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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Catholic Motherhood | Confession | Life Lessons | Sacrament of Reconciliation
"I hate you. I hate you!” my daughter screams from behind her door. Her words cut me, but this is hardly the first tantrum that we’ve weathered. I stand outside, deaf to the sound of kicks and screams. They used to break me inside; familiarity has numbed their sting. “Let. Me. Out!” She punctuates every word with a pound of her fist against the door. This is her mantra, her fit of rage. I listen, but I don’t respond. In her anger, she has forgotten the truth: I am waiting for her outside. The door isn’t locked. If she chose, she could walk back into my arms at any time. Instead, my prodigal daughter sits and stews in the fumes of her own fury. Justice, Mercy, and Fear This is where I vacillate as a parent. I waver between wanting to toe the hard line of justice and wanting to embrace her with arms of mercy. I want her to learn her lesson, to have the discipline to calm down and sort through her feelings and transgressions in a productive way. I want her to seek reconciliation. At the same time, I feel for her. I know the paralysis of the fear of rejection, even as an adult woman. I want to reach in, salve her pain, and help her breathe again.
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catholic family life | catholic parenting | children at Mass
As Catholic mothers, we have a great responsibility to raise our children in the faith and to help them grow closer to God. One of the most important ways we can do this is by taking them to Mass every Sunday, even when it seems pointless or difficult. Do you feel discouraged or frustrated by the challenging of bringing children to Mass?
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Daily Family Prayer | Rosary with kids | how to pray the rosary
Neither my husband nor I grew up Catholic, so we are sort of making up this Domestic Church thing as we go. Of course, we have great witnesses of Catholic family life that we can look to for examples, but not having lived it ourselves as children, sometimes imagining what that means just isn’t on our radar. One of these areas is family prayer. We both knew we wanted that to be an integral part of our children’s memories of growing up, an indispensable aspect of our family culture. But what does it look like? How do we start? Most importantly, how do we make it something joyful, something that draws our children’s hearts to Jesus rather than something they hem and haw about?
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