Lenten Almsgiving as a Family

Raise your {virtual} hand if you grew up with rice bowls during Lent. The cardboard boxes you had to assemble, and then Mom and Dad would encourage you to add part of your allowance or gift money to it, so you could give alms and help the poor?

I haven’t seen them since we moved to a new parish, but the “rice bowls” were still a big deal at our last parish.

But as a kid, I didn’t understand how my nickels and dimes would help the poor. How does this money even get to them? How much food can my meager $1.87 buy anyway?

“And what are alms and how do we give them?”, wondered my younger self.
Almsgiving is making donations to the poor and performing other works of charity. Almsgiving is “a work of justice pleasing to God” (Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 2462).

Our family now has adopted a simple service project that helps us participate in this pillar of Lent. (The other pillars of Lenten practice are fasting and prayer.) We put together “care bags” for the hungry and homeless of our city. These bags are easy to keep in a large box or tote for storage at home, and we always have 2-3 in our vehicles. When we see someone standing on a corner asking for help, we offer them a bag of food and water.

My oldest child was part of a parish youth group about 7 years ago when we first learned of care bags for the homeless. The middle schoolers gather donations and filled the bags, and to my best memory, the high schoolers passed the bags out.

We have since used the idea to assemble bags at home, and pass them out whenever we see a hungry or homeless person asking for help.

*please note, we only offer the bag to people who are visibly asking for help. The response to the bags has been overwhelmingly positive. Only once do I remember a gentleman decline what I had to offer.

What’s Inside the Bags

• gallon size bags
• water bottles
• granola bars
• trail mix packs
• gum
• tissue packs
• beef jerky

We sometimes also include:

• socks
• hand wet wipes or hand sanitizer
• gatorade (in the especially hot weather)
• any other non-perishable snack food

Assemble the Bags

Depending on how many people are helping, you can set up an assembly line system. We have six children, and the last time we filled bags we sat them around the table, each child with one item to add to the bag before passing it to their sibling.

In less than 30 minutes, we filled 40 bags with water, tissues, and snacks.

Next we filled a large box with the bags to store them. We keep the box near the door, so we can easily grab a few on our way out.

It’s that simple! We like doing this because all ages can participate, and this way to give to those in need carries on all year.

Do you have family service projects your family enjoys I’d love to hear about them.