My son's Catholic school has a neat tradition. Each Wednesday at their school Mass, one class receives a special cross called the Vocations Cross. They are asked to take the cross back to their room. That class dedicates its prayers all week to vocations, whether it be priests and religious who currently serve the Catholic Church or young men and women who may be considering the religious life. The hosting class brings the cross with them to the following week's Mass where it is passed to another class. Our pastor announces which class will host the Vocations Cross for a week, so everyone knows who has the special honor for the upcoming week.
I was thinking about adapting this tradition to our domestic church. We will decide the week's prayer intentions as family -- whether we are praying for the souls in purgatory, for people we know who are having a tough time, or for vocations, or for some other need. Then one child will have the privilege of taking the cross to her room for the week and asked to dedicate a special prayer each night for the intention.
I think we will craft a special cross especially for this purpose.
Alternately, I've thought about making a burnt match cross. It would be a good way to use those wooden matches that are left over after lighting our prayer candle. Of course, it would take some time to collect those matches. But in the meantime, perhaps we could move our prayer candle to each child's room. Each time we light the candle, we could write down the prayer intention, then save the spent match. It would be interesting to read over all those intentions while matching our burnt match cross.
I found directions for making a Burnt Match cross at the DLTK-Bible website.
Have any of you ever used a traveling cross? Please share your experiences!
what a lovely idea. I should see whether our Hobby Lobby has these crosses. thanks for stopping by my blog to win the giveaway. I'll draw a winner in a day or so.
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