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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Parenting | children at Mass | family life
I’ve been a Roman Catholic my whole life, and at one point, I absorbed the idea that during Mass, the congregation must be as still as possible—and that moving around would distract all the people nearby. I took this idea to an obsessive extreme, and even worried about exiting and entering the pew at the exact moments when I would be least distracting to others. I was hyper-aware of myself, and worried that if I moved an inch, I’d be completely destroying someone else’s prayer experience.
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Catholic Motherhood | St. Therese | family life
Like so many other women and mothers, I’ve been deeply inspired by St. Thérèse’s Little Way, a posture of approaching daily life in a way that imbues ordinary tasks with deep love. St. Thérèse’s influence has become a model for so many women—both those who work outside the home and those who focus full time on homemaking—on faithful dedication to the day’s tasks, no matter how grand or how modest.
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Pizza night is sacred in our house. Pizza night is our Friday-night ritual. We gather together after the week—setting aside preoccupations such as my seemingly never-ending rotation of chore lists and my 5-year-old’s concern that his brother will surreptitiously demolish his newly constructed Duplo bridge. My husband will silence his phone. I will make a salad from whatever veggies are lying around. My mom will arrive bearing home baked goodies. We will eat pizza delivered from our favorite local restaurant.
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celebrating Christmas | family life
Every year I find myself with an internal conflict over the celebration and preparation of Christmas. There seems to be this pressure to create the “perfect holiday season” and society certainly plays into this. The day after Thanksgiving my kids are eager to pull out all the Advent and Christmas decorations to bedazzle our home in colors of red and green, so we don’t wait till the last minute. The HOA urges the neighbors to compete in holiday light shows, while department store ads encourage the more decorated your homes and the more presents under the tree, will make you the most accomplished at pulling off the perfect season.
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corporal works of mercy | family life
To love our neighbor, means to open our hearts to all people, including the hungry, thirsty, homeless, truly anyone is need. I’m afraid that, for much of my life, I didn’t love them very much. Of course, I’d pray for them, but I had little direct interaction with those living in poverty.
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children at Mass | family life
Megan Cottam encourages families of young children to focus on the joys and the building of faith-filled memories, even with the squirmiest of kids, while celebrating Mass together.
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