Make Passion Pizza Toast {Living the Liturgical Year}

If you'd like an easy, meaningful, meat-free meal for a Friday during Lent or for Passion/Palm Sunday, how about trying Passion Pizza Toast?

So long as you have some bread, cheese (or dairy-free subsitute), and sauce in your fridge and pantry, Passion Pizza Toast makes for a super simple way to help children live the liturgical year, recalling the story of Christ's Passion as the pizzas are made.

When we made them last year, we simply looked at what we had in the fridge:

Then, set to work making our pizzas, talking through the events of the Passion of the Christ and of Holy Week. Jesus - the Bread of Life - entered Jerusalem on a donkey. (Take your piece of bread.)

People covered the roads with palms.

The very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and strewed them on the road. The crowds preceding him and those following kept crying out and saying:

 

"Hosanna to the Son of David;

blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest."

Matthew 21:8-9

Jesus and the disciples ate the Last Supper together. (Have children retell all the parts of the story that they know.) After they ate, Jesus went to the Garden of Gestheme and prayed. While there, he cried tears of blood. (Put some sauce, tomatoes,or other red item on.)

Jesus was arrested, taken to Pontius Pilate... and was made to carry a cross. (Have children narrate more of what they know of the story before placing down ingredients in a cross shape.)

They nailed Jesus to a cross.  (Add more red sauce or ingredients.)

A centurion pierced Jesus' side with a spear, the fifth of Jesus' wounds.

Pause for a moment of silence and pray, "My Jesus, mercy," or another appropriate prayer.

Jesus died for our sins - a sacrifice of love. (Add white cheese as a symbol of Christs pure love.)

Once the story has been told, toast the pizzas, pray, and eat. While waiting, read portions of the Passion of Christ from the Bible or a storybook or ask children to sit and pray in silence.

Serve with a side salad with "five wounds" for an extra boost of nutrition.

May the last leg of your journey through Lent be blessed and may Christ have mercy on us all.