Happy Birthday John The Baptist!

~We have been planning ahead and preparing to celebrate the birthday of the Forerunner of Christ on June 24th~ 
John the Baptist is the only one besides our Blessed Mother and Our Lord himself whose birth is celebrated liturgically.  I am posting this a bit early to share some ideas.

Happy Birthday John the Baptist!  
You may read about this Solemnity HERE and HERE.

This will be a great day to read about the beautiful Sacrament of Baptism~The Sacrament of Faith!

Bible Readings:

Matthew 3:1-17

John 3:22-36

CCC 1213-1284

St. John the Baptist was the model of the virtue of humility.  We will work on this scripture for memorization:

"He must increase and I must decrease."~John 3:30~

This makes for a great discussion about how this means that we should not look down at ourselves but away from ourselves to the Lord.

Handprint Baptismal Craft

There are many ways that our hands can be connected to baptism, including the hands that baptize us as we receive the sign of the cross, imposition of hands and annointing of oils. 
We made these felt handprints, representing us as children in the "hands" of God.  The baptismal photo in the middle reminds us that we are members of the body of Christ after our Baptism and also to remind us how our Baptism seals us as Christians with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of our belonging to Christ. (CCC 1272)  Through our Baptism we have a continuous call to holiness... May we always strive to be lights in the world around us, reaching out to others with the "hands" of Christ.  
We had fun digging out old baptism photos...

~I just used felt, tacky glue, and card stock to back the photo!  We also wrote each child's baptismal date on the photo to remind them of this special day~

These will make great ornaments for Christmas this year!  
A funny thing happened at our house as we were making this craft... One of my outdoor plaques got broken (that held a ceramic St. Francis of Assisi).

  I decided to recycle the frame for our Baptismal Handprint Crafts and hang it over our home altar with our completed hands!  Next we need to dig up Mom and Dad's baptism photos...

~I think it serves as a great reminder of our baptismal promises~

This is one of my favorite quotes about humility and a great reminder to keep on trying!

"Humility is an elusive virtue. The more we pursue it—and the more we seem to acquire it—the more we take pride in our accomplishment, and we find ourselves back at square one. "~ from Love in the Little Things~

Since John the Baptist was a model of humility and known to eat locusts and wild honey (Matthew 3:4), we prepared a little snack in his honor.  Afterall, birthday cake would be a little extravagant for this humble saint.*wink*

Stop over to Catholic Cuisine to see how we made these John the Baptist Locust Snacks!  You might say "Ewwww..." or you may even say "Yum!"

Two-year old Angel Baby voted "Yum!"

Here are a couple of other links:
Litany of St. John the Baptist
Birth of John the Baptist for kids
We also look forward to some water play and maybe a visit to the church to fill up our Holy Water containers!

~God Bless you and your families on the Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist!~