Sacraments of 

Healing

Use the Pray event (found above) to pray as a family sometime during the week.
Use the Live event (found above) to live out a work of mercy as a family sometime during the week.

For the Learn do the following:

1. Watch Video at the top of the page. (if you want more resources, or are interested in learning more about the topic click on the Extra tab).
2. Click on the appropriate grade for your child.
3. Read the "relates to..." section at the beginning.  This is helpful to understand what to convey to your child is important about this lesson.  It will        help make the lesson both an intellectual and a lived lesson.
4. Read through and familiarize yourself with the sample script. 
5. Teach your child the lesson, either using your own words or the sample script.
6. Either discuss the questions with your child (best option), or have your child write out answers to the questions.
7. Have your child do the activities and/or do the activities with them.  
8. If working with a parish return the appropriate material in the way they have requested.

All Content for "The Way", Learn, is original content and copyright of the Diocese of Kalamazoo and may not be copied, reproduced, or used without prior written consent of the Diocese of Kalamazoo.   © 2020 Diocese of Kalamazoo

Relates to Jesus: Jesus is fully God and fully man, and so He knows that perfection is difficult to achieve. Our journey to live a holy life will be marked by virtue and failings. Jesus walks with us to bring us to fullness if we allow His help.

Relates to my Faith: The Catholic Church calls us to practice virtue and good works towards others, which aids in keeping us from falling into selfishness and sin.

Sample Script:
Can you remember a time when you made a choice? Did you choose the clothes you wore today, or what game you got to play during playtime? Everyone makes choices, and choices are good because they give us the opportunity to do the right thing! Sometimes we make choices that can be good or bad. When we choose to do what God asks of us, like listening to Mom and Dad when they tell us something or doing what our teacher has asked us to do we make a good choice! God asks us to do these things because he loves us and wants what is best for us. But sometimes we can also make bad choices, like when we disobey our parents or yell at a friend or our siblings when we are angry. Bad choices are called sins, and sins hurt our relationship with God because we turn away from his love.

God created each person in his own image and likeness, and so he created each person good! That never changes, even when a person sins, and it is called dignity. Every person has dignity because God created them, and whether they make good or bad choices it can never be taken away. For example, if your soccer ball broke a window, you wouldn’t say you had a bad soccer ball. The soccer ball was made for playing a fun game, not for the mess it caused. Similarly, when a person sins it does not mean that they are totally bad because they were made good by God.

Each person can still make good and bad choices, and each person is responsible for the choices they make. When a person eats all the cookies before his friends can have some, he has chosen to eat them, and he is the only one who can apologize to his friends. Similarly, when we sin we hurt our relationship with God and we are responsible for asking his forgiveness. When we are sorry and really want to love God better, God always forgives our sins. When God forgives us, he also asks us to forgive others. When we continue to forgive, to ask God for forgiveness and try to make good choices we grow in virtue! Can you think of someone virtuous, someone very good? We become more like them, more courageous, patient and loving when we do our best to make many good choices, and we also show God that we love him back! 

Questions: 

What is a good choice, and what is a bad choice? Can you think of an example? 
What are bad choices called? 
Is a person who sins totally bad? Why or why not?
When we make good choices, what do we grow in? 

Activities:
Make a chart, one side with good choices and one side with bad choices. Can you think of 3 examples of each? Draw or write them down, and pick one good choice that you can make today! 

Make 3 vocabulary flash cards for dignity, sin and virtue.

Relates to Jesus: Jesus forgives our sins through the priest in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, restoring the grace that was lost and allowing us greater ease to turn away from temptation and sin and live the divine life of grace offered through Jesus Christ.

Relates to my Faith: The Catholic Church offers the Sacrament of Reconciliation as the means by which souls are freed from sin and the chains of vice.

Sample Script:
When we make choices, we know that we can make good ones and bad ones. The bad ones are called sins, and they hurt our relationship with God, so we need the sacrament that will heal our personal relationship with him--Reconciliation. 

Reconciliation is a liturgical act, which means it is not something that we do at home but at church like when we receive all the other sacraments. We go to our church building to remind us that Reconciliation is a sacrament from the Church (big “C”). Jesus is the one who established that sins be forgiven through a priest who is “in persona Christi”, that means “in the person of Christ”. When we speak to the priest during Reconciliation, it is as if we are talking to Jesus himself, and we are asking healing and forgiveness from Jesus. WHen the priest says absolution (which is when our sins are forgiven), it is Jesus forgiving our sins by the power of the Holy Spirit! 

Though it can be scary to tell our sins to the priest, he will only give us guidance to help us make the right choices, and he can never tell anyone else your sins. This is called the sacramental seal of Confession, that a priest who hears Confession must keep them absolutely secret with no exception. All we need to focus on when we go to Confession is that we are truly sorry for the sins we committed that have hurt our relationship with God, and to be excited to receive the healing power of the sacrament! 

It is good to make a habit of going and receiving Reconciliation. Imagine what would happen if you didn’t shower for a month. You would be super dirty and stinky! When we sin over and over again a similar thing happens to our soul--it gets gunky and stinky. It is good to make a habit of going every month to receive Reconciliation to get a shower for your soul! You will leave with a clean slate, fresh and ready to tackle those choices! 

Questions: 

Which sacrament can we receive that will heal our relationship with God after we have sinned? 
Is Reconciliation something we can do from home? Why or why not? 
What is the sacramental seal of Confession?
What do we focus on when we go to receive Reconciliation? 
How often should we go to Reconciliation? 

Activities: 

Plan a time with your parents to go and receive Reconciliation, and also plan something fun to do together afterwards to celebrate! 

Relates to Jesus: Jesus came to heal the sick in a very real spiritual way so that you and I can be free to use are God given gifts and talents to the full.

Relates to my Faith: Freedom from sin as given through Reconciliation prevents us from falling into the bondage of vice, which constricts us and limits us in our quest to be whole.

Sample Script:
When we make bad choices, our sins are what hurt our relationship with God. Like a sickness that keeps us from doing all of our favorite things that we are able to do when we are healthy, sin keeps us from being free. 

When we receive the sacrament of Reconciliation, we are forgiven of all our sins, healed from them and our relationship with God is restored, and we are given the graces that help us better tackle future temptations to sin. With our goal as Christians to imitate Christ, Reconciliation is like medicine and a boost of energy! For this reason it is good to make a habit of going--once a month is a healthy goal to strive for. 

Receiving Reconciliation is also important as preparation for receiving other sacraments, such as the Eucharist, Holy Orders, Matrimony, and Confirmation. If we receive Reconciliation right before one of these sacraments, we are in a state of grace and able to more fully receive the new graces that come with the sacraments! If we are in a state of mortal (grave) sin when we receive them, we won’t have the capacity to fruitfully receive the new graces. 

Once we receive this awesome sacrament, we should practice forgiving and praying for people who have hurt us. When we pray for someone, or make sacrifices for the sake of another person, God hears us and grants us that what we do is of great help to that person! This sacrifice could be completing your chores without complaint, giving up dessert for a night, or doing something helpful for one of your family members. This is one big way that the sacrament of Reconciliation helps us choose to better imitate Jesus! 

Questions: 

What are our sins comparable to? What do they keep us from? 
What are the effects of Reconciliation? Because of this what is a good habit of how often to receive the sacrament? 
How is Reconciliation a good preparation for receiving the other sacraments? 

Activities: 

Who is a person you can think of in need of prayers? Choose a specific prayer to pray for that person, and one sacrifice that you can make today on their behalf. When you make a little prayer to God that you are going to do this sacrifice for that person, he will grant that it helps that person! 

Sometimes it can be easy to feel afraid to go to Confession. If you are nervous, talk with your parents about it, or even to your parish priest! He will help you relax and remember that God is excited for us to receive this sacrament! 

Relates to Jesus: Jesus, in His teachings and parables, shows us what is needed to form our conscience well and thus how to navigate this life as a child of God.

Relates to my Faith: A life rooted in worship, prayer, study, and almsgiving is the blueprint given by the Church for us to be disciples of Jesus Christ.

Sample Script:
For those times that we are faced with a difficult choice, or even when we take action throughout our day, God has given each person a conscience. “Conscience is the inner voice in a person that moves him to do good under any circumstances, and to avoid evil by all means. At the same time it is the ability to distinguish the one from the other” (Youcat 295). In our conscience, it is God speaking to us and leading us to good choices. 

Conscience is a gift from God, and he has given us the responsibility to form our conscience well. Some don’t, and it is confusing and difficult for them to know what is good. That is why it is important that we do things that will form our conscience, so that we have little difficulty in recognizing what is good from bad and can choose it! We form our conscience by taking a little time each day to pray, by studying the faith (like in catechism lessons), and making habits of virtue so that we can hear God better! Once we have a solidly formed conscience, we can trust it and must be sure to follow it. 

There are many situations in which you may be faced with a difficult decision. For example, say your friends all agree that doing something would be fun, but you get the feeling that it isn’t a good choice. Something you can do is stop for a minute and think: why do you have a bad feeling about this? It may be from your conscience, and in thinking you can realize the consequences of that decision and voice them! Or, say someone at school or sports practice asks you to do something you don’t understand. Ask someone older than you, especially someone you trust for help as to what you should do and whether it is a good choice or not. If you’re ever in a situation where you have a little time, say a prayer asking God what to do. He may lead you to an answer or help resolve the situation! Always remember that you have the gift of your conscience for aid! 

Questions: 
What is a conscience? Why does each person have one? 
What must we do to form our conscience well? What is the case if we do not form our conscience? 
Name a method you can use when faced with a difficult decision. 

Activities: 
Have you ever been in a situation like one of the ones described? Talk about that time, or a time you could have used one of these methods to make a good choice. 

Interview various family members asking them a time when they were faced with a difficult decision, and what method they used to make a good decision. 

Relates to Jesus: Jesus gives comfort to the sick and suffering, sometimes physically healing but always spiritually guiding to help us find meaning and comfort in our time of trial.

Relates to my Faith: The Sacraments of Anointing of the Sick and Reconciliation can be and should be received as often as appropriate so as to help encounter the grace of God and to grow closer to the Lord.

Sample Script:
Do you remember a time when you were injured and needed some time to heal from it? Just like our body needs healing, our soul needs healing when our relationship with God is strained. When we sin, we deliberately act against the true order of things that God has arranged out of love. A mortal sin is a serious sin that destroys the divine power of love in a person’s heart, while venial sins which are less serious sins still strain our relationship with him. This is why our soul and our relationship with God is in need of healing when we sin. 

There are two sacraments of healing available to us, the Anointing of the Sick and Reconciliation. These sacraments repair our relationship with God, bring us back into grace and right relationship with him, and strengthens our journey of faith that began at Baptism. Anointing of the Sick is received by a Catholic who is especially sick in their body and at risk of dying, because the sacrament gives a person what they need in the face of death: consolation, peace, strength of spiritual battle and also the forgiveness of sins so that they can meet God with a clean soul. 

Receiving the sacrament of Reconciliation is more common, and it’s important to make a consistent habit of going to receive the sacrament. When we receive the sacrament of Reconciliation, we are forgiven of all our sins, healed from them and our relationship with God is restored, and we are given the graces that help us better tackle future temptations to sin. With our goal as Christians to imitate Christ, Reconciliation is like medicine and a boost of energy! For this reason it is good to make a habit of going--once a month is a healthy goal to strive for. It is the sure way of having a fruitful prayer life too. Once everything in the way of our relationship with God is removed, it is easier to be still, to listen, and to share with God what is on our heart and mind. 

Questions: 
What is the effect of mortal sins on our relationship with God?
What is the effect of venial sins? 
What two healing sacraments are available to us?
What do each do to heal our relationship with God? 
Why would we want to make a habit of going to Confession? How often is a good benchmark to strive for? 

Activities: 
Make a plan with your family to go and receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation together, and be sure to plan at least some small way to celebrate afterwards! 

Tonight, perhaps right before you go to bed practice this method of prayer: 

1. Think of 3 good things that happened during your day, and thank God for them. 
2. Think of the times when you sinned today, or when you didn’t imitate Jesus as well as you could have. Confidently ask God for mercy for these times. 
3. Think of the moments when you did make a good choice or imitated Jesus well. Thank him for the strength to do it! Lastly, make a tiny resolution for tomorrow. 

Relates to Jesus:  Jesus loves us so much, that there is nothing that can separate us from Him. In fact, His love continually seeks us out, calling our name so that we meet turn and return to Him.

Relates to my Faith:  The Sacraments of Healing are available to any of the faithful at anytime. The Church makes available these Sacraments through the priest alone as He stands in the place of Jesus Christ Himself when administering these gifts so that the soul is speaking directly to Jesus.

Sample Script:
Forgiveness is one of the most important elements of the Christian life. God is the model of forgiveness, as we see over and over again in Scripture. Many times God made a covenant with the whole world, meaning he wanted all people to be a part of his family. It began with Adam and Eve: he made a covenant with them, yet they turned their back on him and broke their end of the covenant. God nevertheless loved humanity, so he made a covenant with men through Noah, and the visible sign of this covenant was the rainbow. But Noah and his family also sinned against God. Yet, God still kept his promise never to flood the world again, and he still wanted to make everyone in the world his family.

He made covenants through Moses and King David too, and can you guess what happened? Man broke his end of the covenant, God kept the promises he made, and still loved man. So much that he sent his Son to become man, to heal man’s broken covenant--only a man could represent humanity, and only God could fix man’s brokenness. So he healed man’s relationship with God through forgiveness. Throughout his public ministry Jesus forgave the sins of people he encountered, and finally in taking all the sins of humanity onto himself and paying the price for them in dying on the Cross, he restored our relationship with God. 

God wants to forgive us even now, which is why he established to forgive sins through a priest. The sacrament of Reconciliation is available to us so that we can ask God for forgiveness and make our relationship right with him. We never need to be afraid because there is no sin that God won’t forgive if we are truly sorry for it. Afterwards we have the awesome chance to show others the love that God has shown us by forgiving our family members, friends and classmates. 

Questions: 
What is a covenant? Why does God want to make a covenant with all people? 
What happened in each covenant that God made with man? What was God’s reaction? 
Ultimately why did God the Father send his Son into the world? 
Which sacrament did God make available to us so that we could receive his forgiveness now? 

Activities: 
Make a habit of praying the Our Father each day. In the Our Father, we are reminded to forgive as God has already forgiven us. 

Think if there is any person in your life that you need to forgive. How can you react as God has? 

Relates to Jesus:  Jesus reminds us that every moment of our life is a gift, so nothing in our life is wasted. When we are hurt and suffering, we need to offer this pain to Jesus, who wraps His arm around our shoulders and helps us to bear this burden, much like He did for us on the Cross.

Relates to my Faith:  The Church rightly teaches about redemptive suffering, which is that understanding that our sufferings have eternal consequences when offered for another merit life giving grace both now and in the life to come.

Sample Script:
We all know someone who has suffered, it might be what we have experienced in the past or present. Everyone suffers at one time or another, and some suffer more than others and some less. God did not create a suffering, nor did he ever want man to suffer. He created man, Adam and Eve, in Paradise in the Garden of Eden. With the sin of Adam and Eve came disharmony, death, temptation and suffering. Sin brought suffering into the world. 

God is not the cause of sin but he allowed it to be brought into the world because he wanted people to have free will where we could decide to love God or turn from him. In the same way God does not cause suffering but he allows it. Why would God allow suffering? 

God would never allow an evil such as suffering if he could not bring about an even greater good from it. An example is that suffering can sometimes be a teaching tool to us, a reminder that we cannot rely on ourselves but that we have God to rely on. Experiencing suffering has been an opportunity for many people to open their heart to God, to trust him or even to begin believing in him. God wants heaven for all people, so he brings them closer to himself so that he can lead them there and the disruption of suffering can be a person's first step in his direction. 

Beyond that Jesus made it possible that we might have a kind of power in suffering. Jesus suffered and died for the sake of others taking the sins of everyone onto himself. When we suffer, if we choose to accept it, not to fight it or ignore it but bear it patiently, we can unite our suffering to Jesus suffering on the cross. We say," Jesus, I know you understand suffering because you did it for me, so now I choose to offer mine to you." This is incredibly powerful and it gives meaning to our suffering because we can merit the grace Jesus earned for us. We can offer our suffering to Jesus for ourselves or even for another person's sake to help them reach heaven. 

For this reason Pope Saint John the Great said. "Don't waste your suffering!" It can be a gift that unites us to Christ and helps others, if we let it. This can be very hard sometimes, but Jesus accepts even the littlest offerings that we can make. And they can still make a big difference.

Questions: 
Is God the cause of suffering?
What does God do in regards to suffering? 
Why would God allow suffering? 
What did Jesus make possible for us when it comes to suffering that we experience?

Activities: 
Suffering can be a difficult thing to talk about, but I encourage you to talk with your parents, or to journal if you have experienced any kind of suffering. If you have experienced it in the past, tell God about how it affected you, and pray that you can soon see the good that will come from it. If you are suffering now, tell him what you would want to offer it up for. If you cannot give it all to him now, begin by offering to him what you can. 

Think if there is someone you know, a friend or family member who is suffering now. God grants that our prayers or little sacrifices can be of help to those we offer them for. Think if there is a prayer, perhaps the rosary or a chaplet that you would want to pray for that person, or a little sacrifice like giving up your favorite dessert this week as an offering to God on their behalf. 

Relates to Jesus: Jesus' gift of the Holy Spirit as the Advocate constantly intercedes on our behalf to bring us away from sin and death and towards holiness and life. As the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit's mission is the exact same as that of God the Father and Jesus Christ, God the Son.

Relates to my Faith:  Jesus desires mercy over sacrifice and the Church is right in teaching us that we are called to reflect God's love and mercy in our own life and in our relationships with others. Love, mercy, and forgiveness are some of the greatest gifts that we can give to others and to ourselves.

Sample Script:
The Holy Spirit has a larger role in our lives than we may realize. Through the sacraments Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to the members of the Church. The same Spirit in Jesus is the Spirit that lives in us! 

During Jesus' public ministry, he forgave the sins of people he encountered by the power of the Holy Spirit. He established that priests would have the same power so that we may encounter his forgiveness in the sacrament of Reconciliation! Through all the sacraments, Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to the members of the Church, so the Holy Spirit lives in us! Saint Paul spoke about this when he said, "the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us" (Rom. 5:5). The Holy Spirit helps us in our daily lives, and especially in preparation for Reconciliation. Saint Paul also says that," the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes" (Rom. 8:26). The Holy Spirit meets us in our weakness and guides us to rooting out sin and seeking God's forgiveness and mercy. He gives us the strength to do so. 

He helps us to express the love of God that has been poured into our hearts to others as well, in the powerful way of forgiving others and showing mercy to them. The Holy Spirit plays a big role in our lives and we can always pray for his aid when we are weak with the simple prayer, "Come Holy Spirit!" 

Questions: 
Bywhose power did Jesus forgive sins in his public ministry?
By whose power does the priest forgive sins in the sacrament of Reconciliation? 
Through which sacraments do we receive the Holy Spirit, poured into our hearts? 
How does the Holy Spirit come to our aid as we prepare for the sacrament of Reconciliation? 

Activities: 
The Holy Spirit can seem more difficult for us to get to know. Here is a 4 minute video that shows how the Holy Spirit has worked in people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNNZO9i1Gjc

Knowing that the Holy Spirit lives in you, write down the times when you feel weakest; whether it is with your friends or encountering someone who is not kind to you, and write a prayer to the Holy Spirit that you can pray now, and in the next encounter you face.