One of the best ways to inspire your children to become saints is to introduce them to canonized Saints. Knowledge of their lives gives our kids practical examples and an opportunity to develop a relationship with members of the heavenly kingdom that will hopefully last for all eternity.
Here are my top 5 tips for helping kiddos love the Saints!
Celebrate Feast Days
One of the fastest and most fun ways to start introducing your entire family to the Saints is through feast day celebrations. Perhaps start with a well-known Saint like Patrick on March 17 or read about the life of St. Valentine on February 14. You can do crafts, sing special songs, or go on a special outing. My favorite way to celebrate a feast day is through food. Special butter on St. Brigid’s feast day or simple tacos on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it should be fun and something that you know your family will look forward to and will become a tradition.
Choose Patron Saints
If you named your child after a favorite Saint, don’t forget to celebrate that feast day in a very special way. We always have a special dessert and a little religious gift on each of our kids’ feast days. We also have a few family patron Saints that have become special to us, like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Therese. Every year on St. Therese’s feast day “St. Therese” surprises the family with fresh roses and a little gift like a new picture, a special letter, or even a little relic. Our whole family always looks forward to it and calls on her intercession for all sorts of reasons.
Collect Holy Cards and Beautiful Images
We love using holy cards as bookmarks in our home. Our kids look at them often as they read and get exposed to lots of different Saints. I also love having beautiful pictures of our favorite Saints around the house and in our home chapel. Each of our children have a special picture or statue of their patron that they keep near their beds, as well. These are such special reminders of their heavenly friends and how they really are beside us each day.
Create a Shrine
In addition to the pictures by their beds, each of my older children have a little shrine that they help create themselves. They keep a special holy card, statue, picture, or maybe candle on a shelf by their bed. In the past I have used different bookshelves or closets to create a peaceful atmosphere that they would enjoy, depending on their age and the place we were living at the time. We also have our family chapel where we keep special images, statues, and books that we all enjoy together.
Read Saint Books
Of course, my favorite way to introduce my children to the Saints and help them grow their relationships is through books. I have created several Saint books for children including Girls Saints for Little Ones, Girl Saints for Little Ones 2, and Boy Saints for Little Ones, which include simple biographies and beautiful images of some favorite Saints I think children especially enjoy. My oldest daughter, Maria, has also created her own coloring book, St. Therese: Her Path to Carmel, along with her friend. As my children grow older they have fallen in love with lots of Saints through the TAN Collection of Mary Fabyan Windeatt Books like St. Catherine of Siena and St. John Vianney. Windeatt’s Blessed Imelda Lambertini book is even how I started falling in love with the Catholic faith when I was around 12! I still love to read Saint biographies and autobiographies and hope that by my example my children will continue to grow in their relationships with their favorites Saints and new ones through the wonderful gift of good spiritual reading.
