CHARTING A JOURNEY TO BABY JESUS | KAIROS GLOBAL | FEBRUARY 2021

Author: Sheeba Prasad

Intro: Sheeba Prasad was given the responsibility for last December’s advent preparation for children. She tells us how the much-appreciated Journey with Saints was the fruit God’s amazing care and providence

It was in September 2020 that I was entrusted with the year’s Advent preparation for children. From that moment, I was anxious as to how to go about this huge responsibility. My prayer was, ‘Lord if you have chosen me to fulfill this, please lay straight the paths for me.’ The rest of September was spent in prayer.

October was the month of the Rosary and I held on the Mother Mary. By God’s grace, we have been able to go for Holy Mass every day and so as I do for each special intention, I offered my new responsibility during each mass. I offered my doubts, capabilities and my cluelessness about how to bring this out for children every day during Mass.  My ardent prayer was that it be fulfilled according to how the Lord intended. The whole of October was spent praying so. 

When I was given this responsibility, it was recommended that I select a few people and form a team for this. I had a few people in mind and some were suggested to me. I kept all of them in prayer along with the daily intention at Mass. On October 29th, at Mass, I asked the Lord to reveal to me that day, those who would be part of the team for this project. What I had in mind was, just as the Trinity is three, a three member team. But I had before me five members, including myself. I went ahead and called each of them up. Two of them said that they would not be able to join due to existing commitments but promised to help out in case of emergencies. This left three of us – just as I had prayed for! That was a great confidence booster for me.

During the past twenty-nine days of October, I had prayed hard for what the content would be and how would I put together the advent preparation. It also had to be different from the previous years’ advent preparations as well. In prayer the answer came to me – child saints. Though I knew about a few young saints very well, I was clueless about how this would translate into content for each of the twenty-five days. But this revelation was on my mind day and night and I prayed very specially for it as well as the mode of content creation – would it be videos, text content or something else. 

So I decided to share these thoughts and ideas with the team – Suja Siju and Priscilla from Palakkad and myself from Kayamkulam¹. Though I had never met them, it became clear over the coming days that they were indeed handpicked for this by the Holy Spirit. We got together on an online meeting and I told them about the child saints idea. Little did I know that I was in for another surprise. When the meeting was convened, one of them was on the verge of quitting from this project due to other pressing responsibilities. But when she heard the theme, she knew that God indeed in his mysterious ways had been preparing her for it, several months ago. How? For the past six or seven months, she kept getting promptings about child saints. She did not know why these thoughts kept recurring with such persistence, and this ‘troubled’ her. It was only now that she realised that those promptings were the working of the Holy Spirit. I was amazed. Before we even thought about this advent preparation, God had already thought about it and planned it out!

We decided to bring the videos out in two languages – English and Malayalam. While Suja would take care of the Malayalam part, we did not have anyone to translate this to English. This intention was kept in prayer. Prior to the content creation, the JY Kids Ministry had prepared a brochure about it, which was circulated among all JY groups. Seeing this, Dr. Sindhu contacted me from Florida. She was very taken up by the idea and wanted to replicate it for children in the US as well. She also said that she would be happy to help out in any way possible. Here again, I got to see God’s amazing care and providence. He was laying straight the paths for us! His words in Philippians 4:19 became a reality for us, And my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

By November-end, most of the videos were ready. I was adamant that my children too watch them along with the others when released, with the same excitement and expectation and do the daily tasks with enthusiasm.  

We hoped that Journey with Saints would be unlike previous years where the children had to depend on elders. We wanted the kids to be able to watch and do the activities and prayers by themselves. One of the instructions we had given at the beginning was to keep a journal and write about the videos and their experience of the advent journey. One of my great joys was that my children too prepared their journals for these twenty-five days completely. Their enthusiasm for this was so evident when each night they’d enquire about the next day’s video and my clues would keep them guessing!

One of the things that my two older kids told me – and my joy at their realisation of this – affirmed the fruitfulness of this advent preparation. ‘Amma, even though we are a bit naughty, we too can do it, right? We too can be saints.’ 

She lives with her husband and three children in Kayamkulam, South India, where she runs a business. She is part of the JY Kids Ministry and has been active in the movement for more than two decades.