Little Flower Basilica Pilgrimage photo gallery

 

Praying with St. Pat

This is a link to a good discussion of the famous prayer, St. Patrick's Breastplate.  It includes the entire prayer, as well as highlights the last part which, as that writer says, makes for a shorter, strong Morning Offering.  Good prayer material for this week of the Feast of St. Patrick (March 17), especially for those who have participated in CRHP since we used that prayer in Formation/Discernment.

Living the Church calendar: October, part 1

So, October started with a bang for us with the cold-from-hell-coupled-with-strep everyone being sick.  I do intend to regularly post helpful links to the year-long family liturgical calendar post (from our Prayer Book in progress) that I wrote earlier this school year...  New thoughts are in "October orange" along with my original post excerpted below.


October--
1. Feast of St. Therese

She is a special saint for me because she was introduced to me by two close friends in college who loved her and really lived/live her "Little Way."  Both claim her as special patronness because their middle names are Therese.  We all visited Lisieux together during our Rome semester and it was then that I learned there is so much more to this smart, strong, and holy woman than the sappy sweet ways we often refer to her.  The book below is  great for getting to know her in this way.  And while the website I linked to below does not mention the rose St. Therese sends to those who ask fo rher intercession, I have always found her to be generous in fulfilling that promise.
Start or finish the unique and beautiful Rose Novena of St. Therese, a favorite among Catholic women for generations, found in this prayer book. An atypical treatment of this young & innocent saint whose "Little Way" of spirituality is anything but sappy sweet & weak can be found in the book Shirt of Flame: A Year with St. Therese of Lisieux, by Heather King. 

2. Feast of the Guardian Angels
Another good day to bake an angel food cake to celebrate and give thanks for God's provision and protection for us in His angels.
I always buy boxed cake mixes- what can I say? They are good & cheap.

4. Feast of St. Francis Take your family pets to the "Blessing of the Animals" held at many parishes on this day, in honor of this saint of radical material & spiritual poverty who was so peaceful that it is said he could communicate with animals. Or bless your animals at home as a family with a simple spontaneous prayer.
We did bless our pets at home this year in three groups: inside pets: Jude's gerbil & mouse, outside pets (dog &cats), and farm animals: chickens & horses.  We used this blessing that I found on a holy card in an on-line Catholic shop (author not credited):

In your infinite wisdom, Lord God, when You created the Universe You blessed us with living creatures.  We especially thank You for giving us our pets who are our friends and who bring us so much joy in life.  Their presence very often helps us get through trying times.  Kindly bless my pet.  May my pet continue giving me joy and remind me of Your power.  May we realize that as our pets trust us to take care of them, so we should trust You to take care of us, and in taking care of them we share in Your love for all creatures.  Enlighten our minds to preserve all endangered species so that we may continue to appreciate all of Your creations.  Grant this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

St. Francis patron of those who study & care for the earth, ecologists, pray for us!

St. Valentine's Day

This year, we celebrated by making valentines and then having a cookie feast.  Everyone had valentines at their place from Mom & dad, as well as other family & friends.  A couple people gave us cookies, including delicious red velvet-white chocolate ones from our best-babysitter/nanny-in-the-world, and we made our own which altogether made for a cookie feast.

We also read this truly beautiful book: St. Valentine.  I highly recommend it for both the text and the mosaic art.  We were all enchanted by it, even Jesse.

Let's Begin "A Dozen for Delight" at the end... #9 & #12.

So, I will do my best to work through the entire list during the liturgical year.  Today I want to start by posting some pics of our family altar, including our All Saint's Day altar.

9.  "Make a FAMILY ALTAR or PRAYER TABLE..."
I use the mantle over our fireplace as our family altar right now.  During Ordinary Time, our altar is often somewhat bare b/c our fireplace is of a huge, southwestern variety.  We've just started using one side as a nature display.  The boys collected leaves and pine cones for that side last week.  I've been so excited to discover this part of Texas does have a fall season, relatively speaking!  :)  Mark added those pine cones at the bottom when we were working on it b/c that is where he could reach.  And he must always do things
all. by. himself.

During Advent and Lent, I usually keep our wreath and Lenten centerpiece on the dining room table b/c then we see them even more often and they become a focal point for the season; so, the Advent wreath is not headed to our mantle altar but the Nativity Scene will go there, without Baby Jesus, who will arrive on Christmas morning, and the 3 Kings, who will arrive on the Feast of Epiphany.

This is a close up of the current right-side of our family altar, remnants of the Feast of Saints Day.  The big crucifix is from our pilgrimmage to Mexico City to see the original image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  The statue of the Blessed Mother is Our Lady of the Atonement, patroness of the big boys' incredible Catholic school when we lived in San Antonio.  The crucifix and statue of the BVM always stay on the altar.  Also, I often keep a cloth and candle of the color of the liturgical season on our altar, too.  We're wrapping up Ordinary Time so the cloth and candle are green, w/ a fallish design on the candle holder.  (Catechesis of the Good Shepard materials call for a prayer cloth that covers your kid-accessible prayer table, but we've moved to this high family altar and I drape or somehow arrange the cloths now b/c they really are too small for the new space.  I'm working on gathering some CGS materials accessible to all the boys at our low prayer table in our school room but it will be more a CGS work space, w/ this remaining as the family prayer space/altar.)

12. "Round out your celebration of Halloween w/ the FEASTS OF ALL SAINTS AND ALL SOULS." 

So, for the Feast of All Saints, I borrowed an idea I read on Elizabeth Foss' blog to gather all the images of our family patrons on our family altar.  Now, we don't all have icons of our name or patron saints yet and this is one reason I wanted to start this series of posts at the end of my "Dozen for Delight" list.  I thought you may not have them either but we can work on collecting them throughout the next liturgical year.  The icon of St. Catherine of Siena, my patroness, was a gift to me from my mother-in-law and she purchased it here: http://www.monasteryicons.com/.  I think it is beautiful and I have already ordered a few more from there for Feast of St. Nick and Christmas gifts this year.  The small icon on the right above is, I believe, a true Orthodox icon and was bought for Jude on his Baptism by a special friend of mine from law school who is Greek Orthodox.  That should have gotten me started on icon collecting earlier!  John Paul chose that photo of Pope JP the Great from a calendar we have and I plan to have it mounted on foam board as his patron image.

Costumes of saints is another, more fun way for the kids to celebrate All Saint's Day.  This could be as easy as adding saint-costume-friendly dress-up supplies to your collection and encouraging the kids to use them often, especially on the Feast of All Saints.  I am not a seamstress and I have not made my children special saint costumes, on top of gathering Halloween costumes, except for those years that we've belonged to a school or parish that celebrates w/ costumes.

Finally, we end our celebration of All Saints w/ a Litany of the the Saints.  This year I wrote a Litany of Our Family Patrons.  To ask the saints to pray for us, the prayer can be as simple as the parent naming the saint and the rest of the family responding with "Pray for us!"

My Own Copywork for the Feast of All Saints

Christians believe that a mysterious, spiritual solidarity exists among themselves and all other children of the same God. We call this solidarity the communion of saints; the efforts, merits, sufferings of each individual benefit the rest. A similar law exists in the natural order, and if we think about it a little, we shall be convinced that our words and actions have a deeper and more far-reaching effect than we often imagine. Therefore, it is an absolute duty for everyone who understands what "absolute" and "duty" mean, to say and do nothing that is evil or even indifferent, since there is no neutrality in matters of morality. From that arises the obligation to make a sustained effort on a daily basis to work at interior perfection, because, whether we intend to or not, the effect we have on others will be the reflection and expression of what we are within. Let us create an interior treasure of noble thoughts, energy, and strong, intense affection, and then we may be sure that sooner or later, perhaps without our being aware of it, the overflow will affect the hearts of others.
I am not hiding the fact that this is a difficult task for one who relies on reason alone, which is itself to some extent only a tool, and many circumstances may falsify it or impede its action. I have, however, total confidence in God's ways of working with each person, even with those who never address God personally, and yet offer genuine homage by their love of the good, the just, and the beautiful.
-Elisabeth Leseur (d. 1914), whose cause for canonization is underway