Reminiscing

By Theresa

Girl Reading a Letter by Chalon (Wikimedia Commons)

As I pulled down my memory box from the shelf to put a couple of things away to remember Gabriel (one of our children resting in Heaven), I decided to go through it while sitting with my husband and two daughters.

Homemade Mother's Day gifts...jewelry boxes and crosses made from popsicle sticks, bubble gum machine rings, handmade picture frames, a pillow with "Mother" on it...

...all the cards my children have given me since they were born...19 years worth...construction paper cards with innocent scribblings and sentiments of love, cards made on the computer or bought at the store, notes of appreciation from struggling teens...

...the many cards my husband made or gave me since we started dating...he chuckles as he looks over them and says "Did I really write that?"...


Continue reading at Theresa's blog my desert heart.

Our home: A flexible tabernacle

By Melanie Jean Juneau

A Happy Family by Eugenio Eduardo Zampighi

My husband and I discovered how to build relationships with our children and encourage their relationship to God  through a combination of the grace of God, parental intuition and perhaps a dash of sheer luck.

In order to nurture authentic Catholic family life, we learned that we had to first nurture our own intimacy with God. When parents are in communion with the Trinity (who are the first community), our children are also drawn into a spiritual relationship with their parents and in turn with God as well. A blessed home, dedicated to God, could actually be called a tabernacle because it is filled with a tangible Presence of God. 

When we give God permission to be Lord of our lives, our children and our family life, then the Holy Spirit is in the very air we breathe.

The image God gave me of Christian family was a triangle of light with strong bars of light flowing from the heart of the mother and father at the base  and up to God at the top of the pinnacle, with the children protected in the middle of the triangle. The light of God’s love filled the triangle protecting and nurturing the children. This is a vision of family as a community, submersed in the community of the Trinity.

Continue reading at Melanie's blog joy of nine9.

Finding our supernatural home

 By David Torkington

The Triumph of Religion by Overbeck (Wikimedia Commons)

As a  person tries to observe the  new commandments by making acts of love through all they say and do, they are  gradually able to rise step by step towards journey’s end. Their progress is made possible, because it is made in, with, and through Christ who claimed to be the vital living embodiment of Jacob’s mystical ladder (John1:51). He is The Way, The Truth, and The Life (Jn 14:6). He is  the way to our destination, the Truth who both reveals and  embodies that destination, and the eternal life that constitutes that destination.

The journey stretches from here to eternity where the traveler finally enters into  a profound and ongoing Holy Communion with the One who dwells in the eternal ecstatic joy, that flows from the  mystical  vortex of loving that constitutes God’s very being. Faith in what is to come, is fortified by hope that is derived from the tangible experience of the  love enjoyed  in the profound intimate Holy Communion, that has already begun here and now. These gifts are given as  the new commandments are put into practice day by day:-

No More Homeless, No More  Orphans!

 That is why Jesus promised that we would not be left orphans, because through the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son would make their home within us here and now:-

I will not leave you orphans I will come back to you. (Jn 14 :18)  

“If anyone loves me he will keep my commandments and my Father will love him and we shall come to him and make our home within him.”(John 14:23-24)

Read the rest at David's blog David Torkington.

Praying the our Father: Thanksgiving

By David Torkington

Jacob's Ladder in the Via Latina Catacombs (Wikimedia Commons).

My earliest and happiest memories  are of going to visit my grandfather. It wasn’t because he played games with me, gave me  my favourite chocolate or even money to buy myself an ice cream on the way home, it was just because I  loved him. He  was such a lovable kindly man  that it was more than enough just to be with him and feel myself enveloped by his  love. This was before I even went to prep school. By the time I did he was dead  ‘though by today’s standards he was still a young man barely old enough to  draw his pension.

However he left me a legacy of love in his eldest daughter who was my mother.  She was the most loving mother one could wish for, who in spite of the dyslexia that blighted my early life enabled me to grow up with confidence and imbued with a security that only love can give.

I can still see  my grandfather in my imagination with a mop of  white hair and a moustache to match. I saw him over a year ago in my bathroom looking at me through the mirror. I was just raising my hand to shave the soap suds from under my nose that had left me with a white moustache and there he was looking back at me. I had never thought I looked like him before, never given it a second thought, but there he was looking back at me.  It  was undoubtedly him. The only trouble was the face that looked back at me wasn’t the kindly loving face that I remembered with such love, would that it were.


Continue reading at David's blog David Torkington.

Sacrificed on the altar of success

By Melanie Jean Juneau

 

14th century depiction of the Holy family and the Presentation

Have you  sacrificed all on the altar of success?

Since preschool, society has pushed you to excel, to rise above your peers.  You were groomed for success, to get into the best universities and snatch the most prized careers. Well, it is nice to have confidence, to fulfill your dreams, and have a sense of satisfaction in your chosen field of work but that will not make you happy. Just take a look at the generations that have gone before you.  The all too common mid-life crisis is a testament to the failure of a life focused on career advancement to the exclusion of family. Men and women bemoan the fact that they did not have time for nurturing and loving their spouse or children.

All too often, family life crumbles to ashes, sacrificed on the altar of success.

As for childcare, society relegates this arrangement to women who are often treated as second class citizens. I want to yell out as loudly as I can that raising children is definitely not a default chore for women who were not successful in the world of business, power and wealth. Exactly how you, the next generation, love and form your children will directly influence the kind of society that they in turn create.

Continue reading at Melanie's blog  Joy of Nine9.

In praise of family life

By Michael Incorvia

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The activities of family life can be overwhelming.   Man was created not to be overwhelmed by family life, but to be overwhelmed by God’s love and to embrace family life in union with God.

God instituted the family as a domestic church to reflect his covenantal relationship, to be co-creative with him, and to drawn all to him.  These are the critical aspects of family life.

To the domestic church God bequeathed, through the marital union, the ability to be co-creative in union with him and bring new life into the world.  To shun this co-reactive aspect of the marital union is to shun God, his creation, and his love for mankind.  The covenantal relationship of the marital union makes no sense if the co-creative aspect of the marital union is absent.


Continue reading at Micheal's blog To Love and Truth.

The prompt-me prayer

by Monica McConkey

Morning Prayer by Ebenezer Newman Downard (photo in public domain)

I have written about Br. Lawrence's Practice of the Presence of God before. I think it's a simple yet profound way to deepen our relationship with Jesus, do small things with great love like St. Therese and to grow in virtue while we live out our Faith more consciously. I know I'd like to carry out my vocation as Mom... graciously, with more patience and love, but I inevitably become unraveled, and caught up in my often self-inflicted pressures of family life.

The tasks set out for me in my vocation as a Mom, if carried out with love, are supposed to catapult me to holiness!  This is the Mom's School of Holiness. I'm not sure where I have read this, but my friend Fr. Roger tells me this all the time.

I get flustered by the needs and demands of my family and the general chaos can be overwhelming.  I'd like to carry out all my tasks prayerfully...with grace and patience and gentleness, but I know...and I know my kids would agree.... I just can't pull that off.  Even if I could get it all done.... grace and patience and gentleness slip away pretty fast!

Cooking, cleaning, training, managing, driving, shopping and never-ending laundry can be tedious, thankless and frustrating.

I've had a problem with practicing the Presence of God, ever since I read my doggy-eared paperback discovered at a used book store...almost 20 years ago. And back then, I wasn't even a Mom yet!

I usually forget the most important part of practicing the Presence of God: prayer. I do pray...but Brother Lawrence prayed continuously while he went about his simple duties. He was in constant conversation with God! I know I need to ask for help from my husband AND my kids before I enter the realm of I'll-just-resentfully-do-it-myself...but the MOST important help I need to request...is from Jesus and His Mother Mary. Mary knows how to get it all done...connected constantly to her Son.


Finish reading at Monica's blog  I blog Jesus.