Illuminate the Act of Contrition

We are learning about Illuminated manuscripts in our Catholic Schoolhouse chapter, and simultaneously preparing for first reconciliation and first communion at our house. When you merge those two together, you end up with a printable act of contrition for you to illuminate.

There are several different versions of the Act of Contrition, but for simplicity sake, I chose one to have my daughter work on memorizing. It’s not the shortest one, but also not the longest one. She’ll be making her first confession soon, and I’ve been working on preparing her.

Now about the Illumination. Don’t let that scare you. Illumination is basically a fancy word for ‘making it look beautiful.” Monks in the 4th and 5th centuries would copy the books of the Bible by hand in their monasteries. To make it more beautiful, they would often decorate and illustrate around and in the first letters of major sections of their books. They’d decorate borders of pages, or add little illustrations in the blank spaces. Real illumination uses actual precious metals like gold and silver. But illumination today can be anything from a simple extra flourish around a letter… to full blown gold clad letters and hand drawn illustrations.

If you think about it, you’ve probably seen illuminated letters in places you don’t realize. The Golden Children’s Bible has illuminated letters even:

So for the act of contrition page, just tell your kids you are making it beautiful like the monks of long ago did. Decorate your “O” with intricate designs, or just have fun making it colorful. We used a set of these Glitter Markers by Crayola, which are actually a lot better than I thought they would be. Usually glitter markers’ color soaks in just leaving silvery glitter on top, but these actually stayed colorful AND glittery. I also used color pencils on mine since I’m not 5 and didn’t feel the urge to make everything glittery 😉

If you need some suggestions- add flowers, vines, berries. Draw a small illustration in the O of someone praying. Add ropes that intertwine and knot. And if you want some real inspiration, you can get this cool book, The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane by C.M Millen.

I got my copy at a IHM conference last summer, but you can find it on Amazon. I just love the illustrations and the story is cute too! It fits perfectly with our study of Illumination this spring.

My daughter has already asked if we could illuminate some other prayers to display in our schoolroom, so I guess I better get on it.

UPDATE: We literally did another one of these the very next day, The Guardian Angel Prayer (one of Eva’s favorites). Here it is to print:

Thanks for reading! -Kristen

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