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Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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 | 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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Brief and contemporary inspiration focused on hope and family prayer will be delivered to your inbox! Articles include live video, written word, and links to resources that will lead you and your family deeper into faith.
Daily Family Prayer | Family Activities | reading the Bible
Nicole Berlucchi shares about ways to help your children engage with Scripture this Lent (or anytime). Over the last few years, I’ve become very intentional about Scripture with my kids. I don’t want the only time they are reading Scripture to be at Sunday Mass, because we all know, even the best of us, how easy it can be to zone out or be distracted during Mass when your mind is full of things. Lent is a great time to have your children spend a little more time in Scripture as a “something to do” in Lent rather than “something to give up.” Here are some tips I’ve found useful as I’ve explored Scripture with my children.
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Ave Maria Press | Family Activities | Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary | how to pray the rosary
Ivonne J. Hernandez recaps her own experience of using the new book, The Family That Prays Together Stays Together, to pray the Rosary. Father Willy Raymond, C.S.C., in his book, The Family That Prays Together Stays Together, encourages us to pray the Rosary a little bit at a time. As we stretch those muscles and create new habits, he invites us to pray a decade a night. The goal of this book is to help you establish a habit of daily prayer rooted in devotion to our Blessed Mother. To that end, each day’s prayerful reflection is built around the rhythm of the Rosary. I could immediately appreciate how this would be a gift to families with young children. To be introduced to this magnificent prayer in small bites, allowing the grace to flow as the roots deepen in their little hearts. Habits of virtue to last a lifetime. What surprised me was how praying with the Sorrowful Mysteries for a week with this little book impacted my prayer life.
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Christmas Season | Family Activities | Nativity
Michelle Nott reflects on how we can still find joy at Christmas despite the chaos. I am sure we can all agree that the weeks leading up to Christmas and even the weeks after Christmas are a busy time of year. The holidays can bring lots of emotions and make you feel lots of pressure to get things done and to do them the right way. I am guilty of this, but I am trying to learn to let go of things this year, as we are missing a core part of our family this season. In the past, I have held high expectations for myself to get Christmas cards mailed, shopping done, baking done, help with class parties, and still manage to teach the kids about the true meaning of Christmas.
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Christmas Season | Family Activities
Rosemary Bogdan imagines what those last few days before the birth of Jesus might have been like. Bethlehem rejoices, as the hymn goes. Might it not be rejoicing already as we come so close to Jesus’ birth? All of creation is awaiting the arrival of the God-man. Surely there is a strange anticipation in the air. Everyone coming to Bethlehem was journeying because they were of the House of David. David’s Line and the Birth of the Savior Perhaps most of them knew that the Messiah would come from David’s line and that He would be born in Bethlehem. How many, inspired by the Holy Spirit, may have been thinking that of all the bustle in the city, perhaps a pregnant woman would come to give birth to the Messiah at that very time?
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