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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Celebrations | Family Time | Thanksgiving | prayer
Do you want to trade in the cultural stressed-out, food frenzy and instead experience Thanksgiving (and the surrounding days) as God intended? If so, I invite you to try out the two steps I use to create a simple yet celebratory Thanksgiving! Below, I’ve outlined my own Thanksgiving plan (which includes a three-day stay at my parents' home with my husband and two teenage sons) that you can use to create the kind of holiday you actually look forward to.
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Thanksgiving | The Sacraments | catholic family life | family prayer
My elementary and preschool-aged children have enjoyed making a construction paper chain full of things we are thankful for this month as we approach Thanksgiving. We have discussed the pilgrims and Native Americans in our homeschool lessons, and they look forward to traveling to visit relatives later this week. It's fun to cultivate holiday traditions with young children and to teach them to count their blessings at Thanksgiving. But how do we teach them gratitude beyond Thanksgiving day? How do we shape their hearts to cultivate gratitude for what they have when the stores are bursting with Christmas gifts they think they "need"? Here are four ways to help your families make thankfulness a habit when the pumpkin pie is long gone! When you're finished reading, we'd love to hear some of your own ideas in the comments!
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Catholic Family Fun | family prayer | pray the rosary
Getting kids to sit down and recite a whole Rosary is not always met with cheers and delight, as much as I wish that were the case. If I am telling the truth, I am sometimes met with groans and eye rolls alike. But when you lay out a donut Rosary, suddenly your kids are rallying to lead more prayers than their siblings. There’s nothing complex about the Donut Rosary. The cross can be a construction paper cutout, or you can make a cross with donut holes. The Our Father and Glory Be prayers should be regular-sized donuts — whoever leads the longer prayers and Scripture verse for the Mystery gets a “big donut.” The Hail Marys should be donut holes — make a decade one flavor or mix them up. After you say your prayer or prayers, you get to eat the donut(s). You will be amazed at the complaints about how unfair it was that Sister 1 got to lead more prayers than Sister 2 —haha!
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Learn more about our faith | Why pray?
Birds are generally nice to look at. Whether they are flying or perched on a branch, most birds look beautiful. Except one species – the vulture. These scavengers, with their scruffy, hunched appearance and their diet of decay, seem to embody darkness and death. Vultures don’t hunt; they gather where there is death.
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Who doesn’t like fireworks? Seeing those lights shooting through the dark sky, exploding into a multi-colored ball of gigantic sparks, is always fascinating. It seems that many Christians would like Christianity to be as full of surprises and as entertaining as a fireworks show. Many people desire dramatic events to occur in order to raise awareness about developments in the Christian community. However, it often seems as though not much is happening—at least nothing that would make headlines in newspapers. This leaves people asking in dismay, "Why not?"
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Learn more about our faith | Why pray?
Psalm 23 is one of the most well-known, even to people with limited knowledge of scripture. It is a beautiful and encouraging song of faith and hope in God's role as shepherd of our lives. When I was in my final year of seminary, there were a lot of last-minute details to take care of, and one that had escaped me was to create a small ordination prayer card. Some of my classmates probably had theirs done at the beginning of the year, but there I was about two weeks before ordination, looking for an image of Jesus and a suitable scriptural verse.
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