If you are a registered SVP Young Vincentians group then you will have received a pack when you started containing three spiritual reflection guides or something equivalent. These will contain readings, psalm and Gospel for each week in the Church accompanied by spiritual reflections and activities. This page is designed to give you useful tips for successfully using these guides with your groups. This is not an exhaustive list, nor is it tailored for your group, we advise you to experiment with how you deliver reflections to try and find the way that works for you and your group.

• Don’t just dive straight into the reflection. Think about how the room is laid out: candles lit or not, sitting on the floor or in seats, dim lighting or not, music playing or not, are they sitting in a circle or spread out and are there any distractions in the room. Next, consider how you are going to calm them down and approach the reflection, could you get them to first act out the scene in groups to get them into the right frame of mind? Could you begin with worship and get them to sing with you? Whatever you do make sure you give them something initial to focus on, try not to allow their minds to wander onto other things.
• Now when moving onto reading the scripture, to aid your group’s understand try and get their minds into the environment from the scripture. Give them a bit of background or give them clues as to what they should be picking out. Whatever you do don’t tell them what to think, give them the space to work things out for themselves, faith must be developed from within. However, do guide their thoughts. Try reading the scripture from different perspectives, think about how different people in the story would have felt, what would you have said if you were there? Get different people to read and sometimes use videos.
• Moving forward, pick your activity carefully. You don’t have to use the one from the book. If you just want to start a meeting like that you can. You could also do this before you move into doing an act of charity, bring your group before God’s word and then act. Whatever you choose don’t forget to pray. Open prayer, intercessions, worship, drawing or writing, whatever you choose just be sure to include God in all you do.
• Towards the end remember to bring everything back to charity and acting. What can we take forward? What can we do? How are we responding to what God has told us? It is important that this is seen as a journey and not as something which is done and dusted.
• Try and finish by gathering all the good things which you and the group have experienced during the session and sing or pray.

We hope this is helpful. If you have any good suggestions of things you have tried with your group be sure to email in and tell us.