Thursday, 3rd Ottubru 2024

6:30pm – 8:00pm

St Venera

Parish Pastoral Centre, St Venera

Adoloscents

Prayer Spaces will be setup for adoloscents

Maltese

🌟🙏 The SDS team welcomed a wonderful group of adolescents from St Venera Parish for a special prayer journey! 🙌 They explored ✨prayers for the world 🌍, asked their big questions to God ❓, blew bubbles of wishes 🫧, created jigsaw prayers 🧩, visited the peace garden 🌿, thought about their life may and reflected with forgiveness stones.

Peace Garden

This prayer space encourages one to reflect on peace, whether when one is at peace, where is peace needed or how is peace felt.

Be Still

This is a place to be still. To be at peace. There is no need to talk, no need to do anything.

Forgiveness Stones

In this prayer space one reflects on the good feeling of letting go and forgiving someone who caused pain.

Big Questions

Some of them are ‘head’ questions, things we find difficult to grasp and understand. But most of them are ‘heart’ questions, to do with our experience of pain and suffering, doubt and disappointment, etc.

The Bible is full of question-prayers. All of the significant characters in the Bible ask question-prayers of God – Abraham does, David does, even Jesus does – and many of the questions remain unanswered, at least in the way that the ask-er hoped they would be answered.

This prayer activity works best when a team member is nearby to encourage the pupils to ask honest questions. Sometimes, students might ask the team member what they think about a particular question. When this happens, the team member needs to answer honestly, even if their answer is “I really don’t know”. The purpose of this prayer activity is to reinforce the idea that questions are OK. In fact, asking honest questions is essential to authentic faith.

Pipe Cleaner People

This prayer space encourages one to think about, and if they want to, pray for someone special in thier lives in a fun and creative way by making a ‘pipe cleaner model’.
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What did the youth say about this experience?

One participant shared, “I found prayer very creative—such a cool way to talk to God!” 🎨🙏. Another said, “I enjoyed being still the most. I really needed that quiet moment to be at peace for some time.” 🌿💭.

Regarding the Big Questions, one adolescent shared, “It was a chance to ask God things I never thought about before.” 🤔💭 another said, “It felt good to talk to God about things that are too big to understand.” 🙏🌠. One participant reflected during the prayers for the world, “Praying for others made me feel like I was helping in some way.” 🌎💙

The forgiveness stones were powerful for many: “They helped me forgive others.”. And, “The fact that I was with friends, praying together, really encouraged me.” 🤝💫

We thank Fr Maurice Abela, OC, parish priest, and Ms Roseanne Camilleri, their amazing youth leader, for guiding and supporting this beautiful experience! 🙏❤️✨ Thanks also to the National Literacy Agency, who supported this Prayer Space session.

This event is part of the Prayer Spaces programme.