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Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Catholic Family Fun | Easter season | Living the Faith
Laura Vazquez Santos explores how the Church’s fifty-day Easter season invites mothers to move from celebration to formation. Every year, I enter the Triduum with holy ambition. I imagine dim lights, whispered prayers, and children gazing reverently at a crucifix. What I usually get is my 6-year-old asking for crackers every 5 minutes during the Gospel at Mass or my preschooler sword-fighting with last year’s blessed palm. I admit that getting through the Easter season can be both logistically challenging and spiritually testing. In years past, and especially after my reversion to the Faith, I placed unrealistic pressure on myself as a mother to get everything right each Easter, as I feared my children would be more enticed by the Easter Bunny than by the amazing reality of the Resurrection.
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Easter season | Learn more about our faith
I would like to invite us to briefly reflect on the First Reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles. There is a question in there that was directed at the Apostles, but it is also directed at each of us as followers of Jesus. “By what power or by what name have you done this?” Or as they say in politics, “Who paid you for this?” In the text we have today, there is a tension between the apostles Peter and John, on the one hand, and the religious leaders, on the other. After the resurrection, the apostles were went about healing the sick and preaching and they were arrested by the authorities.
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Catholic Faith | Easter season | Family Activities | easter
Laura Vazquez Santos explores how the Church’s fifty-day Easter season invites mothers to move from celebration to formation. Every year, I enter the Triduum with holy ambition. I imagine dim lights, whispered prayers, and children gazing reverently at a crucifix. What I usually get is my 6-year-old asking for crackers every 5 minutes during the Gospel at Mass or my preschooler sword-fighting with last year’s blessed palm. I admit that getting through the Easter season can be both logistically challenging and spiritually testing. In years past, and especially after my reversion to the Faith, I placed an unrealistic pressure on myself as a mother to get everything right each Easter, especially as I feared my children would be more enticed by the celebration of the Easter Bunny than by the amazing reality that is the Resurrection.
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Easter season | Holy Saturday | Holy Week | family entertainment
Gabby and Nick walk us through the Catholic perspective of what it means to be saved. Salvation and Redemption Have you heard someone ask you? Are you saved? Have you been saved? Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? How do we approach this question and the idea of salvation in general? Join Catholic Central hosts Gabby and Nick as they walk us through the Catholic perspective on what it means to be saved. Watch the Salvation and Redemption episode here:
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Easter season | Family Activities | Holy Week | Triduum
Do you attend the Triduum liturgies with your family? We've gathered up some tips and encouragement from past years to help you and your children get the most out of these holy days. Triduum Memories "Let us stand." ... "Let us kneel." I have vivid memories of the first time I attended a Good Friday liturgy. It was held during the day, so Dad was probably working, and we kids attended with Mom and two of our great-aunts. To top it off, we were attending at our great-aunts' parish, not ours, so it was an unfamiliar church. Between the completely different ritual of the Good Friday liturgy as opposed to a regular Sunday Mass and the new surroundings and music, I remember being very confused. I certainly didn't understand the custom of venerating the cross.
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Easter season | catholic devotions | family life
Once Lent ends, it signals for most Catholics that they can resume doing whatever they gave up. It’s like an exhale of relief that it’s over. If your Lenten experience didn’t transform you, you can still experience a closer connection to Christ during Eastertide, the season of the Resurrection. While Lent was focused on sacrifice, as Jesus sacrificed His life for us to have everlasting life, Eastertide is 50 days of celebrating the glory of the Resurrection. Jesus appeared to his disciples for 40 days before His Ascension to Heaven. Then the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost, empowering them to share the Gospel and signaling the beginning of Christianity. As believers and followers of Christ, we are also empowered to model and share the message of our Lord Jesus as His disciples.
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