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2006 Lent/Easter
Gospel Action Figures
Keep It Simple . . . The Way Jesus Did
Whose Experience Is It Anyway?
Helping Children Connect Lent to Easter
Music Suggestions for Liturgies with Children - Year B

Jack Miffleton

In Ernest J. Gaines’ novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman an Easter moment arises when a rebellious girl splashes a little “white only” water on her “black” lips. Arrests and protests follow, but from this water fountain new life and hope begin to flow in a southern town filled with death and oppression. In The Wizard of Oz it is wind in the form of a tornado that carries Dorothy to Oz, and it is water that melts the wicked witch of the west. The waters that flood and destroy are also needed to quench one’s thirst. Hurricane winds can ravage the earth, but the gentle breeze refreshes. In Australia the many bush fires stimulate seeds in the soil to germinate. An Easter moment occurs when the new plants come to life as the rains begin. The earth (humus), like its human inhabitants, continues to cycle through life and death, celebrating its primal sacraments of fire, wind and water.

Liturgical Catechesis
These natural elements feed the religious imaginations of children and adults and unite believers with the God of Genesis who continues to create and renew the earth through fire, wind and water. In Scripture wind, water and fire are prominent symbols of God’s active presence. Effective liturgical catechesis with children takes advantage of their sense of wonder, curiosity and experience around these capricious elements so when children encounter this language in Scripture and worship they see how one comes to know God through the ordinary.
The Lent and Easter stories present a Messiah who suffers and dies, and yet rises to new life. Lent and Easter liturgies draw their meanings from the sacraments of initiation (baptism, confirmation and Eucharist)—new life in Christ begins from baptism’s watery grave; new fire burns to announce the light of Christ; a mighty wind appears as the Holy Spirit anoints the disciples with tongues of fire; and earth’s gift of the bread becomes spiritual food.

Bridging History and Theology
These metaphors and paradoxes form the roots of Catholic ritual. For children below junior high age, metaphors can be difficult, and for all elementary students the religious explanations can be far too abstract. Yet the Easter events cannot simply be presented as history even for children. The path linking history and theological meaning is the experiential. It is the imagination that brings the paschal mystery to life in liturgy and allows the childlike to enter. It is the artists, the musicians, the poets, the storytellers and the creative preachers that bridge the history and theology of Easter and lead believers to a renewed faith in the power of God to transform human life. The artists’ and teachers’ tools are the sacred symbols and signs God has provided and the church has preserved in its traditions. The experiential in the liturgy is a child’s yellow brick road to Easter meanings. How but through the human imagination can we recover the sense of mystery that many feel is lacking in today’s liturgy? But is this just about the child?

The Paschal Symbols Should Speak to Children and Adults
My wife grew up as a secular Jew in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. A few years ago she attended the Easter Vigil with me for the first time. I did not prepare her or try to explain anything. I wanted to see if the symbols of fire and water and words of liberation would speak on their own to someone unfamiliar with Catholic liturgy. Unfortunately, they did not. It was a long, disjointed, wordy, priest-centered occasion that was unintelligible to this well-read university trained scientist. The poor children there! The poor adults! This service was an example of a book-oriented liturgy. An important catechetical moment is lost for most of the assembly and especially for the children when the liturgical texts are not accompanied by poetic actions and sounds and when no attention is given to the context of a particular community. On this holiest night of the year for the sake of the young and old, the liturgy must go beyond a service that is simply valid canonically (ex opere operato). By tapping the earthy richness of the Pasch and letting its holy wonder flood the church through imaginative planning, worshipers of all ages can know:

This is the night when Jesus Christ
broke the chains of death
and rose triumphant from the grave.
This is the night when Christians everywhere,
washed clean of sin and freed from defilement
are restored to grace and grow together in holiness. (Exsultet)

My wife and I are now part of an excellent parish where great care and artistic attention are given to these feasts and their symbols both in sound and sight. In our parish there is something brief and special for young children on Easter Sunday morning. But where the Easter symbols become liturgical actions that are large, transparent and uncluttered, children at least in the junior high grades should be able to participate in these mysteries in their own way and to see, hear and feel that Christ lights the darkness, overcomes death with life, forgives and renews, feeds the poor and hungry and calls his followers to do the same.

Jack Miffleton is a teacher and musician. His songs are sung in classrooms and churches around the world. He is theological consultant and music director for the I Am Special program published by OSV Publications. He teaches music at St. Jarlath School in Oakland, California, and lives with his wife and son in Martinez, California.