Little Flowers- Joy

Sunday we had our Little Flowers group meeting.  We studied St. Clare of Assisi, the virtue of Joy/Mirthfulness and the flower was the tulip.   St. Clare is one of my favorite saints- she was the daughter of a count who was so moved by St. Francis of Assisi's teachings that she gave up all she had and took a vow of poverty.  She wore no shoes and ate no meat and wore only a woolen habit and rope for the rest of her life.   They still have a box of her gorgeous hair that St. Francis cut off as she took her solemn vows- even though she lived in the 1200s!  The Poor Clare nuns are still in existence today- Mother Angelica of EWTN is in that order.



We told the girls about why you always see images of her holding the sacred monstrance with the Eucharist- when soldiers came to attack her convent she ran to meet them holding the monstrance with Christ and said, "O Lord, protect these Sisters whom I cannot protect now."  And the captors fled in terror- Jesus defended His own!



After coloring St. Clare the girls worked on their JOY notebook pages-








While they cut and pasted I read verses about Joy from the Bible and the true source of our joy.  Then we looked at this image of a pregnant woman and talked about how women feel when they are pregnant- the struggles and hard times they face-



But we suffer the heartburn, the sleepless nights, the weight gain, etc because we know the JOY that comes at the end of 9 months when we hold a precious, eternal soul in our arms-



Joy comes from looking at things through Christ's eyes- not our own eyes.  Seeing things the way God sees them.  We accept hardship now for the reward to come.  This world is not our home.  The girls seemed to understand this.  We also talked about the acronym JOY- Jesus, Others, Yourself- and how that's the only way you can find joy in this life because it's how we were made.  When we put ourselves first our joy is stolen.  We also took time to learn our memory verse and sing the song that goes with it-



Then it was time to clean up and have snack.  One of the mothers brought sugar cookies and small rice cakes to represent the Eucharist-









And as always, after cleaning up we headed to the playground and let  the girls play to their hearts content.  A superfun day with supersweet little girls.