Edge Small Group Guide: 40
1: The Season of Lent
Dear Parents and Family,
This week at Edge, we began a new three-week series called “40” about the season of Lent. Your child was presented with an overview of Lent, focusing on both its penitential nature and the preparation it provides to celebrate the Resurrection at Easter.
The Edge Night began with a small group game. Youth used 40 letter cards to construct words and sentences. Next, the teaching reviewed the traditional practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It provided your son or daughter with concrete suggestions for enhancing their prayer life during the season of Lent. Your son or daughter was then given a journaling handout and encouraged to make Lenten commitments, individually and with the small group. The Edge Night ended with a reflection on 2 Timothy 1:7-14.
Your child’s weekly challenge is to complete the My Lenten Commitments handout and pray the Prayer of Commitment found on the handout.
Main Ideas
- Lent is one liturgical season that lasts for 40 days — beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending on Holy Thursday before sundown — and is linked to various imagery and stories from Scripture.
- Many different penance practices during Lent come through our Catholic Tradition, the three main practices being prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
- As we enter into Lent, it is important to choose practical approaches to these practices that help us enter into the season and grow in holiness.
Catechism Reference
“The seasons and days of penance in the course of the liturgical year (Lent, and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord) are intense moments of the Church’s penitential practice. These times are particularly appropriate for spiritual exercises, penitential liturgies, pilgrimages as signs of penance, voluntary self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving, and fraternal sharing (charitable and missionary works).” (CCC 1438)
Scripture Reference
“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control.” (2 Timothy 1:7)
Family Reflection Questions
- How can our family pray together during this season of Lent?
- How can our family serve together during this season of Lent?
- How can we support one another in our Lenten commitments?