Milford St. Joseph's hosts workshop on sacramentals

By RENEE WEBB, Globe editor
Feb. 8, 2007

MILFORD - Each year the director of religious education at St. Joseph Church in Milford comes up with a workshop for kindergarten through sixth grade students in the parish's religious education program. This year the workshop focused on sacramentals.

Karen Schwaller, DRE, said she has opted to create and facilitate a winter workshop for the students for two reasons. First, it gives the regular catechists a break from their weekly responsibilities of planning a lesson and teaching a class and second, it adds a little variety for the students over traditional classroom lessons.

"It is something different for the kids - to get them out of the classrooms and over to the church, to do something as a large group. They really seem to enjoy large group activities," she noted.

Schwaller mentioned that she got the idea to focus on this topic for the workshop after she came across a book on sacramentals in the parish library.

Sacramentals, as defined by the Catholic Dictionary, are sacred signs - whether objects (rosary, chalice) or actions (blessings or certain prayers) - that possess a likeness to the sacraments and whose effects are obtained by the prayer of the Catholic Church.

"These are things that show we are Catholic," she explained. "When they see a rosary they know that it's a Catholic thing and when they see the Stations of the Cross they know that it's a Catholic thing and all of the symbols of the Eucharist are a Catholic thing. I think it was eye-opening for the kids."

Schwaller pointed out that if the students walked into a church, she wanted to teach them to identify items that would let them know they were in a Catholic church.

The workshop was held in the church. There, she set up a table that displayed many Catholic symbols.

"The incense was there, monsignor's (pastor Msgr. Kenneth Seifried) vestments, a table with Eucharistic items and symbols of every sacrament," she said. "To start the workshop, I had borrowed a Stop sign from the road department and asked the kids what signs were good for and what they tell us."

She held up symbols and asked the children how certain things represented the sacraments or the Catholic faith. It was a show and tell of sorts.

Some of the sacramentals relating to specific sacraments included a baptismal candle and white garment for baptism and wedding rings to represent marriage.

"I told them that even prayers that monsignor says in church can be sacramentals because they are blessed," said Schwaller. "It opened their eyes to the fact that there are all kinds of things that can be sacramental if they just look around."

The DRE also mentioned to the students that the word sacramental had the word mental in it, which means to help the students remember in their heads the sacraments.

"They were very wise. The kids who responded gave very good answers," said Schwaller.

That portion of the program took about 40 to 45 minutes and the last 15 to 20 minutes of class time was used to make a craft that tied into the workshop. The younger students made a symbol out of modeling clay and the older students made beaded rosaries.

"The kids are always excited to do something new and different. By the attention that they showed me that day, I could see that they were really interested and excited in learning about their faith," she said. "It was not that hard to put together and was so meaningful for the kids. The teachers also appreciated having a week to relax and learn along with the kids."

She sent a list of sacramentals home with her students so that they might be able to do a search, like a scavenger hunt, in their own homes. That was devised to get the families involved and possibly give them a little faith formation.