Sunday, February 28, 2010

Multimedia Meets Communal Penance Service

The Holy Spirit is hard at work in my parish, as always. When our liturgy planning committee began to plan for Lent, several of us, independently, encountered resources and ideas that convinced us our Lenten focus should be on reconnecting with our Baptismal call as we accompany our catechumens to the font. This is what we have been doing - each week focusing on a symbol or action from the Rite of Baptism.

Then, I encountered this amazing video that says so much about what the relation between Lent and Baptism:



Powerful images, no? This is formational - each time we watched it, we saw more meaning.

When people enter the church for our Communal Penance Service in a few weeks, we will be running this video repeatedly. When we begin, we will run it one last time, and Spanish speakers will proclaim the translations of the English words that appear on the screen. Then our bilingual liturgy will begin. The Examination of Conscience will ask us to recover our baptismal purity - and at the end, the presider will lead us to the font, near the door, and ask all to dip their hand into the water and bless themselves as they leave.

Now, understand, this is not a parish with big screens on the walls - this is new for us to try something like this.  A step forward into the age of media. One small step for St. John's Parish. One large step for the People of God!

Thanks to Sister Caroline Cerveny for posting this video for me to find... to enrich our Lenten experience.

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