Children of the St Vladimir’s Seminary community, especially the church school students, sang some of the responses at the Liturgy on Lazarus Saturday. Directed by Dn Kevin Smith, they had rehearsed twice in anticipation of this day. Later at the end of the Liturgy, they carried pussywillows and palms in a procession around the Three Hierarchs Chapel, singing the troparion of the Feast. Parents and teachers then hosted a lunch, where the children excitedly lined up for potato chips and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

After lunch, the children gathered on the front lawn for an ecology lesson led by Daniel Talley, a first-year MDiv student. The lesson included three activities designed to build awareness of God’s creation and our responsibility to care for it. The first was a clean-up task where the kids divided into groups and picked up trash from the seminary’s grounds. (Throughout Great Lent, Daniel has also organized community volunteers for similar clean-up projects around the shores of Crestwood Lake.) With boundless energy, the children ran around calling out to each other when they found trash to fill their trash bags.

For the second activity, the children were each given a small flowerpot, filled it with soil, and planted seeds for black-eyed susans. A group of the girls gently placed their little pots in the sun after giving them water, and some even proudly began to name their future flowers. Some of the boys began taunting each other, each anticipating that his flower would grow bigger than the others. In their own ways, both groups demonstrated their enthusiasm for the activities.

The third and final activity, involved a listening exercise next to a large tree, where the children were encouraged to stand still and notice the sounds of nature. Daniel tied this last activity to Holy Week: “As we prepare for Pascha, take some time to quietly notice the sights and sounds of God’s creation in nature all around us.”

A photo gallery of Lazarus Saturday at St Vladimir's Seminary is available here.