Ready for Lent 2016

It's that time again! Time for renewal, transformation, and repentance.  A time for great sacrifice and also great hope! I love the Lenten season so much, I cannot fully put into words what it means to me.  For years my Lenten experience was very personal and to some extent it still very much is. Yet now I'm a wife and mother and my vocation expects me to share more of myself than was ever required before marriage. All the moms reading this understand what I'm talking about. Motherhood is a daily martyrdom to oneself. We are constantly giving and sacrificing and doing, and working, and so on and so forth. Most days, especially mothers with little ones or those with children who have special needs, are tired, no, exhausted, barely able to open our eyes in the darkness of the morning when our youngest cries out. But we do it. We get up and the dying to ourselves begins again. 

Lent is another one of those great sacrifices for mothers and fathers. We desperately want and need to be refreshed and renewed in the blood of the lamb. But we are also spending all of our free time with our family, in the noisy hustle and bustle that child rearing is. How hard it is to find any time for silence and listening to the voice of our Lord!  How difficult it becomes to really participate in the Lenten process in order to make the transformation we desperately need! That is why, for me, preparing my house for Lent is more than necessary. 

I need to be reminded on a daily basis of the liturgical season in which we are currently.  I need that visual to make me stop and be present in the many moments of sacrifice a day so I don't waste any suffering,  any penance,  any sacrifice or annoyance. I need my eyes to tell my brain over and over again to "offer it up". I also need these decorations to illustrate to my children that this time of the year is a very very special time and different than any other time of the year.  So this is the motivation behind decorating my house for Lent. It's not for the purpose of enhancing beauty but to bring us all closer to the Lord.

This is how I prepared for Lent this year.  The picture at the top of this post shows our dining room table. I just added a purple runner and this cross centerpiece for our family dinners.

I made this centerpiece by using an old picture frame ( I added a black piece of construction paper inside of the frame just to give it a black background) with simple black rocks (I actually found in the aquarium area at Walmart), and votive candles that I bought at a thrift store.

My plan is to begin by lighting each candle nightly at dinner and as the weeks get closer and closer to The Passion of Christ we will blow out one candle each week. This is a visual way to show my children that the "Light of the World" was extinguished from this material world on Good Friday.  A friend of a friend came up with this idea and I thought it was perfect for my family. I'll share pictures of what we will do to celebrate the Easter season when that time comes.

I placed some plastic purple flowers (I bought 4 stems at $.97/each a few weeks ago!) around the house in a few places just as another reminder of this beautiful time repentance. 

Seven feet of purple tule I purchased for less than a dollar. I simply wrapped it around the staircase so that we are greeted with a sign of Lent as soon as we walk into our front door.

Covering our crucifixes was the hardest thing for me to do. How I miss seeing my Jesus' face when I pray to Him! But I knew I needed to do it, for myself and my family.

All the purple cloth was purchased for about  $7 total. I simply cut it up to use to cover my crucifixes and as my dining room table runner.

And that's it! I don't decorate my entire house just the living areas and our prayer room. One day maybe I'll share a picture of that room with you. But not yet. ;)

This is a beautiful Lenten meditation book we are going to read and follow daily as a family during Lent. It is written by Donna-Marie Cooper O'Boyle (there is a Lenten sale going on right now and you can get four of these meditation books for $11 at this link). She has numerous ones for various saints. I purchased the ones with St. Pope John Paul II, Bl. Mother Theresa and this one above with my lovely Little Flower, St. Terese of Lisieux. 

What I like about these meditation books is that they are written for families. Each day offers  a meditation, a story about the Saint's life, a suggestion of what to fast from that day, and prayers that you can pray as a family together. It's a beautiful way to reconnect as a family, and a way to emulate such wonderful

Saints during this Lenten time.

So that's how we have prepared ourselves for Lent 2016! I would love to hear your ideas as well.

Blessings to you and yours,

Book Review: Mother Love

As you have probably figured out by now, I love to read.  At any given time I'm working my way through several books.  My latest book, arrived this past week and I was so interested in it, I have to say I read through it (meaning not every single prayer but all the other goodies) in ONE DAY!  I'm not ashamed to admit, I LOVE Mother Love!  It's a vintage book written in 1926.  So we are talking pre-Vatican II here.  You can imagine how many hidden treasures on in this book!  

What do I like about it?  Well there are several things that really spoke to my as a mother as well as something on this homeschooling journey.

This book is separated into 5 different parts.

Part 1 provides chapters on Morning Prayers, Night Prayers, the Holy Rosary and, my personal favorite chapter, Points of Doctrine (which provide the quick and dirty basics every parent should teach their children such as:  the 10 commandments, the 6 precepts of the Church, the Holy Days of Obligation (a few are different now but still cool to see what they did in '26), 7 sacraments, 7 capital sins and their virtue counterparts, the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit, 12 fruits of the Holy Spirit, the Beatitudes, the Corporal and Spiritual works of mercy, and the 6 sins against the Holy Spirit. (Um, who knew there were six?  There they are in the picture by the way!)  In that section there are many more simple straightforward goodies of our faith and I just LOVE it!  Clear, concise and to the point!

Part 2 is chock-full of various kinds of traditional prayers: prayers for mothers, prayers for their children, prayers for your child's vocation, prayers for a happy delivery, prayers for the new born, prayers for the conversion of a child, prayers for sick infants/a sick husband/sick grown child/sick relative, and maybe the most important section, prayers for the dying.

My Favorite Part of this Book:  The Ten Commandments of Christian Education.
This topic being so near and dear to my heart as a homeschooling mom!

Part 3 provides prayers to various saints.  Part 4 offers a plethora of information regarding indulgences, and prayers one can say to receive plenary or partial indulgences.  Word of caution:  I am not an expert in this area therefore I would recommend looking up the current list of indulgences to cross reference and determine which are still current.  But the prayers themselves are still so beautiful and worth praying!

Part 5 discusses the information relevant to the Confraternity of Christian Mothers. I am not sure if this group is even in tact currently but still reading through the recommendations and advice gave me some new thoughts on how I can help other mothers.  The very LAST chapter in this book is called Little Book Of Instructions, and will probably be the chapter you LOVE or HATE the most.  I read it, keeping in mind these are instructions written for mothers back in 1926 and found it both historically fascinating and, if I'm being perfectly honest, the feminist reel in my head was a bit irritated by some of the comments.  Why would I read it?  How could it be relevant?  Well, for me, I found there were some tips that I could use and some that would not fit in the parenting style of my family.  My rule of thumb: take what works and leave the rest.

And so there you have it!  A quick look into my new favorite prayer book, Mother Love.  It's a must have book in my list of prayer books and one I'll be carrying around with me to adoration.  The treasure trove of prayers alone make it priceless to me. You can purchase it at the link shared.

I give it:  5+ Chaotic Stars

A Note About Joy!

It's the third week of Advent and we just celebrated Gaudete Sunday.  It's the week of joy, my friends!  Christ is coming soon!  Yet, when we look at the world around us, how can we speak of joy?

I'm so very happy that this week is the "week of joy"!  We are getting over stomach bugs and colds in this house and what a joy it is to feel so much better! But joy is so much more than just feeling better or being happy.  To me joy is a choice, one that we make numerous times a day.  Do we choose to be joyful?  When our children wake us up an hour early, do we choose joy? I'll admit it, this is a hard one for me. When it's rainy and cold and we have to run errands, do we choose joy?  When it's time to work on reading, writing, or worse...science projects with our little ones, do we choose joy?  When it's time to make dinner, and our toddler is hanging on our leg screaming (because apparently the only moment that we MUST pay attention to him seems to be the exact moment we must also cook), do we choose joy?

Part of being a joyful person is to accept where we are in life and that all situations, trials, celebrations, and the mundane moments of daily life can bring each and every one of us to sanctity.  But we must CHOOSE joy!

Another aspect of being a joyful person is to SHARE our joy.  Like oxygen to a fire, are people to joy.  Joy must be shared among others for it to grow and burn strong.  So now we need to ask ourselves, do we share our joy?  When we get cut off by an oblivious driver, do we share our joy?  When we are 10 minutes late to an appointment, do we share our joy?  When the post office lost our mail, when the water company puts us on hold for 35 minutes, when our dishwasher breaks, do we share joy?  When running in and out of the doctor's office, grocery story, library, do we make that choice to share our joy or do we bottle it up inside smothering it's flame?

I know what you are asking yourself.  Why should we be joyful, Maria?  The world is falling apart?  And who can be joyful with all the annoyances of daily life?  But I say, why SHOULDN'T we be joyful?  The world is a passing phase.  Life on this earth, has but one function, to help us achieve Heaven, to be with our Lord, God, the Holy Trinity, forever and ever.  And we can use these moments of annoyance, these little sufferings.  Even those moments, we can offer up to our Lord.  So, really, who doesn't want to celebrate?  I mean, we are Catholic, people.  We are a religion of festivities and fun.  We have two full seasons of celebration, the Christmas and Easter seasons.  We have so many feast days and saint remembrances, that we are partying almost every day throughout the year!

We are a religion of party goers because we know the GOOD news.  Christ is coming!  So let's choose joy.  As my one year old just woke up from a 20 minute nap and is currently screaming for me to come get him, I'm going to have to sign off here, but in the meantime, I'm going to choose joy.

May your days be filled with moments of pure joy!

Blessings to you and yours,

Advent 2015 Week 2: Feast Day Fun!

Well we've made it through week two with a little bit of sickness to boot us into week three but at least I'm getting this post up.  If you missed our Advent fun in Week 1 just click on the link to hear all about it.

This is the Advent chaos that's been going on in our household this week :

St. Nicholas Feast Day

We opened week 2 of Advent with the feast day of Saint Nicholas which is also the feast day of my oldest child. So we spent the day watching a Saint Nicholas movie from CCC of America titled Nicholas: the boy who became Santa, reading about Saint Nicholas and how he fits in this time of celebration of Baby Jesus, and of course enjoying the goodies that Saint Nicholas brought us and our shoes. I also made my son this Saint Nicholas peg doll for his special feast day.

Immaculate Conception

December 8th we celebrated the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed Mother. With this coloring picture from Catholic Icing, I explained to my kids how Mary was born to St. Anne free from original sin.  To honor our Blessed Mother, we all wore blue.  And we met up with two other Catholic families and colored this picture from Catholic Icing (grab your copy at this link).

San Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe (Feast days Dec. 9th and Dec. 12th)

This is my oldest's "favorite Mary". Ha!  So we go big or go home for these feasts!  First we watched the CCC of America's San Juan Diego video, followed by coloring an Our Lady of Guadalupe coloring sheet you can get at Catholic Playground (grab it at this link). We cut out and taped this picture to some sheets of packing paper (last year we used a brown paper grocery bag) we still had in our house, cut out and whole for the head and voila', we have a tilma for the kids to wear!  

We also have an ornament of Our Lady of Guadalupe my husband found last year on clearance at a Hallmark store.  We placed it on our Jesse Tree as a daily reminder of this amazing miracle, that the Immacute Conception was about to bring the Word Incarnate into the world.  What a beautiful Advent celebration we have two weeks before Christmas!   Hanging the ornament in our living area was a great reminder to us all to say a quick prayer random times of day to Our Lady.  

Blue Knights meeting:

My oldest is part of a Blue Knights Boy's Club in which my husband,  being the good dad he is, is the leader. This week was their monthly meeting and they learned about the virtue "Fear of the Lord", which was a hard one for me as a child to really understand.  But my husband explained that just like parents need to sometimes discipline children when they make poor choices, so does our loving Father in Heaven.   My husband explained that Our Lord will do everything in His power to keep us close to Him, safe from evil and sometimes those things may feel like punishments but they are permitted out of love for us. As a mother, I totally get "Fear of the Lord" now and pray my children will always fear upsetting or hurting Our Lord enough that it will keep them on a straighter path than I have trod. Here's a picture of the delicious snack I made for the kids. I didn't have any purple sprinkles for Advent, so Christmas colors it was. 

Still going strong:

Our Jesse Tree Ornaments, Advent Calendar and Sacrifice Manger are still going strong here in this house.  As you can see from the above picture, my little Bean, loves the tree. Some days we do better than others and sometimes we miss a day and have to catch up on our Jesse Tree ornaments but it's still been so much fun seeing my son internalize more and more of these bible stories I've been reading him over the past few years!

And finally, our family dinners around the Advent wreath have been such a blessing.  My family is enjoying it so much, it usually is listed as one of our daily "Three Favorite Things" (post coming for more information on this one) for one family member or another each day.

How is your Advent season coming along?  Have any other great ideas to share?

I'll see you back here next week for our weekly Advent round-up!

Many Blessings to you and yours this Advent Season,

Advent 2015 Week 1: Peace

Ok we shall see if 1) I can keep the weekly Advent updates coming and 2) if I can effectively pace myself for all the festivities.  Only with God's grace will this happen for sure.

So here's the Advent chaos that's been going on in our household this week:

Advent Calendars
Everyone needs an Advent calendar,  a way to mark off our days of anxiously waiting for the coming of our Lord. This one I purchased from the National Shrine of the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes a few weeks ago. Sorry, they don't mail products.  I asked. :( Anyway, I just love this calendar! Each day, one of my children chooses another object or character to add to the Nativity scene. Our Blessed Mother will be coming on December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and Baby Jesus,  well He comes on the last day of course! :)

Sacrifice Manger
I didn't come up with this idea, just liked it and decided to pass it on to my children. As a way to teach them, Advent is also a time to grow in holiness, we made this little manger out of paper. I used yarn I had in the house for hay, and cut up tons of pieces. Each time someone in the family does a good deed without being asked, acts kindly to another or loves as Jesus loves, he/she is permitted to add a piece of "hay" to the manger. By Christmas day, hopefully the manger will be full of enough soft hay for Baby Jesus' arrival. My 5 year old is REALLY into this one!

Jesse Tree
What a great way to learn the history of Jesus from bible stories beginning with Adam and Eve! I do not believe in reinventing the wheel so I used a Christmas tree that I had since my college days and put it up in our living room area. I explain to my children that this is the Jesse Tree. Each day we watch the video from Holy Heroes and color one of the Jesse Tree Ornaments that they provide free of charge from their website. You just need to register for their Advent adventure and you too could have these Jesse Tree Ornaments available to you. Everyday I'm asked "Mom what's the ornament for today?". It's a great way to encourage Bible reading as a family!

Advent Wreath
If you cannot do anything else during the Advent season, sitting down at the table together as a family around the Advent wreath is a must! Each evening for dinner we will sit around the Advent wreath light candles while singing a verse or two of O come, O come Emmanuel and my husband, being the spiritual leader in our family (more on that to come in another post), will read a very short passage from Isaiah regarding the prophecy of the coming of Jesus. Of course my children are still very little so we do have to explain what the passage means. Yet, we feel it's a nice way of introducing the prophecy of Jesus slowly but surely within this Advent season. The wonderful family time and the grace we receive at family dinners is always astounding and I encourage every family if you can do this even once a week to do it, as it's so very important for children.

So that's what we have going on during our first week of Advent. Next week hopefully I'll give you an update on what we have been doing for week 2 so stay tuned.

Blessings to you and yours,

Mary: Mediatrix of All Graces!

The Catholic Church honors our Blessed Mother with so many beautiful titles including one of my favorites,  the Mediatrix of all grace.   Now what does that mean?  It means that the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Blessed Trinity, chose Mary to bring the Word, our Lord, Jesus Christ, into the world.  Did He have to use a woman, who at the time was considered a lesser human being?  Of course our God didn't have to use ANYONE to bring Jesus into this world.  He CHOSE her.  She was chosen, above ALL women!  She was chosen for the Son!

Upon choosing Mary to be the vessel of the incarnate Word, the Holy Spirit made her, His channel through which all graces flow to this world!  Wait. What?  Yep you read that correctly.  Jesus was brought to this world to complete the "new covenant" through His passion, death and Resurrection.  It was ONLY through GRACE that He was made in the flesh and walked on this earth.  It was ONLY through GRACE that our Father, God, chose to make a new covenant with us, to open the gates of Heaven.  And there was ONLY one vessel in which this grace was bestowed, and that was in our Mother Mary!  

It is recorded in the bible that Mary was "full of grace".  This direct translation from the original language actually meant that Mary was, is, has always been since conception, full of grace.  The direct translation reveals to us, through scripture that Mary, at the moment of her CONCEPTION was FULL OF GRACE!  This is why, we as Catholics, call her the Immaculate Conception and we do not believe our Lady had original sin.  Jesus was NOT the Immaculate Conception as the secular world seems to presume.  It was, is Our Blessed Mother.  This is why we as Catholics know our Lady was the chosen vessel to bring grace upon the world!  Sit with this for a minute if this is the first time hearing these thoughts.  They are mind-blowing. I understand.

Mary was always free from sin.  Mary was always full of grace.  Mary was chosen by God.  Mary, who was given free will to say "No", chose to say "I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to thy Word.".  Mary, who brought the Incarnate Word into the world, who raised Him, adored Him, loved Him, taught Him, cradled Him, nursed Him when He was sick, held Him when He was hurt, nourished Him body AND soul (as only a mother can do), then let Him go, allowing Him to sacrifice Himself as a lamb heading to the slaughterhouse.  Mary, who watched our Lord suffer under the weight of the cross, witnessed him lose more than half of his blood from soldiers scourging, whipping and beating him, and faced him hanging on the cross for three excruciating hours never choosing to deliver Himself from such great agony.  Mary, the mother who lost her Son at Calvary.  Mary, the mother whom Jesus loved so much He performed His first miracle only at her insistence.  Mary, the mother Jesus adored so fully that He chose to "give" her to the world, by "giving" her to St. John, His beloved apostle at the foot of the cross.  THIS is the Mary we venerate!  THIS is the Mary we love!

ALL graces that are bestowed upon this world MUST come THROUGH our Blessed Mother; given by Christ of course, but ONLY THROUGH the Blessed Mother.  She is the channel with which the world receives our Lord!  So yes, we as Catholics, rightly so, give our Blessed Mother, the title of Mediatrix of All Graces!  It was through her fiat, her "yes", that all graces came, and will forever come into this world.  

As St. Louis De Monfort said:

  

"He has chosen her to be the dispenser of all He possesses, in such sort that she distributes to whom she wills, as she wills and when she wills, all His gifts and graces.  The Holy Ghost gives no heavenly gift to men which He does not have pass through her virginal hands."

And this is why we LOVE our Mother, Mary so very very much!  Through her we learn who Jesus is.  Through her, we find HIM!

Blessings to you and yours,

Boasting in the Lord!

Boasting in the Lord. St. Paul tells us to do it (1 Cor in thins 1:31). In fact, it's a good thing. Yet he reminds us not to boast in leaders of the world (1 Corinthians 3:21). Ok Paul, I gotcha. Boast in the Lord, my God, my Savior not in flawed sinful men. Yes! I want to. Some days I want to shout with JOY screaming at the top of my lungs sharing all the good things the Lord has done for me. But when does this boasting become just bragging? When does it become "look at me, I'm favored because God has done so much for me"?

This is something with which I struggle a great deal. Some days I am so excited about receiving the Eucharist that morning in Mass, I just want to dance. In fact, (ok I know this is weird but), I do dance "in my head". Walking back from the Communion reception line, here I am in my brain dancing down the aisle singing the only word that ever comes to mind (or maybe the only word that really comes from my heart, who knows), "Yes! Yes! YES! YES! YES!!!". So yes, I WANT to boast in my Lord. I want everyone I meet to get that feeling of pure happiness, that almost uncontainable joy, when receiving our Lord, when participating in the perpetual sacrifice, when taking part in the ONLY moments where Heaven ACTUALLY meets earth.

Have you ever really thought about that? The Mass is the ONLY time in our lives we will be able to experience a bit of Heaven here, in our mortal lifetimes! We know for certain, our gardian angels are there as they come everywhere with us. But have you thought about the fact that there are other angles present as well according to Paul (1 Corinthians 11:10). And what about the saints? We even mention the saints in our Eucharistic prayer. Could it also be possible they are present too? Honoring our Lord at His great table of plenty? Of course it is! And if so, then why AREN'T we flocking to the churches on Sunday, Holy days and every other chance we get? Why AREN'T we boasting in the Lord our God?

Here's what I think. At least for me, it's all about vanity. Curse my stupid pride! I don't want that person to think I believe I'm holier than them. If I say, "Listen to how great God is to me...." I don't want that person I'm speaking with to think of me as a braggart, like the pious Sadducees and the fake Pharisees who thought of themselves above others. No, I would never want someone to think that about me. And so I keep my mouth shut. I choose not to share my great joy in Christ because, heaven forbid (pun intended), someone might think ill of me.

Well no more. The time is NOW. Pride, be gone with you! I happily, loudly, and joyfully boast in Jesus Christ, my Lord, my Savior, and my great, great love.  Today, I shout it from the laptop (not a mountaintop but it will do)!  I stand steadfast in my love and joy of my merciful Lord.  I will not deny Him and my happiness will NOT be contained!

So next time you see me, I just might be dancing down the aisles at Mass unable to contain this great happiness.  And don't stop me outside of church or you just might hear "Hey, guess how good God is to me?".  Because from this day forward you cannot STOP me from boasting in the greatness that we call our Lord and our God.

My prayer for you, my friends, is that you too will find the strength, peace and joy of boasting in Jesus too (whether it be through words or deeds).

Blessings to you and yours,