5 Ways Children Can Live in Faith for All Souls

Happy All Saints Day and beginning of the month dedicated to the Souls in Purgatory, whose feast day is tomorrow. 

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How will you be living your faith this month?  Here, we'll be revisiting some of the ways we have prayed for All Souls in the past as well as adding some new prayer traditions to our lives.  Perhaps the ways we plan to pray will inspire you and your children to live in faith for All Souls, too.


1.  Visit a Cemetery to Pray from November 1 through November 8

Last year, we began the practice of praying for the Souls in Purgatory at a cemetery after Nina expressed a strong desire to go visit her cousin's grave to pray.  This year, I hope to visit a cemetery on each of the first eight days of the month with my children to pray for souls, thereby gaining indulgences for them, as described at Catholic Culture.

2.  Visit a Church to Pray on November 2 

Tomorrow, we have an extremely full day pre-scheduled, but it won't be too full to slip into a church to pray for All Souls in order to gain plenary indulgence for them as described at Catholic Culture.

3. Use Prayer Dice to Pray for Souls All Month 

When Luke was preparing for First Holy Communion, our parish gifted him with a new prayer tool.  A year later, Nina received a similar gift.  So, we are blessed to have two Catholic Prayer Cubes which will help us revisit A Simple Activity for All Souls Day -- Or Any Day You Want to Pray with Children for the Faithful Departed this month.  Basically, we roll the dice and say prayers for folks who have passed away. 

 

4.  Learn the "Eternal Rest" Prayer 
This morning, I printed out copies of the Eternal Rest prayer and the St. Gertrude's Prayer for the Souls in Purgatory and reminded my children that November, the month of All Souls, has begun.  We prayed the prayers together at breakfast time and will do so daily throughout the month.  Praying these prayers so often will, I hope, will help us commit them to memory so we can pray them anywhere, anytime in the future.

5.  Create an All Souls Prayer Box 
A friend from our local homeschool group recently shared that her family keeps:

...a book of the dead on our family shrine table. It's a photo album. We have collected memorial cards over the years, organized by month. Each month, the cards of those who died that month are put in the slots in the book and the previous month's cards are rotated out. On a good day, at morning prayer, the names of the deceased for whom we are specially praying that month are read off.

I loved this idea and am adapting it to a box for our family to use. 

This morning, I re-purposed a box meant for large index cards as our "All Souls Prayer Box".  I suggested to my children that, since this month is the month of All Souls, each day we will add a new memorial card, photo, or card with a name of someone dearly departed to the box, praying for the person's soul.  We'll organize these by the dates people died on.  Then, as the year continues, we will pray anew for each person's soul during the month each died.

As the month continues, we may decorate the box and make some laminated Eternal Rest and St. Gertrude prayer cards to keep in it, too. 

If you would like us to add your dearly departed names or pictures to our prayer box, please leave a comment, message me or Facebook, or otherwise get in touch. 

I would love to hear how you live in faith for All Souls with the children in your life.  Please share in a comment here or on Facebook.  Thanks!