Owie Crown

View of our Lenten homeshrine in progress.

"Then they put an owie crown on his head and it scratched his head..."

So the other day at breakfast John and I were discussing what we should "do" for Lent as a family. During Advent we decided to do a treasury of grace exercise. For those of you out there who may be reading this with no idea what that is, here is a little background. I was first introduced to the idea by a dear Schoenstatt sister they day I met her. I was protestant at the time and was having a terrible day. Casting lists had just gone up for my last year in the Nutcracker and I didn't get the part. I was devastated. This sister described this comforting idea of placing our disappointments, failures, joys and victories into the "treasury of grace", in essence offering them up to Mary so that they would be transformed into graces. We offer them as prayers to Jesus through Mary, and as prayers they become treasures. I spent the next few hours thinking about this spiritual offering and wondering if there was a physical representation of it somewhere on that land. Ha! Little did I know how full the Catholic faith was of physical representations! I thought that somewhere there must have a been a treasure chest full of sacrifices. What would those sacrifices look like?

So for Advent this past year, which is the "kinder, gentler Lent" (so says this sister), we placed a small treasure chest shaped box on our homeshrine with a pile of gold and silver glitter foam stars in a bowl next to it. Every night for night prayer my husband, 2-year-old daughter, and myself would each take a star and at the end of our usual prayers tell the Blessed Mother what we offered for her son and place the star in the box. I had every intention of creating a larger star out of the smaller ones to place on our tree or over the creche, but as my life goes, that didn't end up happening. Next year.

So this beautiful, kind, gentle treasury of grace exercise was perfect for a two year old, perfect for the beautiful season of Advent leading to the joys of Christmas. But what about Lent? What images of the extremely sacrificial nature Lent could we use in our family devotion?

I saw an example of one involving a crown of thorns. I love the idea. Each sacrifice is a paper flower placed on a thorn of the crown, portraying how Jesus's sacrifices blossom into graces for our salvation. While I would normally encourage even a toddler to be exposed to and use the real materials for nearly any activity, this particular example could be dangerous. Especially since she's at just the right height to reach up and pull down the crown of thorns onto her baby brother's head. So as we're sitting around the breakfast table trying to come up with ideas the discussion of the physical dangers of having a crown of thorns in the house turns into a discussion of the Way of the Cross for toddlers. Just how would you describe this to a two year old? Our version went something like this:

"They told Jesus he was going to die and put an owie crown on his head that scratched him, then they made him walk with his cross, then he fell down and saw his mom, Mary, then he got back up and Simon helped him, then he fell down again..."

Just didn't seem...um...how do you present such an important yet graphic aspect of our faith to innocent little lambs? Question for another time.

Our discussion turned back to the sacrifices for our night prayer and we finally settled on the image of the crown of thorns with flowers. For now we'll start educating our little ones with the images and practice of the exercise of sacrifice without the dangers of sharp thorns poking around the homeshrine. My talented husband made this version of a crown of thorns on Illustrator. We'll make purple flowers out of paper and paste them on the thorns with a glue stick.

John's work of art

The toddler's sacrifices will probably include using her words, saying please, and sharing with her baby brother. And for a two year old those are pretty tough.

leap for joy