Parent information for Journeying Together
A sacramental preparation resource series for parents and children
Welcome!
The Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne has prepared resources for you to accompany your child on the journey towards celebrating the sacraments of initiation.
The Journeying Together sacramental preparationmodules for Confirmation and Eucharist each consist of four sessions—with Penance and Baptism modules coming shortly. Each session in a module follows a process to assist you and your child not only to become more familiar with the elements of the particular sacrament your child is preparing for, but also to grow in the Catholic faith.
Each session is divided into 11 sections, and you should allow approximately 40–45 minutes for each session. As a guide, you should aim to complete the sessions over about a four-week period.
Most sessions encourage your child to make use of a journal to record their ideas, reflections and images as set out in the sessions. It would be wonderful if you could support your child in using their journal and making it an important element of your Journeying Together to Confirmation sessions.
The sessions
We hope that the sessions will inform and form participants as they embark on the journey towards celebrating each sacrament. A brief session outline follows.
- Focus. Each session in the module has a title, which becomes the focus of the session.
- Prepare. Each session includes a list of relevant symbols, artefacts and items that will be used throughout the session. It is a good idea to gather these together before the session begins.
- Begin. We start with a brief prayer to settle everyone and to begin to consider the session’s focus.
- Share. This short time of conversation and personal sharing helps participants to connect their everyday lives with the sacrament by reflecting on their life experiences, making new discoveries together, and recording their reflections and new understandings in the journal.
- Listen. In this section, we listen to a piece of Scripture that will help your child come to a deeper understanding of the importance of the sacrament.
- Reflect. Once you have listened to and/or read the Scripture passage, there is an opportunity to reflect upon its message through a series of thought-provoking prompts.
- Explore. In this section, your child is encouraged to explore more deeply the Scripture message and/or the focus of the session. In many instances, an interactive element will accompany this exploration.
- Learn. This section is an opportunity for you and your child to come to a deeper understanding of the sacrament from the perspective of the Church’s teaching.
- Connect. By this stage of the session, quite a lot of thought and information has been shared and considered. This section helps your child to make deeper connections with what they have heard and thought about. Once again, this section will often include an interactive element.
- Apply. As an extension of the ‘Connect’ section, your child will be prompted to consider what it means to be a Christian. This section is designed to help children incorporate all of this understanding into their lives and to understand it in relation to how they are being called to live, especially as they prepare to receive the sacrament.
- Pray. To conclude the session, you and your child pray together. This is an opportunity for your child to bring all their understanding, thoughts and, perhaps, questions before their God, whom they will experience in a special way in each sacrament.
We would welcome specific feedback about what your family enjoyed, what you found interesting or challenging, and ways we could improve this resource.
This resource has been prepared to assist parents and guardians, who, as their children’s first faith educators, play an incredibly important role in the faith life of their children. We encourage you to think of these sessions with your child as godly moments, in and through which the love of God may be manifested in your lives and in your family.