This week’s word is ‘fasting’.
During the season of Lent, we should give something up. However, this does not mean just stopping eating our favourite sweet treats. Fasting only works if what we are giving up benefits someone else.
For example, if we do give up chocolate, we could donate the money we would have spent on chocolate to a charity.
We were reminded of Jesus’ 40 days and 40 nights in the desert when he fasted in order to concentrate on spending time with God.
We heard this reading from the Gospel according to Matthew:
And when you fast, do not put on a sad face as the hypocrites do. They neglect their appearance so that everyone will see that they are fasting. I assure you, they have already been paid in full. When you go without food, wash your face and comb your hair, so that others cannot know that you are fasting—only your Father, who is unseen, will know. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.
Matthew 6:16-18
This tells us that we should fast for ourselves, not to show off to others.
We thought about what we could give up and how we could do something more important instead.
Ideas included:
- Giving up time on our gaming console and spending it playing with our brothers or sisters instead
- Giving up part of our lunchtime to help our teachers with tidying the classroom or organising the books
- Giving up playing with our friends to play with someone who is on their own
- Giving up watching TV to help with the cooking or washing up
- Giving up part of lunchtime to attend meditation club
- Giving up some of your free time at home to say an extra prayer each day
What will you do to achieve this week’s mission: to give up something we like and to do something more important instead? Let us know in the comments below.
6 comments
Year 4 talked a lot about what fasting means and that it is about showing determination to stick to something for the benefit of others. We are going to give up time playing with our games and toys to help those that look after us complete the jobs around the home. We are also going to give time to other friends and play with those who don’t have anyone to play with.
As a class, we discussed the different things that we can give up that will help and benefit others. Most of our ideas revolved around giving up some of our time in order to raise money. Therefore, year 5 have decided that they will be giving up some of their time to complete a sponsored walk within the school grounds in order to raise money for CAFOD.
The Year 3 children thought giving something up to help others was a good idea. They suggested giving up their time to read to a younger sibling, giving up their time by doing jobs at home to help their parents eg.setting/clearing the table away and giving up their time to listen to others when they feel sad. They have also thought about giving up their time to sit and pray with God by attending meditation club each week during Lent.
As a class, Year 1 have learned about fasting and what it means . We talked about how fasting is not just about giving up food but about giving up things we like. This week we started our class fundraising event (one mile challenge ) to raise money for CAFOD . We are giving up five minute of our lunch time to complete this challenge and we have all shown positive commitments.
In year 2 we discussed giving physical things up, like our favourite treat, and then went on to discuss how we could spend this money elsewhere to help others (give it to charity or buy someone a gift).
We also discussed giving things up that are not physical, like time doing something (playing on an IPad) and came up with things that we could do instead that would do good (support the Ukrainian effort or help with chores).
In Year 6 we spoke about different ways we could fast during Lent not just by giving up foods we enjoy. We thought about things we could give up to help other people such as our time to help family members or to help our friends in class. We also thought about things we could fast from to have a positive impact on ourselves for example: fasting from jealousy and instead being filled with gratitude; fasting from anger and instead being filled with patience; fasting from worries and instead having trust in God and fasting from pressures and instead making time to be more prayerful. We all promised to try a few of these this week, throughout lent and beyond.