The Traveling Cross Tradition

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.

Here is a document that describes how this tradition is used within a parish. It was published by the Archdiocese of Chicago's Office of Vocations.

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. 

We already have a plain wooden cross like this, which I found at Hobby Lobby a couple of years ago. It could use some embellishment. Maybe we could paint it. It has a slight lip around the edge, so perhaps we could turn it into a mosaic cross using some of the gems I have left from another project.

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!