LYNNFIELD — Confirmation students at the Our Lady of the Assumption/St. Maria Goretti collaborative are doing more than learning about their faith. They’re living it.
That was the challenge presented to them by Robyn Yannone, adolescent coordinator of the Catholic collaborative.
“I wanted 10th graders (Confirmation-age students) to have their class time to learn about particular aspects of Catholicism, but I also wanted them to live their faith as well.”
There are 100 candidates slated to receive Confirmation this fall in the two parishes. Yannone split them up into groups of five, and told them all to choose a community service project that focused on the corporal works of mercy (of which there are seven, according to church teaching).
One of the projects involves Catholic Charities Child Care Center of Lynn.
“The majority of children served (at Catholic Charities) are foster children,” said Christine Feeney Breslow, whose daughter Sarah’s group came up with the idea. “The center is in constant need of supplies, mainly diapers, Pull-Ups, wipes, toothbrushes, underwear, socks, crib sheets and hats and mittens.”
Other projects include collecting supplies for the Plummer Youth Promise in Salem, which offers residential programs, including one to house young men and women referred by juvenile court, and a foster care program.
Others are collecting for the Northeast Animal Shelter, Girls Inc. of Lynn (where candidates served a Thanksgiving dinner last November as well as continuing to tutor members. Some are collecting fleece blanket for patients at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Also involved is a project to collect socks and diapers for state child services. Some of the teens have chosen to go into nursing homes to visit the elderly patients there, while others are collecting books to give to elementary school students in Lynn.
Others are extending their services closer. One group has chosen to be in charge of the children’s liturgy of the word on Sundays in the two parishes.
“I wanted these students to see what it’s like to be kind,” Yannone said, “to do unto others what you would want done to you.
“How does it make you feel when you’ve done something kind? Do you feel happy? Sad?
“They really seem to have worked it out,” Yannone said. “They see how it all relates to our faith. As Catholics, we are supposed to live the Ten Commandments.”
Yannone said that all the groups got to pick their own activities. There were some suggestions made, Breslow said, but the candidates also got to come up with their own ideas.
For example, Breslow “in my former life, before I had children,” worked in the field of charitable giving in Boston.
“Catholic Charities was always on our radar,” she said. “My daughter and her friends are at that age where they’re all into babysitting and working with kids. Sarah and I came up with the agency, and pitched the idea to the rest of the girls in the group.”
Sarah Breslow’s group worked on donations through December by, among other things, asking friends and relatives for donations and putting out messages on social media. They are now waiting for a date where they can drop the donations off to the facility in Lynn.
“I couldn’t be prouder of them,” Yannone said, “and one of the reasons is that they’re pretty proud of themselves.
“Some of them have helped their elderly neighbors who cannot get out of the house,” she said. “The point of the project is to teach them how to live their faith.”