Make a Tiny Saints Prayer Wreath

​Create a personal mini-wreath of prayer with Tiny Saints charms, composed of just those saints who reflect what you feel in your soul. I was fortunate to find the charms at this year’s Religious Education Congress in Anaheim, CA, but they are also available online (www.tinysaints.com). First, pray about your intention. Next, reflect on the simple images of the saints. I appreciate how modern and accessible they are. Then, read the succinct descriptions of each saint’s life on the back of the charm packaging or on the website.
 
For me, my prayer centered on finding a bold courage to write and share my faith with others despite some obstacles within my life. I wanted to rediscover familiar saints and become inspired by new ones. Now after arranging the charms simply with some beads, I pray about the saints’ stories and powerfully sense their intercession. Here are just two:
 
Mary Magdalene: I had known that she had first discovered the joy of the resurrection on Easter morning. But I learned that she is the patron saint of converts. I became Catholic at the age of 27 after a non-religious childhood in a loving family with a Protestant background.
 
Blessed Margaret of Castello: I had never heard of her story. Her family confined her in a room attached to a church simply because she had disabilities. But she found faith and friendship with a priest. She became a Dominican Sister, serving working parents by caring for their children. This service resonates with me, since one of my greatest joys was volunteering every week at a preschool for children of families facing adversity. I can’t even imagine the strength of Margaret’s faith and boldness in overcoming obstacles.
 
Stories like Margaret’s continue today. In a podcast by Timothy Shriver, Chairman of the Special Olympics, he testified powerfully how game participants vulnerably trust the world with their dreams in a way that many of us find difficult. (Find it at Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations.) Blessed Margaret must have trusted the Holy Spirit to lead her out of that dark room to a life filled with love and hope.
 
Your prayers are likely very different than mine, but that is the beauty of saints’ stories. We can find in them so many different threads of human experience, and I love the way that Tiny Saints bring those to us so simply. 

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