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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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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Advent | Catholic traditions | family life
When my children were younger, we painted seven letters purple and then sprayed glitter paint over the top. The seven purple letters are hung every Advent, reminding us to prepare our hearts for Christmas. Now, as I sit early in the morning by a Christmas tree lit with the promise of a season of hope, I am prayerfully going deeper into what it truly means to prepare. Advent is a time of such busyness: a whirlwind of shopping, decorating, and hospitality added to the everyday responsibilities that the peace that calls to us can be hard to pause for. But what if we did? What does that look like—that pause? For me, it can mean closing my laptop and sitting with the Lord. Peaceful Christmas music playing softly in the background, I hear Him calling and from my couch, snuggled with a sleeping child, white lights twinkling from that tree, I pause. We walk heart in heart, Jesus and I, perhaps down memory lane, talking through all the thoughts swirling around in my head and heart, and he shows me all the ways He has loved me through the Christmases.
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Advent | Advent calendar | Catholic Family Fun | family life
As we approach the joyous season of Advent, it’s a time for us to prepare our hearts and homes for the coming of Christ. Advent is a season of anticipation, hope, and joy, with many ways we can immerse ourselves in the true reason for the season. This year, Catholic Mom and Family Rosary are excited to introduce several engaging activities to help you and your family make the most of this sacred time, including the SnapAdvent Instagram Photo Challenge, our new interactive Advent Calendar (with three ways to use it), an Advent Playlist on Spotify, and a collection of inspiring eBooks.
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Parenting | family life | prayer
What subjects does your school of love do well, and where can your school of love improve? “The family is a school of love,” Saint John Paul II once said. I wish I had seen this phrase early enough to have taped it to my fridge when our five young adult children were little. It might have empowered me to see more clearly the sublime dignity in my role as a mother in the most intense hands-on years. As I meditate on this phrase now, and on the section of The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) where the virtues of the family are laid out, it’s clear my chances have not vanished entirely: not in my role as a mother nor as a daughter. Not yet, anyway.
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Assumption | Blessed Virgin Mary | Catholic Faith | family life
On August 15 each year, we celebrate the glorious Feast of the Assumption of Mary, our Holy Mother, into heaven. This solemnity reminds us of Mary’s unique role in salvation history and her deep relationship with God. As we reflect on her life and her Assumption, I would like to focus on three qualities of Mary that we can all strive to embody in our own lives: humble, hungry, and smart.
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Catholic Family Fun | family life | family prayer
Now that the long, slower days of summer are finally here, they bring with them the invitation to slow down a little. Hopefully, the lengthy twilights and break from school brings a sense of less urgency and more playtime to your home. Of course, the flip side of no school and more flexibility can also mean that the house seems to perpetually be half a step away from descending into complete chaos. When my kids were growing up, summer meant sleeping in and a lot of time for bedtime stories. On the other hand, it was also the season when one or another of my boys would get mad and inform us he was going to run away and we’d be sorry! So summer brings both sides of the coin. (By the way, they only ran away to the stop sign a block away. I would wander over a while later with some snacks in case they had run out of food. They usually had. One time, their dad dropped off a pillow, so they “would sleep better.” They all eventually decided home wasn’t so bad after all.) That is the great thing about summer: there’s even time for some mini-adventures.
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