Imagination...with a Mission

The imaginations of children are wonderful things. They can so easily place themselves in a distant time or event and make it come to life. Every year, the children in the Religious Education program at Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Parish in Plymouth imagine themselves as participants in major events in the life of a very special Child: Jesus. On the Feast of the Epiphany, Blessed Kateri’s children present a pageant that takes them from Mary and Joseph’s trip to Bethlehem to be counted in the census through the Nativity to the arrival of the Magi to worship the newborn King.

This year, the pageant took on new meaning because the Epiphany is also known internationally in our Church as Holy Childhood Day – a day when all members of the Holy Father’s Mission Society for children celebrate their work of solidarity with their brothers and sisters around the world. The children at Blessed Kateri and all members of the Holy Childhood Association (HCA) were greeted by Pope Benedict XVI on that day with these words of encouragement: “Observed on the Solemnity of the Epiphany is the Holy Childhood Day, with the motto of ‘Children Helping Children’. This initiative educates children to be formed in a mentality open to the world and to be in solidarity with their poorest peers. I greet affectionately all little missionaries on the five continents and encourage them always to be witnesses to Jesus and heralds of his Gospel.”

The students at Blessed Kateri also used their imaginations recently when the tremendous earthquake struck Haiti. Last year, as part of their mission visit from HCA, they learned about the small island country and the conditions in which children there lived on a daily basis – clean water was scarce, public education was not free, regular meals were not guaranteed. It was not hard for them to imagine how circumstances had gone from bad to worse in an instant; they had been made witnesses to the realities of life for children in Haiti through membership in the Holy Childhood Association.

Your children are invited to use their imagination as members of the Holy Childhood Association as well. They’ll travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem …to the ends of the earth.

To view these HCA members in their beautiful Epiphany pageant, click here.