Learning about Mary at vacation Bible camp
During the summer, Our Lady of Peace Roman Catholic Church students delved into the study of Mary, exploring appearances of our Lady at a Fatima, Lourdes, Guadalupe, Knock, and Mount Carmel. The New Providence church hosted its inaugural Vacation Bible Camp from July 15 – 19, with the program “Tracking Mary: Aboard the Queen of Heaven Express.”
The week-long summer camp took six families with 12 children aged K-6 on a journey through the sites of various Marian apparitions. Additionally, families learned how to pray the rosary together.
Emphasis on Fatima
Gloria Alves, the Director of Religious Education, said her Portuguese heritage and deep devotion to Our Lady of Fatima led her to choose the “Tracking Mary” theme for the camp. She wanted to introduce young parishioners to the spiritual significance of the rosary and its historical context.
“I wanted the children to understand that Our Lady is always with us and to encourage them to seek her intercession through the rosary,” Alves said. “The most important lesson was that Jesus will always listen to his mother.”
Our Lady of Fatima is a title used to refer to the Virgin Mary in her apparition to three shepherd children — Lucia dos Santos and her cousins, Francisco, and Jacinta Marto —in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. According to the accounts, Mary appeared to the children several times, delivering messages about repentance, prayer, and peace.
Catholic tradition considers the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima significant, emphasizing the rosary, the conversion of sinners, and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
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“Tracking Mary” across the globe
In addition to Fatima, the children visited four other shrines: Lourdes, France; Guadalupe, Mexico; Knock, Ireland; and Mount Carmel, England.
At Lourdes in 1858, Mary appeared to 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous in a small town nestled in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains in southern France. In 1531, Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego in Mexico and requested that he build a church in her honor. The next time she appeared, she arranged roses in his tilma. When he presented the tilma to the bishop, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe emerged on the cloth.
In Knock in 1879, 15 people witnessed an apparition of Mary on the gable wall of the parish church. They reported that she appeared with St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist, a lamb, and a cross.
At Mount Carmel, England, in 1251, the Blessed Mother appeared to St. Simon Stock, a Carmelite priest. She held the child Jesus and gave him a brown monastic “apron” known as a scapular. She promised that anyone who died wearing it would be spared from eternal fire.
Helping kids understand the rosary
Throughout the week, participants also engaged in various activities designed to deepen their understanding of the rosary. Craft projects included making rosaries and decade beads, each linked to the different apparitions of Our Lady. Students also made prayer cards and picture frames to hold icons of Mary.
Families received daily flyers outlining how to pray the rosary. The flyers also including the prayers and the mysteries associated with the rosary.
Danielle Grieco, a lifelong parishioner of OLP, said that her two children enjoyed attending the vacation bible school and learned a lot. “They made a beautiful frame made of colored stones that has a picture of Mary inside,” she said.
The vacation bible camp sessions reinforced the faith formation they do already at home, Grieco said. “We are a Catholic family, and we try to do a family rosary as well as other prayers together.”
Featured image: Students board the “Queen of Heaven Express” to learn about Marian apparitions around the world. (OLP/Gloria Alves)
