Eucharist focus makes kids' program fail proof, director says

By Dave Hrbacek, The Catholic Spirit, Tuesday, 29 June 2010

A sea of color lit up Holy Family church in St. Louis Park June 25, as more than 300 children and adults wearing bright tie-dyed shirts gathered around the altar for eucharistic adoration.

About our CVBS program......................

It happens every year in June. With the end of school, CVBS begins! We come together for 5 of the most fun filled, prayer packed, grace filled days that can be found! It’s for boys and girls ages 4 through the completion of 6th grade. We have lots of teenage helpers and moms and dads volunteer to help too!

We always start with our large group Gathering Time (and we look great! in our matching CVBS t-shirts!). We start with prayer lead by Father Dufner and then we have an interesting large group lesson that gets us ready for our day. Whoosh! It’s off to music class!, art class! lesson time!, snack time! and before you know it, it’s already time to wrap up our day.

CVBS is not over when we leave. No way! We have lots to tell our mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and anyone we meet. And we always work hard, until we go to bed, to make special sacrifices each day for Jesus. We write out what we’ve done or draw a picture and put them in the big “Sacrifices for Jesus” basket each morning. Mrs. Prather always picks the best examples and gives out prizes (but she tells us that Jesus knows every sacrifice we make for the love of Him and He’ll give us the best! prize when we see Him someday in Heaven.)

My favorite part of CVBS is our closing time at the end of the week when we all cross over to the Church (wow! there are so many kids, teachers and teenage helpers that sometimes the police have to come and help stop the cars for us so we can cross the street safely.) When we go into Church, we all come into the sanctuary and kneel all around the altar... we really fill the place up! And then Father Dufner brings us Jesus, truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament, and places the beautiful monstrance on the altar. We sing all the songs we learned during CVBS for Jesus, we offer prayers for our families and all the families of the world. We pray for our priests, for our country and for all the needs of our world. And we always bow down and adore Jesus and tell Him how much we love Him! (Because He really loves it when we console His Heart and pray for poor sinners.) We always end our time together by asking our Blessed Mother to pray for us, that she will help us to be just like Jesus!

Don’t miss Holy Family’s Catholic Vacation Bible School!

Contact:  Mrs. Jean Prather 952-929-0113 ext. 12