives: that we need to have faith and believe that the “power of Christ”, which is stronger than any of us will ever be, can help us cope with the difficulties we meet in life.
This message of faith is also one that we often associate with Saint Thomas the Apostle, whose feast day was earlier this week on the 3rd of July. Saint Thomas was the apostle who didn’t see Jesus risen from the dead when the rest of the apostles first did, and who doubted their word. When Jesus appeared the next time, He told Thomas “doubt no longer, but believe”.
Why is this important? Faith is one of the three most important virtues, along with hope and love (or charity). Faith helps us turn to and rely on God – God the Father, Jesus God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to help us in everything we do and in every difficulty we face. Faith is the spiritual food that keeps our love for God strong, just as we need earthly food to keep our bodies strong and well.
What can we do as a family? This week, we invite you to have a conversation together as a family. There is an old proverb that ‘a trouble shared is a trouble halved’. Perhaps something is troubling you that you want to share. Just as Saint Paul told his friends in Corinth about his ‘thorn’ and did not keep it to himself, so it is important when we struggle with something in life – at home, at school, at work – that we don’t keep it to ourselves but share it with someone close to us as well as sharing it with God.
You might like to use this video reflecting on faith to start your discussion. Or you can listen to this song! It’s not a hymn that we sing in church, but it is about faith, and it’s a beautiful way to reflect on how the wonderful things in the world can inspire us to have faith in God. And you could light a candle together – either at home, or in the church before or after Sunday Mass – as a physical sign of the faith you share.
What we can all do is pray! We have used the song we shared as inspiration to write this prayer especially for our parish families this week.
Activity Archive
Click on the image to visit previous week’s activities.