Carrying Your Burdens
This class will teach the importance of letting go of the things that bother us and laying our burdens down at the foot of the cross.
Preparation
Purchase at least 15 potatoes for each student in your group.
You will also need a large gunnysack
A piece of paper and a pen for each person.
A handle tie trash bag for each person.
Blindfolds for each student
Activity I
The students should sit in a large circle. Each student should have a pen or pencil and a piece of paper. Place all of the potatoes in the middle of the circle. Students should be given the rules of the game and then asked to turn around so that their backs face the circle.
Rules: Students should privately write a list of their burdens, worries, and frustrations down on the paper their given. They can only put names on the paper if they use initials. Students should be encouraged to list as many things as they could think of. This should be in the formation of numbered list. When the student is finished with his/her list they should fold it in half and hand it to an adult leader. The adult will place each list into a potato sack and tie it shut.
Students are then asked to take the same number of potatoes as they had listed burdens, worries and frustration. Facing the center of the circle, they should set the potatoes in front of them and remain quiet until everyone is finished.
When the students have all turned in their papers and collected their potatoes, an adult leader should hand out a trash bag to each student.
Students are instructed to put their potatoes in the trash bag and then put their arms through the handles and carry it around like a backpack.
Rules: Students are not allowed to carry each other’s burdens, share, and exchange or carry their bags in any other way, than in back pack fashion. Students should carry their bags throughout the entire evening, class time or retreat time.
Lesson I
The lesson for this class is tied into the burdens they are carrying around; therefore the class time should be mostly about playing games and wearing the students out.
Any kind of physically active group games will work, however I’ve listed a game that would be active enough to possibly tire them out.
Activity II
This activity would be best to play either outside or in a gymnasium.
· Split the students into four teams.
· Each team should gather in one corner of the gym.
· When the instruction is given, students should cross from one corner of the gym to the opposite corner.
The team who finishes the race first without cheating will be awarded points. A bag of candy will suffice as a prize for the winners.
The following instructions should be given one at a time:
· Hop to the opposite corner on one leg.
· Pair up with another team member and wheelbarrow race to the opposite corner.
· Run backwards to the opposite corner.
· Pair up and piggyback to the opposite corner.
· Linking arms with everyone in the group walk as fast as you can around the entire gym.
· Crawl on all fours to the opposite side of the gym.
· Linking arms back to back with another team member walk as fast as you can around the entire gym.
· While blindfolded, students should feel their way around the perimeter of the gym and back to the place they started.
· Skip across the gym to the opposite side
· Using the blindfolds, tie legs together and run across to the opposite side in as if in a three legged race.
· Girls only, run to the opposite side of the gym.
· Boys only, run to the opposite side of the gym.
· Holding hands with everyone in the group run in a line to the opposite side of the gym.
Lesson and Reflection
Gather the students back together in a circle. Ask them to reflect on the difficulty of carrying the sack of potatoes/burdens. Ask them to think about how much easier it would have been to run the race without the potatoes strapped to their backs.
Have students take turns reading the following scripture and Catechism references. Take time to discuss each.
You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? Galatians 5:7
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
1 Corinthians 9:24
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
Hebrews 12:1
Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens.
Psalm 68:19
Galatians 6:2 Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2
CCC 1642 Christ is the source of this grace. "Just as of old God encountered his people with a covenant of love and fidelity, so our Savior, the spouse of the Church, now encounters Christian spouses through the sacrament of Matrimony." Christ dwells with them, gives them the strength to take up their crosses and so follow him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another's burdens, to "be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ," and to love one another with supernatural, tender, and fruitful love. In the joys of their love and family life he gives them here on earth a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb
CCC 803 "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people."
CCC 2844 Christian prayer extends to the forgiveness of enemies, transfiguring the disciple by configuring him to his Master. Forgiveness is a high-point of Christian prayer; only hearts attuned to God's compassion can receive the gift of prayer. Forgiveness also bears witness that, in our world, love is stronger than sin. The martyrs of yesterday and today bear this witness to Jesus. Forgiveness is
During the prayer ending to your class, have a ceremony where the students each take their bags of potatoes and place them in the center of the prayer circle. Urge them to make a conscious prayer of releasing the burdens. Also, make a ceremony of burning the papers that were earlier placed inside the gunny sack. (Be careful not to set the smoke alarms off if you do this inside. It would be best if there were a standing crucifix in the center of the circle and one or more of the songs below played as they each took their turn.
We took the potatoes to a local soup kitchen when we were finished.
Songs:
“Cry out to Jesus” by Third Day
“Lay your heavy burdens down” by Todd Agnew
“Move me” by Shaun Groves
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