Our Catholic Faith should be the center and the foundation of all that we do. Invisible or external, it needs to penetrate what we do each day with our families….
by Emerson Hynes St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota
+J. H. Schlarman Bishop of Peoria President NCRLC
Sacramental Protection of the Family
(Notes from a talk by Emerson Hynes to the Rural Life Summer School, St. Bede College, June 25, 1945.)
We need instruction because we Americans came to this country in a violent way. Most of the home ties were broken. We came to a strange land where there were no traditions of Catholicity. We left home and village and nation where traditions may have been strong, but in this new land all was new.
Some of the nationalities, of course, settled as units and thus some of the traditions were transplanted. But often they died with the first or second generation. Thus we find our country in many ways barren of the solid religious spirit and practices that characterize the homes of our ancestors in Europe.
Those traditions have to be rebuilt. We are often simply ignorant of how to make our home a place worthy of a religious vocation. We know how to wash floors and operate vacuum cleaners and electric stoves, but we do not know how to sanctify our baking, our meals, our action.
We need confidence because the traditions have been lost. We Catholics without embarrassment walk into church, attend Mass, and abstain from meat on Friday. But in the intimacy of our own homes we are often self-conscious about the countless practices, symbols, and words which are needed to make our homes fitting places for a continuous sacrament.
You may know of many exceptions, but as a general rule, and increasingly as the rest of the nation becomes more secular and as the radio competes, religious life within the family itself becomes more foreign.
So we need much instruction and much bolstering. The instruction cannot be merely by sermon and handing out pamphlets. The priest must enter the very homes themselves and instruct.
The mothers, in their guilds or societies, must be instructed and encouraged to start a few of the practices. The children in school must come to accept it as ordinary practice of the Catholic family.
Blessings by the father before meals and thanksgiving afterwards, the family rosary, the crucifix on the wall and a picture of the Sacred Heart: these are starting points, but they are not enough. There is a wealth of possibilities over and beyond.
Then there are the blessings for the home: for the house, the barn, the parental bedroom, and others. The priest, for example, might perform these blessings as he is taking the census.
It is scarcely necessary to add what advantage the rural pastor has in building family life. For the rural family still has the unity and the privacy and the authority. The chief need is instruction.
The urban pastor has far greater obstacles. He is dealing with families where the whole family is rarely together, once the children start to school, and where the father is away from home much of the day. He is dealing with family life that goes on under ceaseless environmental difficulties and distractions, and where the competition of the secular attractions is almost insurmountable.
We can place his work in the power of the Holy Spirit and practice the supernatural virtue of hope.
Sacred Heart, Immaculate Heart…
Symbols to Stitch ~ Mary Reed Newland
For feasts such as Corpus Christi, the Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and others, we have a project that is easy, practical, and lots of fun, and provides us with a meditation on the lessons of the feast.
On brightly colored construction paper chosen to go with the feast, we lightly sketch one of the appropriate symbols (Sacred Heart, Chalice and Host, Immaculate Heart with M, and so forth).
Placing the paper on the couch or a hard pillow, we punch holes with a large nail every inch or inch and one-half around the outlines. With a large-eyed needle, the children outline line the symbols with colored yarns in a sewing stitch (much as mothers have done with “sewing on cards”sets when they were little).
The result is a bright banner for the wall or the center of the table on a feast day. Stephen has done them (very well, too), and he is only five; so it is a project the little ones will enjoy.
It takes no time at all to assemble, and is a quiet, neat project- ideal for small apartments, crowded rooms, or “company times.”
The saints, our Lord, and our Lady are our teachers, and they teach us in many delightful and beautiful ways. We should invite them into our homes every day of the year, joining our prayers to theirs, asking them to pray with us, now and then (when we have the time) creating a happy custom with which to celebrate their feasts.
We are not without calculation in this matter. We look for profit and gain. A man is known by the company he keeps.
“There is also the question of time. Where do we find the time to participate in the Church’s liturgical year with our children? Like these other questions, the answer is, we can find it if we plan for it. We can find it quite easily by looking to see where we waste it.
Not wasting it is not easy, because the habits of time-wasting, although they are harmless, are hard to break – as I know from experience.
Mothers have this struggle all to themselves. It involves such things as the radio (now internet) habit, coffee breaks, long telephone conversations, chatting with neighbors, a heavy involvement in outside activities.
Somewhere most American women CAN “find time” to devote to the enriching of their families’ spiritual life. The joyous discovery is that once we have struggled and found the time, tasted and seen how sweet are these pursuits together, we begin to gauge all our doings so that there will be time – because we are convinced there must be.” -Mary Reed Newland
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Why do we wear our best clothes on Sunday? What was the Holy Ghost Hole in medieval churches? How did a Belgian nun originate the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament? Where did the Halloween mask and the jack-o’-lantern come from?
Learn the answer to these questions, as well as the history behind our traditional celebration of Thanksgiving, in this gem of a book by Father Weiser.
For over half a century, Catholic families have treasured the practical piety and homespun wisdom of Mary Reed Newland’s classic of domestic spirituality, The Year and Our Children. With this new edition, no longer will you have to search for worn, dusty copies to enjoy Newland’s faithful insights, gentle lessons, and delightful stories. They’re all here, and ready to be shared with your family or homeschooling group. Here, too, you ll find all the prayers, crafts, family activities, litanies, and recipes that will help make your children ever-mindful of the beautiful rhythm of the Church calendar.
The Following are Wonderful Words of Wisdom on the Virtue of Humility taken from
Celebrating Pentecost ~ Mary Reed Newland, 
