Promote Happiness in Your Homes & A Giveaway!

A few quotes from Father Lasance and then….A Giveaway!

My Prayer-Book (Happiness in Goodness)

Be Affable Always

There are some who are affable and gracious to everyone as long as things go according to their wishes; but if they meet with a contradiction, if an accident, a reproach or even less should trouble the serenity of their soul, all around them must suffer the consequences. They grow dark and cross; very far from keeping up the conversation by their good humor, they answer only monosyllables to those who speak to them. Is this conduct reasonable? Is it Christian?

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It is to be regretted that so many people who are very pious are very censorious in their comments upon their neighbors. Piety ought to find expression in kindness to our neighbors as well as in devotion to God. We should remember that the Christ who we serve was kind.

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Enthusiasm

It is faith in something, and enthusiasm for something, that makes a life worth looking at. – Oliver Wendell Holmes.

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Keep a hobby and ride it with enthusiasm. It will keep you out of mischief, to say the least; it will keep you cheerful. Here as in all things you can apply the Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.

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Home is the place where a man should appear at his best. He who is bearish at home and polite only abroad is no true gentleman; indeed, he who can not be considerate to those of his own household will never really be courteous to strangers. There is no better training for healthy and pleasant intercourse with the outer world than a bright and cheerful demeanor at home. It is in a man’s home that his real character is seen; as he appears there, so he is really elsewhere, however skillfully he may for the time conceal his true nature.

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Promote Happiness in Your Homes

It would do much in the home if all the members of the family were to be as kind and courteous to one another as they are to guests. The visitor receives bright smiles, pleasant words, constant attention, and the fruits of efforts to please. But the home folks are often cross, rude, selfish, and faultfinding toward one another. Are not our own as worthy of our love and care as is the stranger temporarily within our gates?

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A Sunshiny Disposition

There is a charm which compensates so much for the lack of good looks that they are never missed, and when combined with good looks it doubly enhances them. The name of this charm is a sunshiny disposition. If things go wrong, as they will go once in a while, does it mend matters to cry over them? Sensible women will say “No,” the women who do not know how to control themselves will say: “Yes, it does me good to cry; I feel better after it.”
There are times when tears must come, but these are beautiful, holy tears. Quite the contrary are the tears shed over selfish, petty annoyances “to relieve nerves.” The grandest quality of the human mind is self-control.

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Father Lasance says:

 

a Giveaway!!!

Today, I’d like to offer you a Fall Giveaway!!

The winner will receive this lovely, Vintaj wire-wrapped Blessed Mother Necklace! Get it blessed and you can wear it as a Sacramental. Included is the Finer Femininity True Womanhood Maglet!

Just leave a comment here, and your name will be added! It is always great to hear from you. 🙂

I will announce the winner next Monday, September 28th!

Finer Femininity is a small publication compiled to inspire Catholic women in their vocations. It consists of uplifting articles from authors with traditional values, with many of them from priests, written over 50 years ago. These anecdotes are timeless but, with the fast-paced “progress “of today’s world, the pearls within the articles are rarely meditated upon. This little magazine offers Catholic womankind support and inspiration as they travel that oftentimes lonely trail….the narrow road to heaven. The thoughts within the pages will enlighten us to regard the frequently monotonous path of our “daily duties” as the beautiful road to sanctity. Feminine souls need this kind of information to continue to “fight the good fight” in a world that has opposing values and seldom offers any kind of support to these courageous women. Inside the pages you will find inspiration for your roles as single women, as wives and as mothers. In between the thought-provoking articles, the pages are sprinkled with pictures, quotes and maybe even a recipe or two.

“Holiness means happiness. Holy people are happy people at peace with God, with others, and with themselves.
There is only one requirement. You must do God’s will. This embraces various obligations and gives you corresponding rights and privileges.
This is the lesson of the Holy Family. The will of God must count for everything in our daily lives. Prosaic deeds done for God can lead to spectacular holiness.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were human, intensely human in the best sense of the word. They show us how our lives, too, should be human–truly warm and Godlike.”

The Catholic Young Lady’s Maglet (Magazine/Booklet)!!

Enjoy articles about friendship, courting, purity, confession, the single life, vocations, etc. Solid, Catholic advice…. A truly lovely book for that young and not-so-young single lady in your life!

Age appropriate: 14 and up (at Mom and Dad’s discretion). 🙂

Available here.

 

Package special available here.

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Author Mary Reed Newland here draws on her own experiences as the mother of seven to show how the classic Christian principles of sanctity can be translated into terms easily applied to children even to the very young.

Because it’s rooted in experience, not in theory, nothing that Mrs. Newland suggests is impossible or extraordinary. In fact, as you reflect on your experiences with your own children, you’ll quickly agree that hers is an excellent commonsense approach to raising good Catholic children.

Fr. Lawrence Lovasik, the renowned author of The Hidden Power of Kindness, gives faithful Catholics all the essential ingredients of a stable and loving Catholic marriage and family — ingredients that are in danger of being lost in our turbulent age.

Using Scripture and Church teachings in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step format, Fr. Lovasik helps you understand the proper role of the Catholic father and mother and the blessings of family. He shows you how you can secure happiness in marriage, develop the virtues necessary for a successful marriage, raise children in a truly Catholic way, and much more.

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Ten Rules to Being Happy Parents – Christ in the Home

Here are some excellent points from a book called Christ in the Home by Father Raoul Plus, S.J., copyright 1951:

1. Always appear before your family in good humor.
Nothing is so depressing as a father or mother out of
sorts. See that the family never has to suffer because of
your nervousness or irritability.

2. Never weary in cheering your family with your smile.
It is not enough to avoid depressing them; you must
brighten them up and let their spirits expand. Be especially
vigilant when the little ones are around. Give them
the alms of a smile, hard though it be at times. What a pity
when children have to say, “I don’t like it at home.”

3.  What can be shared, speak of it openly. If something
must not be told, then don’t tell it. Do share what
you can so everyone profits by your experience, especially
the family.

4.  Amiably show the greatest interest in the smallest
things. Family problems are generally not affairs of
state, but everything that concerns those we love most
in this world should be worthy of interest: the baby’s
first tooth, the honor ribbon won at school, the entrance
of one of the little ones into the Holy Childhood
Association.

5.  Banish exaggerated asceticism from your life. If your
home is Christian and each member of the family is
learning to carry his cross, then it is essential to avoid
making others suffer by a too ostentatious or inopportune
austerity. There is abundant opportunity for self renunciation
in devoting oneself to procuring joy for others.
Marie Antoinette de Geuser used to sacrifice her great longing
for recollection and her taste for a simple life by accompanying
her brothers to evening affairs for which she
wore dresses that she said “made her look vain.”

6.   Be sure to treat all alike. Nothing is so disrupting to
home life as favoritism for one or the other child.
The same measure for all!

7.   Never think of yourself, but always of them in a joyous
spirit. Henry the Fourth of France used to crawl
around on all fours, with his children on his back, to
enliven the family get-together. Louis Racine, son of the
famous French playwright, author of “Athalie,” relates,
“My father was never so happy as when he was free to
leave the royal court and spend a few days with us. Even
in the presence of strangers, he dared to be a father; he
belonged to all our games.”

8.   Never begin an argument; always speak prudently.
Discussion should not be banned unless it develops
into bickering. A free habit of exchanging ideas on a
broadening subject cannot but be profitable; the children
should even be encouraged and led into it to develop
in them a wise and discriminating mind and a
habit of suspended judgment. Unsavory and disturbing
subjects and those beyond their depth naturally
ought to be avoided.

9.   Always act patiently and answer graciously. That it
takes the “patience of an angel” to rule vigilantly
over the little world of the family is beyond question.
Affability is essential.

10.  By good will you will gain hearts and souls without
exception. Loving much is the key to gain all.
These slogans for a happy home life are not marvels
of prose, but do express a precious rule of wise
family discipline.

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“It is wrong to deny one’s self all diversion. The mind becomes fatigued and depressed by remaining always concentrated in itself and thus more easily falls a prey to sadness. Saint Thomas says explicitly that one may incur sin by refusing all innocent amusement. Every excess, no matter what its nature, is contrary to order and consequently to virtue.” – Light and Peace, Quadrupani, 1793 http://amzn.to/2qIMO9B (afflink)

Package Special! The Catholic Boy’s and Girl’s Traditional 30-Day Journals

Available here.

The Catholic Boy’s and Girl’s Traditional 30-Day Journals! Let’s keep our youth engaged in the Faith! Let’s teach them how to be organized, how to prioritize, how to keep on top of, first, the Spiritual things in their lives, and then the other daily duties that God requires of them…

Cheerful Chats for Catholic Children available here.

Review:

(Thank you, Hannah!): I just bought this book about a week ago, and I already love it! The stories are well-written, clear, and childlike without being “dumbed-down.” My kids range in age from 10 to 5, and they each really appreciate the stories. I like that there is a good selection of discussion questions, some of which are open-ended, and some of which are review. Perfect item for this busy homeschool mama!

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Set of all 20 Children\’s Saints Lives

For ages 10 and up. Great stories of the saints for youth that are easy to read; yet extremely edifying and instructing! We all need good examples how to live a good Catholic life — these books will not overwhelm or turn off those who need them most.

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The Sweet Mistress of Home

HOW THE POOR MAN’S HOME CAN BE MADE RICH AND BRIGHT AND DELIGHTFUL BY A TRUE WOMAN’S INDUSTRY.

From True Womanhood, Rev. Bernard O’Reilly, 1893

Lest persons who are not of princely station or noble birth should fancy that the lessons of St. Margaret’s life (see post on St. Margaret, True and Noble Woman) do not concern them, we shall devote this section to showing how easy and necessary it is for the mistress of a poor and lowly home to imitate the sainted Scottish queen.

As it was to a poor and lowly home that the Son of God came, when he began the work of our redemption, as it was in the home of a poor mother that he lived so contentedly during thirty years, so, ever since, his followers have looked upon the dwellings of the poor with inexpressible love and tenderness.

Ah! he is no true lover of Christ who is not drawn to the home of poverty and labor; and the spirit of Christ dwells not in the heart whose sympathies do not go forth to the trials and distresses of those who are, above all others, the friends of Jesus Christ.

But our concern is now with the wife, the daughter, the sister of the laboring man and the poor man; we wish them to understand what royalty of spirit can and ought to be theirs, in order to be the true imitators and true children of that great Mother, who knew how to make the poor home of Joseph so rich, so bright, so blissful, so lovely in the eyes of men and angels.

She, too, was of right royal blood who was the mistress of that little home where Joseph toiled and the Divine Child grew up in all grace and sweetness, like the lily of the valley on its humble stem beneath the shadow of the sheltering oak.

It was the lessons of Mary’s life at Nazareth that Margaret had learned from her royal kinsfolk at the court of Buda, and had practiced so industriously through girlhood and early womanhood, till she became mistress of a court and a kingdom.

One lesson above all others she was trained to practice from childhood— to be forgetful of self, and mindful only of making everyone around her happy.

Woman’s entire existence, in order to be a source of happiness to others as well as to herself, must be one of self-sacrifice.

The first step in this royal pathway to all goodness and greatness is to forget self. Self with its miserable little cares and affections is the root of all the wretchedness we cause to others, and all the misery we endure ourselves.

Every effort we make to forget self, to leave self behind us, and to devote ourselves to the labor of making every person with whom we are bound to live, happy, is rewarded by interior satisfaction and joy.

The supreme effort of goodness is,—not alone to do good to others; that is its first and lower effect,—but to make others good. So with unselfishness: the first step is to forget one’s own comfort in order to seek that of others; the next is to forget one’s own pains and suffering, in order to alleviate those of others, or even to discharge toward others the duties of sisterly or neighborly kindness.

 

“If you accept a man at face value, is there any hope he will change? He may not, and you need to accept this fact. But in a miraculous way, when you accept him at face value, he is more likely to change. The only hope that a man will change is for you to not try to change him. Others may try to teach him and offer suggestions, but the woman he loves must accept him for the man he is, and look to his better side.” – Helen Andelin

Reviews:

These books have been such a blessing to our family! The little poems and nursery rhymes are so much fun but yet have so much depth to them. They cover so many aspects of the faith; saints, the Sacraments, the commandments, virtues, and more. My daughter is always asking for me to read them to her. We are actually using them on a daily basis with the hopes to learn many of them by heart. These are a wonderful tool to have in the home to teach the faith to little ones! Highly recommend!

The volumes are so thick and worth the price! Both the black and white volume with its intricate pencil illustrations, and the volume with its bright wall-to-wall colors, have equal appeal each in their own way. It is a sturdy paperback, and will last in a house full of kids. Shipped quickly.

Available here.

“I have tried to show you , that you cannot become good and strong men and women, that is, men and women of character, unless you have Will-power, and further that you will be of little or no use to your country if you are weak-willed. It has been well said that ‘the only way to be a patriotic American is to do your best to become a perfect man.’ and a perfect man you will not be unless your Will is strong.” (This video was supposed to be on yesterday’s post but I goofed…so don’t think you’re seeing double!)    🙂

An old book that has been reprinted….

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My Heart is Full by Theresa (VanderPutten) Byrne

For Throwback Thursday – Our Daughter’s Story……    🙂

Once an old man remarked to a friend of mine who was shopping, with two little children in tow, “My you’ve got your hands full!”
Without skipping a beat my friend looked up, smiled and said, “Actually, I’ve got my heart full!”
I haven’t forgotten her words and I bet the old man hasn’t either.
How would you define, “to have your heart full?”
I think different people would have different answers.

I think back to my teenage years, the get-togethers, the fun, the go, go, go.
My parents monitored things closely and we had lots of good, joyful, wholesome fun in a home open to family and friends.
I worked by waiting tables at a small hometown restaurant, ran the Junior Legion of Mary, cooked and baked, and sang for our choir.

Rosary was a daily part of our lives, sprinkled with daily Mass and St. Theresa novenas.
People flocked to our home because it was stable, joyful and good. Dad and Mom sacrificed their home and time, to keep an eye on things while being a part of the games and activity.

We had Paintball Wars! The boys played and the girls cooked and took care of the wounded!
The Traditional Family Weekend originated through Mom and Dad about twelve years ago and twice a year, families from different states came together for music, dancing, talks, Mass and just a wholesome family time!

I traveled twice to France with good Catholic friends, for the Chartres Pilgrimage, then took a jaunt with the leprechauns to the homeland of the Irish. While we were there, we danced, we sang, we prayed, we lived with no regrets.

Being in such a good situation gave my siblings and I a chance to get to know many good men and women…..a golden opportunity for when the time was right to choose our spouse!
Many good marriages came from my parents being open to these get-togethers and having a home open for good people.

So, as you can see my youth was filled with faith, fun, stability and many good young men to choose a spouse from.

I was at peace and happy but my heart wasn’t full yet.

Then I met Devin, my future husband, at one of our Traditional Family Weekends….

I am grateful, so grateful, to my parents for the sacrifices they made for their children. I entered marriage pure, with no regrets.
I am grateful for the nights they stayed up late and for the brother or sister who was always chaperoning when we courted.

Fast forward ten years….

We have three children now and time has flown. Each day is precious!
From holding our first little boy to watching him receive his First Holy Communion….All the happiness I have experienced in the past, could not come close to the joy I felt when my first-born received Jesus for the first time!

From the time I married a wonderful man and have been given three children, I have been blessed.
We have had our ups and downs along the road. Mono put me in bed for a year and with it came a lot of anxiety.
When I got well, life was all the sweeter and I was more aware of my Faith.

My husband and I delight in our children. Together we watch the birds, check for eggs and view the sunsets. Our family is our joy!

 

When something good happens, the kids always call Daddy at work. He is interested in what his children are excited about and this is how we share the good times, even when he is not home.
Each day is an adventure, sometimes you laugh, sometimes you cry!

 

We were driving the other day when my son, Brendan, excitedly said from the back seat, “Mom, you won’t believe this! I know it is because I have received Communion so many times and Jesus is in my heart…..I think God came up through my boots because I put my long sock on my right foot and now it’s on my left! Wow, miracles are happening to me all the time!”

He’s right! Every day is a miracle!
When I look at my children I feel a sense of urgency. They have been given to me for such a short time; I must take advantage of this moment.

When I can go to bed knowing I have read with my children, prayed with my children and laughed with my children, I am at peace.
In fact, I have never known such joy, as what daily living with my husband and children have given me.
The hard times make the good times better.
I wouldn’t change my life for anything!
I look around at the sad, lonely old people who thought kids and family weren’t worth the trouble. You know… the ones that are quick to say, “You sure have your hands full!”
Without skipping a beat, I can now say, “Yes, but my heart is overflowing!”

 

“Youth is at the same time the most beautiful and the most dangerous period of life; it can be the most blessed, or the most fatal of seasons. It is the time of poetry and romance, of dreams and visions, of aspirations and ambitions, of the noblest impulses and the grandest resolves. But it is also the season of inexperience and immaturity, of impulsiveness and impetuosity, of conceit, of hasty ideas, undigested plans and precipitate action. By one heroic decision a young person can lay the foundations of future greatness; and by one misstep a youth can start headlong and irresistibly to utter and irretrievable ruin.”-Rev. Fulgence G. Meyer, 1920’s

Lovely handcrafted items available at Meadows of Grace Shoppe!

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With his facile pen and from the wealth of his nation-wide experience, the well-known author treats anything and everything that might be included under the heading of home education: the pre-marriage training of prospective parents, the problems of the pre-school days down through the years of adolescence. No topic is neglected. “What is most praiseworthy is Fr. Lord’s insistence throughout that no educational agency can supplant the work that must be done by parents.” – Felix M. Kirsch, O.F.M.

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Necessary advice to Catholic parents building a Catholic home. Reliable advice that is almost completely lost today, from people who know how it’s done. How to make it. How to live it. How to keep it. This book covers every aspect of Catholicizing your home–from spiritual matters like prayer and catechism to nuts and bolts topics like Keeping the Family Budget, Games and Toys, Harmony between School and Home, Family Prayers, Good Reading in the Home, Necessity of Home Life and much more

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Fathers, Reflect the Dignity of God’s Fatherhood

From The Catholic Family Handbook by Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik

Nature and Christian Tradition tell us that the father is the head of the home. That alone should suggest the dignity of fatherhood. Your dignity as a father rests, first of all, upon the fact that Almighty God has bestowed upon you the privilege of cooperating in the greatest natural mystery: the creation of human life.

Sons and daughters are yours in a sense that nothing else you may ever possess can be called your own. That thought carries with it a unique honor.

Even modern society, which has striven to forget the sanctity of marriage, retains this basic recognition. Your children are your dependents. They bear your name. They imitate many of your mannerisms, gestures, and modes of thought.

Much more: if you are a worthy father, and they are worthy children, they carry with them through life the training in virtue that you alone can impress on their young minds.

Pope Leo XIII reminds each father that he is “the head of the family” and stresses that “the right of property which has been proved to belong to individual persons must also belong to the man as the head of the family.”

This follows logically, because “it is a most sacred law of nature that a father must provide food and all necessities for those whom he has begotten, as well as what is necessary to keep them from want and misery in the uncertainties of this mortal life….

The father’s power is of such a nature that it cannot be destroyed or absorbed by the State, for it has the same origin as human life itself.”

St. Thomas Aquinas  wrote, “The father according to the flesh has in a particular way a share in that principle which is in a manner universal found in God…. The father is the principle of generation, of education and discipline.”

Exert your fatherly authority early on…..

You should exert your authority as a father even when your children are babies. Your word should be something strong, good, and a little to be feared.

If your children learn to respect your authority even from their tender years, they will find that authority a tremendous power to guide those difficult, almost uncontrollable years of adolescence.

But if you let your wife do all the bossing, and are content to be another child yourself, you will be able to make only a feeble protest to youth’s tendency to disobedience and independence.

It is never too soon for you to take up your position of authority as a father if you wish to have it established as a guide for your youngsters later on.

Reflect the dignity of God’s Fatherhood…

Your children should enjoy the strength of your kind paternal authority. It gives them security. What is more, they are given security by the knowledge that their mother and father are united in matters of discipline.

It is dangerous when a child can obtain from a softer parent something that he has failed to obtain from a stricter one, or when parents quarrel in front of children over points of conduct.

In the full program of domestic education, you must take great care that you use your authority properly.  Pope Pius XI said that normally a vocation to the priesthood is the result of the example and teaching of a father “strong in faith and manly in virtues.”

Therefore, fatherhood is a vocation in God’s service, to be held not lightly or frivolously, but with the serious determination of serious men.

Since it is a life’s work in His service, God offers His aid at every important step along the difficult road.

On your part, though, He expects cooperation with grace, which in turn calls for persevering good will, a spirit of sacrifice, and conscientious observance of God’s law made known by the Church.

“If you mostly ignore your children, turn them over to computer games, audio and visual media, telephone pals, and social events, they may continue to live in the same house, but you won’t find them on the same page. When a parent allows their child’s course to be set by the wind of chance, or the vapor of mere academics, they’re either praying for an unlikely miracle or are guilty of neglect. I think we can all agree that raising children is the greatest challenge and, potentially, the greatest blessing on earth. If children are in your care, your heart must always be on them, for their souls are in your hands.”

– No Greater Joy

Manly, sturdy and beautiful, this wire-wrapped St. Joseph Rosary will be a perfect Father’s Day gift for that special man in your life!

Available here.

A very valuable book for the guys plucked out of the past and reprinted. It was written in 1894 by Fr. Bernard O’Reilly and the words on the pages will stir the hearts of the men to rise to virtue and chivalry…. Beautifully and eloquently written!

True Men as We Need Them

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Family Prayer

by Fr. Francis X. Weiser. S.J., 1956

Going home from church, the newlyweds are not going out of the spiritual atmosphere into a worldly one. They are not leaving the Sacrament behind in the house of God. Their union in marriage, their home and their hearts must remain filled with the grace and love of the Lord. A family is actually a little kingdom of God.

These thoughts have prompted Christians at all times to express their union with God, not only as individuals, but also as a family.

It was the ancient custom among Catholics that, at least once a day, father, mother and children would gather in the home for common prayer. This practice deeply impresses its lasting mark on the hearts of the children.

It is not only an addition of individual praying, but a special source of grace and blessings which far transcends the power of an individual’s prayer and unites us with the Lord more deeply and intimately, according to His own word, “Where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

If this is true of any group, how much more does it apply to the prayerful union of parents and children! In fact, it is a common experience that even the small children who cannot yet talk, quickly adjust themselves to the spirit of devotion when the whole family prays. They seem to be inspired by the grace of Baptism, which gives them an instinctive grasp of the supernatural far beyond their natural capacities.

Held in the arms of the mother, such a little child will watch the praying family with large and solemn eyes, even try to fold his hands and assume an attitude of reverence, which is  entirely different from his usual behavior.

When parents sometimes complain that their smaller children are not quiet or silent in church, perhaps the reason is in many cases that their children have never breathed the atmosphere of prayer at home.

There is a radiance of warmth and attractive dignity about a father and mother who not only give their children the example of individual prayer, but join with them in a common practice of devotion and family prayer.

In recent times this practice has died out in many homes.

Some people still keep a trace of it in the form of grace at meals; but even this custom is fast disappearing, especially among the younger ones. They are either ashamed or careless, or they persuade themselves there is not enough time to pray before meals. Thus many a “Catholic” home never unites the family in common prayer, to the great spiritual loss of each individual member.

Thank God, in recent years the practice of the family Rosary has spread far and wide. Besides obtaining graces and blessings, it has also resulted in a revival of family prayer. All those who have at heart the kingdom of God in the home can do no better apostolic work than spreading the family Rosary among their friends.

Even in our attendance at liturgical services, especially Holy Mass and Communion, the participation of the family as a whole should be the ideal. It is a pity that practical considerations make it seem necessary in many churches to separate the children from their parents on Sunday, that special children’s Masses should have to be held at which the parents are not allowed, and vice versa.

Our Lord loves every good family so much that one cannot help thinking how greatly He would enjoy seeing parents and children together at His Holy Sacrifice and receiving Him together, as a family.

Besides the act of prayer, there are many ancient customs of sanctifying the home through the use of the sacramentals of the Church: holy water, blessed candles, food blessed by the priest on certain feast days, blessed palms, Easter water, etc.

As we have the altars and shrines in our churches, so a Catholic family would do well to keep a simple but dignified shrine in the home. It would be a symbol to all members that their lives belong to God, that religion and prayer are not merely a Sunday affair, and that the home of Christians is a holy place. How cold are the houses and homes in which no trace of a religious object is found!

More and more Catholic homes in the United States are adopting the custom of Mary gardens. A fairly large statue of the Blessed Virgin is placed outside the house, surrounded by nature’s tribute of trees, shrubs and flowers.

This is not only an honor to Our Lady and a public profession of our faith, but also a powerful encouragement of our devotion to Mary and a source of pious inspiration for many who behold this beautiful sight.

In this troubled world we need the prayers of children. Their souls are innocent, their petitions special in the Eyes of God. Let us get our children on their knees, and with fervor and the remarkable confidence of a child, let us get them to pray for our families, our country, our world….. www.finerfem.com

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Lovely gifts! These graceful Vintaj necklaces can be worn every day as a reminder of your devotion. Get it blessed and you can use it also as a sacramental. Available here.

 

Originally written as a religious sister’s guide for daily adoration, 100 Holy Hours for Women contains a plethora of profound spiritual insight into the mystery of the Eucharist. 100 Holy Hours encourages Christian women, of every calling and stage of life, to enter into quiet, loving conversation with Jesus. This book enables all to comprehend the love of Christ, who gave us his Body and Blood that we might come closer to him. Only in the Eucharist can we find the perfect example of total humility, self-sacrificial love, and holy submission. Only through the Eucharist can we hope to attain happiness in this world and the next.

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Kindness in the Family – Catholic Family Handbook, Fr. Lovasik

From Catholic Family Handbook, Fr. Lovasik

Practice Kindness

Charity is practical love of our neighbor, the endeavor to do good to him in soul and in the highest sense of the word. But love that resides in the soul ought to manifest itself through the body and its actions.

The Gospel says that Jesus “went about doing good,” and in this He is a beautiful example for you. You have innumerable opportunities for doing good in your family. You have a heart, good thoughts, good words and deeds, and, above all, prayer.

Kindness is never more important than in the family, and never more necessary than in parents.

Be Kind in Thought

Without kind thoughts, there can be no real charity in the home. The thought eventually takes shape in words and works of charity, and gives to them their life, beauty, and worth. Words and works of charity are dead unless they are accompanied by a loving thought.

Kind thoughts preserve you from many sins against charity in your home. Uncharitable judgments, misunderstandings, suspicions, envy, jealousy, and uncharitable words will not take root in your soul if you think kind thoughts.

Strained relations between your spouse or your children and you will be smoothed out, petty arguments will end of themselves, and aversions will disappear.

Kind thoughts are the secret of success in dealing with the members of your family. Only a kind person is able to judge another justly and make allowances for his weaknesses.

As a mother or father, you wield the power to influence your children for good if your thoughts are always kind.

A kind thought never fails to bring joy to your home. It gladdens you and those around you. Happiness is not necessarily won by deeds, but it is readily held by a simple loving thought which can dispel the clouds of depression, discontent, and sadness.

Your family will not fail to notice the presence of such thoughts, even if no word is spoken. If it should happen that no one is aware of the kind thought in your heart, God is aware of it, for He who Himself is Love knows all things.

You cooperate in God’s work when you wish your spouse or your children well, when you implore God’s blessing on their work and rejoice and thank God for their success. The good you do in this way will be rewarded more than any other because cause it is wholly selfless.

To foster kind thoughts, remember these suggestions:

• Put yourself in the place of the other person, and ask yourself how you would feel if you were the subject of such thoughts or judgments. Does God want this?
• Remember your own faults. Perhaps they are greater than those you condemn in others.
• Remember the good points and virtues of others, which usually outweigh their faults.
• Try to find some excuse for the things that others do which you do not like. This means having your eyes open to the whole truth, lest hasty judgments and prejudices close them to a part of the truth.
• Forgive injuries and try to make up at once with those who have offended you, or with those whom you have offended.
• Be sympathetic. Feel for others, and take a sincere interest in all that concerns them.
• Try to see God in your spouse and children. Love for your neighbor – and no one should be closer to you than your family – means loving God in your neighbor. This will lift your kindness to a supernatural plane and, at the same time, make it more generous, active, and universal.
• Pray for your family that God may be glorified in and through them. Above all, receive Holy Communion frequently, and ask Jesus to increase and preserve love in your heart for your family.

If the Eucharist is the bond of charity that unites all Christians as members of one spiritual body, the Church, it is also the bond of charity that keeps your family together.

By giving you a fuller share in the life of Christ, Holy Communion unites you more intimately to each other. It also gives you the help through actual grace to carry out God’s great commandment of love in your own home, and to put away all unkindness.

Through frequent Holy Communion, you will learn to overcome your selfishness and to resist your natural feelings of hatred and bitterness. You will develop kindness and sympathy, forbearance and forgiveness.

“At a certain moment when going to confession to a Capuchin father, St. Therese came to understand that it was just the opposite: her “defects did not displease God” and her littleness attracted God’s love, just as a father is moved by the weakness of his children and loves them still more as soon as he sees their good will and sincere love.” -Fr. Jacques Philippe,The Way of Trust and Love, http://amzn.to/2fpXVzl Painting by Millie Childers

In this sermon I teach the two ways of meditation, Lectio Divina and Mental Prayer, according to St. Bruno and St. Teresa of Avila, respectively.

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The rosary, scapulars, formal prayers and blessings, holy water, incense, altar candles. . . . The sacramentals of the Holy Catholic Church express the supreme beauty and goodness of Almighty God. The words and language of the blessings are beautiful; the form and art of statues and pictures inspire the best in us. The sacramentals of themselves do not save souls, but they are the means for securing heavenly help for those who use them properly. A sacramental is anything set apart or blessed by the Church to excite good thoughts and to help devotion, and thus secure grace and take away venial sin or the temporal punishment due to sin. This beautiful compendium of Catholic sacramentals contains more than 60,000 words and over 50 full color illustrations that make the time-tested sacramental traditions of the Church – many of which have been forgotten since Vatican II – readily available to every believer.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Published 80 years ago, this Catholic classic focuses on the Christian family and uses as its foundation the1929 encyclical “On Christian Education of Youth” coupled with the “sense of Faith.” Addressing family topics and issues that remain as timely now as they were when the guide was first published, “The Christian Home” succinctly offers sound priestly reminders and advice in six major areas…

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The Family and the Cross

This is a beautiful meditation for Lent and well worth your time!

by Rev. Msgr. Irving A. Deblanc, 1950’s

Ask mothers and fathers if they would like to become saints. Many apologetically answer, “Would that I had the time! I am too busy rearing the children, keeping house, making ends meet.”

This recalls the days when some considered sanctity a luxury for the rich, who in being able to afford servants, could spend long hours in church and in prayer: they were often considered to be the holy ones.

Pope Benedict XV defined holiness as doing the will of God according to one’s state of life. In the state of grace and with the right intention, married people can become saints doing their everyday home work.

They often gain more graces with a dish cloth than with a Rosary, as one may sometime gain more graces getting up in the middle of the night to care for a baby than spending an hour in church. It is a matter of doing the right thing at the right time. Yes, but even more, it is fulfilling a sacramental vocation.

This cannot be said in the same sense about being a lawyer, or a secretary, or a farmer. Marriage is a vocation; it is holy; it is a sacrament; it is a means of going to heaven.

It is interesting that only three of the sacraments are entitled ‘holy: Holy Eucharist, Holy Orders, Holy Matrimony – not that the others are not holy but these are specifically designated.

As a priest gets graces when he hears confessions, preaches, reads his breviary, so a couple under the right conditions is flooded with God’s graces when they love each other, nurse a baby, teach the children. This because they too are fulfilling their vocation.

It is because more and more people see marriage as a vocation that we can hope for more and more saints among those living family life.

In Peru four natives have already been canonized and one beatified in a hundred years. In the U.S.A. so far we still have had no natives canonized. I am afraid we are not even remotely thinking in the direction of trying to be worthy to be a canonized saint.

Married couples are sometimes unaware that suffering is one of their great home-made tools for sanctity. It is looked upon as an annoyance, but Christian marital love necessarily involves suffering, for the essence of unity is not so much to enjoy each other, but to suffer together.

Still joy and suffering are not two sides of a unity called love. What was once desire before marriage becomes offering after marriage.

Some have described love as having three aspects: the digestive, the reciprocal, and the oblative. It is in the oblative sense, this self-giving and suffering that a couple purifies love.

Without these elements, love would die, for passion can only promise; love can keep that promise.

To refuse the call of self-immolation is the sin of obduracy and a rejection of love. One is then of no use to God, to society, to each other, or to oneself. To say no to this human impulse is to corrupt all one touches. It is the cult of selfishness.

The Cross can teach us to love our neighbor; it can teach us compassion. Three-fourths of us, it is said, need it, but there is a strange, unhappy feeling that in too many souls this ingredient is left out.

The Cross is our main tool of sanctity at home. Christian love understands the Cross if it is seen in the context of Heaven.

For pagans the Cross is a scandal. It absorbs them like whirlpools in a river at flood height. Suffering, however, must draw men outside of themselves. It is a reminder of Divinity itself. Not good in itself, the Cross can be priceless as a means of grace.

The bell rings in the life of every one of us and all of us are someday called upon to suffer. The non-Christian tries to escape suffering and he becomes hard and selfish. He seeks comfort only and his spiritual energy dries up, but he must learn to suffer or it will destroy him.

The egotist detaches himself from spiritual reality and becomes a hollow being-an empty body. Like the statue of Buddha, he looks down only at his own stomach and does not see the needy around him.

Not all can see the value of suffering. Suffering is often so inward, so hard to articulate. It has been a special mystery to all, especially pagans. Their many explanations have never been satisfactory.

The Stoic saw in suffering a test of sheer courage; he was completely indifferent to it. The Epicurean saw his answer in pleasure, and the Dolorist tried to delude himself and saw evil as good and actually exulted in that which diminished him. Others saw in suffering only a mere punishment.

A good Catholic makes friends with pain. He holds God’s gifts close to himself but always with open hands. When God allows us sufferings it is not to do us harm but to gather us into His arms.

Suffering never gags a Christian; upon it he sharpens his teeth. Like a cargo stabilizing a ship against storms, so suffering stabilizes us against the storms of passion.

Humanity will ever question suffering, as Job did so dramatically and so officially. But Job gave an answer. Pagan philosophers never learned it. Christ gave the answer for all times: suffering calls less for a philosophy, more for a living of it as worthwhile.

So vast was this question, says Paul Claudel, the great convert to Catholicism, that the Word alone could answer it, but He did so not by an explanation, only by His presence. This presence helped Mary who stood beneath the first Red Cross crimsoned by the blood of her Son; it helped Veronica who so lovingly held a cool, moist compress to the throbbing, fevered brow of Christ; it helped Simon of Cyrene, who later gave his life to serve others; this same Simon must have seen the pallid face of Christ among the poor and on every crumpled pillow where a sick man’s head lay.

We learn with St. Francis de Sales that the love of Jesus begins in the Passion. We learn with Bishop Neumann of the deep beauty of the Litany of the Sacred Heart – a prayer he vowed to say every day.

With St. Alphonsus we become more conscious of the Cross. It is constantly in his writing. When he saw a nail, a rope, a thorn, he thought instantly and tenderly of the Passion. The Cross returns us to the nothingness that we are and yet it lifts us into eternity.

In many churches of the country a large, special cross is carried in church for the Stations. There is no corpus on the cross; each person is reminded that he must replace Christ on the cross. He must learn how to suffer and why he suffers. He must be an extension of Christ.

Christ has plunged Himself into humanity and wants us to make Him real today. He wants us to continue His Redemption, but this is done not by writing a good book, or organizing well, or by a great oration.

One is a Christian when he or she represents Christ, witnesses Christ. Deeply we surrender our will, not with a mere external offering like that of Cain, but with an internal – external oblation like that of Abel – like that of Christ. The external gift is a symbol of the internal giving. We represent Christ so perfectly that we become a mystery to those around us.

In the everyday romance of the world we pierce our valentines with an arrow. The Sacred Heart is the first, true Valentine sent by the Father. But His love is pictured by a heart and a cross rather than an arrow.

His heart is not only the symbol of love but the Cross of hope. The Cross is not the symbol of death; it is the symbol of life. The Stations do not end with a dead Christ in the tomb, but a glorious, living Christ on Easter Sunday, and always in our tabernacles.

He is every city’s most distinguished resident who invites His best friends constantly to take up your Cross and follow Me. The Cross is Christ’s way of identifying Himself and His own. Christians realize it is a gift, not a curse for with Dante ‘sorrow remarries us to God.

St. Francis de Sales on the company we keep: “Be very careful, therefore, dear reader, not to have any evil love, because you will in turn quickly become evil yourself.
Friendship is the most dangerous of all love. Why? Because other loves can exist without communication, exchange, closeness. But friendship is completely founded upon communication and exchange and cannot exist in practice without sharing in the qualities and defects of the friend loved.”

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What happened to Veronica’s veil was simply an outward expression of what happened in Veronica’s soul. Are we “Veronica’s” in our everyday life? Do we seek to serve, to encourage, to listen….?

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Encouraging Catholic Customs

This is a post on Catholic customs…a very important part of our spiritual walk with our families….

Just an aside….Advent is around the corner and it is always nice to be prepared. Many years I put off getting things together because there is so much going on! But if we can think a bit each day about this wonderful season that is approaching, the things we want to accomplish, what materials we will need, and get it together before that first Sunday of Advent (Dec. 2nd this year), we will breathe a huge sigh of relief.

If you have been following my site, you may have adopted some of the customs we talk about here. So, I am going to post this page from my Traditional Advent Journal to get you thinking. You can print it out as a checklist on what to get together before Advent arrives…

Digital version the Catholic Mother’s Traditional Advent Journal here.

  

From A Candle is Lighted, P. Stewart Craig

THE FAMILY

There is a whole school of thought that sniffs at the idea of encouraging Catholic customs in the home—or anywhere else, for that matter. Customs like the saying of the rosary together, the decorating of an altar in May seem to them too childish for consideration.

For them the doctrines of the Church are sufficient, without these extras. And indeed the doctrines of the Church are enough for anyone. They are like straight, unwinding roads that lead into eternity; only on either side of these roads are hedges and ditches and meadows and all sorts of flowers.

The ultra- catholic Catholic is not interested in these flowers or fields. Still, such things are to a road what Catholic customs are to the faith; they adorn it, enliven it, they help to keep one on the journey.

It is not strange that all sorts of devotional practices have sprung up round Catholicism, sometimes practices that may seem rather trifling until one realizes that customs cannot be worthless that have evolved from the faith of the people through many hundreds of years, sometimes through well over a thousand years.

What family is there that does not use certain sayings and phrases that have significance only for those belonging to the circle? What family exists that has no peculiar customs, nicknames, rites, birthday ceremonial that outsiders cannot be expected to appreciate?

I can remember an unfailing ritual that was observed among us as children when we ate porridge. First, you ate it all round the edge until half of it was gone and then straight across until the red and blue figure of Tom the piper’s son showed himself on the bottom of the plate, complete with pig and pursuing policeman.

Why we did that I have no idea and I doubt if anyone can account for the curious rites they observed as children. Those rites are not necessary for family life, but they adorn it and enliven it.

And since the Church is not an institution but a family that ranges from God and God’s mother and thence to the saints and thence to the souls in purgatory and from them to ourselves, is it astonishing that spiritual family rites and customs have sprung up?

It is surprising how few people think of this. But the parents who do enter into these spiritual family customs can give their children treasures, whose value they may not realize until eternity. And not only parents can do this, but anyone who works with young people and children, whether in school or clubs or any type of organization.

There is nothing forced in this idea: why does the church in her liturgy allot the various days to the honor of her saints, or to events in the lives of Christ and of Mary, if she does not wish us to celebrate them in some way?

These feasts are fixed, but the way they can be celebrated can vary—and does vary tremendously from place to place.

With the passing of time the festivities and the customs of the day have also changed, still the essence remains the same.

❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀

“Bank holidays are a poor exchange for the feasts of the Church. It means that people’s noses are now kept much longer to the grindstone than they ever were in the days when the civil year was based on the liturgy.

It means too that a popular, vivid, visual way of teaching the faith has almost disappeared. Those who work with young people, in schools or any sort of youth organizations, or those with families of young children are the only ones who can ensure that this way of making religion real does not vanish completely.

Many of the Church’s feasts were celebrated in a childish, obvious even crude way. This ought to be a recommendation, rather than a drawback. When boys and girls drift away from their faith the reason almost always is that this faith has never been a reality to them. The popular celebrations that obtained so long in this country did indeed help to make the faith real then to those who took part; it could do so again.”

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“These diapers that are changed daily, these meals that are cooked again and again, these floors that are scrubbed today only to get dirty tomorrow — these are as truly prayer in a mother’s vocation as the watches and prayers of the religious are in theirs.” -Mary Reed Newland, How to Raise Good Catholic Children http://amzn.to/2vBGgH7 (afflink)

If you would like to order this St. Andrew/Christmas Novena Chaplet click here. The novena starts the end of this month!! A very powerful novena, indeed! I will post more on this as it gets closer.

Prepare now for Advent and Christmas! This little Maglet (magazine/booklet) is full of inspiration and devotions for your Advent and Christmas Season! Check it out here.

3 Maglets available here.

All 5 Maglets available here.

Here, Baroness Maria Augusta Trapp tells in her own beautiful, simple words the extraordinary story of her romance with the baron, their escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, and their life in America.

Now with photographs from the original edition.

Most people only know the young Maria from The Sound of Music; few realize that in subsequent years, as a pious wife and a seasoned Catholic mother, Maria gave herself unreservedly to keeping her family Catholic by observing in her home the many feasts of the Church’s liturgical year, with poems and prayers, food and fun, and so much more!

With the help of Maria Von Trapp, you, too, can provide Christian structure and vibrancy to your home. Soon your home will be a warm and loving place, an earthly reflection of our eternal home.This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.

 

The Land Without a Sunday – Maria Von Trapp

Newbury, Kansas

From Around the Year With the Trapp Family by Maria von Trapp

Our neighbors in Austria were a young couple, Baron and Baroness K. They were getting increasingly curious about Russia and what life there was really like. One day they decided to take a six-week trip all over Russia in their car. This was in the time when it was still possible to get a visa.

Of course, at the border they were received by a special guide who watched their every step and did not leave them for a moment until he deposited them safely again at the border, but they still managed to get a good first-hand impression.

Upon their return they wrote a book about their experiences, and when it was finished, they invited their neighbors and friends to their home in order to read some of their work to them.

I shall always recall how slowly and solemnly Baron K. read us the title “The Land Without a Sunday.”

Of all the things they had seen and observed, one experience had most deeply impressed them: that Russia had done away with Sunday. This had shocked them even more than what they saw of Siberian concentration camps or of the misery and hardship in cities and country. The absence of Sunday seemed to be the root of all the evil.

“Instead of a Sunday,” Baron K. told us, “the Russians have a day off.

This happens at certain intervals which vary in different parts of the country. First they had a five-day week, with the sixth day off, then they had a nine-day work period, with the tenth day off; then again it was an eight-day week. What a difference between a day off and a Sunday!

The people work in shifts. While one group enjoys its day off, the others continue to work in the factories or on the farms or in the stores, which are always open.

As a result the over-all impression throughout the country was that of incessant work, work, work. The atmosphere was one of constant rush and drive; finally, we confessed to each other that what we were missing most was not a well-cooked meal, or a hot bath, but a quiet, peaceful Sunday with church bells ringing and people resting after prayer.”

Here I must first tell what a typical Sunday in Austria was like in the old days up to the year before the Second World War. As I have spent most of my life in rural areas, it is Sunday in the country that I shall describe.

First of all, it begins on Saturday afternoon. In some parts of the country the church bell rings at three o’clock, in others at five o’clock, and the people call it “ringing in the Feierabend.”

Just as some of the big feasts begin the night before–on Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, Easter Eve–so every Sunday throughout the year also starts on its eve. That gives Saturday night its hallowed character.

When the church bell rings, the people cease working in the fields. They return with the horses and farm machinery, everything is stored away into the barns and sheds, and the barnyard is swept by the youngest farm-hand.

Then everyone takes “the” bath and the men shave. There is much activity in the kitchen as the mother prepares part of the Sunday dinner, perhaps a special dessert; the children get a good scrub; everyone gets ready his or her Sunday clothes, and it is usually the custom to put one’s room in order–all drawers, cupboards and closets.

Throughout the week the meals are usually short and hurried on a farm, but Saturday night everyone takes his time. Leisurely they come strolling to the table, standing around talking and gossiping. After the evening meal the rosary is said.

In front of the statue or picture of the Blessed Mother burns a vigil light. After the rosary the father will take a big book containing all the Epistles and Gospels of the Sundays and feast days of the year, and he will read the pertinent ones now to his family.

The village people usually go to Confession Saturday night, while the folks from the farms at a distance go on Sunday morning before Mass. Saturday night is a quiet night. There are no parties. People stay at home, getting attuned to Sunday. They go to bed rather early.

On Sunday everyone puts on his finery. The Sunday dress is exactly what its name implies–clothing reserved to be worn only on Sunday. We may have one or the other “better dress” besides. We may have evening gowns, party dresses–but this one is our Sunday best, set aside for the day of the Lord.

When we put it on, we invariably feel some of the Sunday spirit come over us. In those days everybody used to walk to church even though it might amount to a one or two hours’ hike down and up a mountain in rain or shine. Families usually went to the High Mass; only those who took care of the little children and the cooking had to go to the early Mass.

I feel sorry for everyone who has never experienced such a long, peaceful walk home from Sunday Mass, in the same way as I feel sorry for everyone who has never experienced the moments of twilight right after sunset before one would light the kerosene lamps. I know that automobiles and electric bulbs are more efficient, but still they are not complete substitutes for those other, more leisurely ways of living.

Throughout the country, all the smaller towns and villages have their cemeteries around the church; on Sunday, when the High Mass was over, the people would go and look for the graves of their dear ones, say a prayer, sprinkle holy water–a friendly Sunday visit with the family beyond the grave.

In most homes the Sunday dinner was at noon. The afternoon was often spent in visiting from house to house, especially visiting the sick.

The young people would meet on the village green on Sunday afternoons for hours of folk dancing; the children would play games; the grownups would very often sit together and make music. Sunday afternoon was a time for rejoicing, for being happy, each in his own way.

Until that night at Baron K.’s house we had done pretty much the same as everybody else. Saturday we had always kept as “Feierabend” for Sunday.

There was cleaning on Saturday morning throughout the house, there was cleaning in all the children’s quarters–desks and drawers and toys were put in order. There was the laying out of the Sunday clothes. There was the Saturday rosary, and then–early to bed.

On Sunday we often walked to the village church for High Mass, especially after we had started to sing. Later we used to go into the mountains with the children, taking along even the quite little ones, or we used to play an Austrian equivalent of baseball or volleyball, or we sat together and sang some of the songs we had collected ourselves on our hikes through the mountains.

We also did a good deal of folk dancing, we had company come or we went visiting ourselves–just as everybody else used to do.

And if anybody had asked us why we began our Sunday on Saturday in the late afternoon, why we celebrated our Sunday this way, we would have raised our eyebrows slightly and said, “Well, because that’s the way it’s always been done.”

But when my husband and I were walking home that night from Baron K.’s house, we realized that our complacency–so prevalent among people in pre-war days–had received a rude shock.

It dawned on us that we had taken something for granted that was, in reality, a privilege: namely, that we lived in a country where Sunday was not so much observed as it was celebrated as the day of the Lord.

This was a new way of looking at things, and the light was still rather dim, but I can see now in retrospect that a new chapter in our life as a Christian family began that very night.

Treat your boys as young men. You want them to grow up to be hardworking and confident. Is it not true, that the more productive we are, the better we feel? Then structure your children’s day to be active and busy—they will thrive under these conditions. -Finer Femininity

Painting by Mark Keathley, 1963

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Here, Baroness Maria Augusta Trapp tells in her own beautiful, simple words the extraordinary story of her romance with the baron, their escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, and their life in America.

Now with photographs from the original edition.

Most people only know the young Maria from The Sound of Music; few realize that in subsequent years, as a pious wife and a seasoned Catholic mother, Maria gave herself unreservedly to keeping her family Catholic by observing in her home the many feasts of the Church’s liturgical year, with poems and prayers, food and fun, and so much more!

With the help of Maria Von Trapp, you, too, can provide Christian structure and vibrancy to your home. Soon your home will be a warm and loving place, an earthly reflection of our eternal home.

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