“Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God and His justice: and all these things shall be added unto you.”
With these words Our Lord concluded His discourse on the Providence of God. A consoling conclusion, to which is attached a conditional promise, the fulfilment of which depends upon ourselves.
The Lord will occupy Himself all the more with our interests when we concern ourselves with His interests. Let us pause here to meditate on the words of our Divine Master.
A question immediately presents itself: Where is the Kingdom of God which we must seek before all things?
“Within you,” the Gospel answers. “Regnum Dei intra vos est.”
To seek the Kingdom of God, therefore, is to erect a throne for God within our souls; it is to submit ourselves wholly to His supreme authority. Let us keep all our faculties under the merciful sceptre of the Most High.
Let our intelligence ever remember His constant Presence; let our will be conformed in all things to His adorable will; let us lift up our hearts frequently to Him by acts of ardent and sincere charity.
Thus we shall practice that “justice” which, in the language of the Scriptures, signifies the perfection of the interior life.
In this way we shall follow to the letter Our Lord’s counsel: we shall seek the Kingdom “and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Here we have a kind of bilateral contract: On our part we must work for the glory of our heavenly Father; on His part, the Father commits Himself to provide for our necessities.
“Cast thy care upon the Lord.”
Fulfill the contract which He proposes to you. He will keep His word. He will watch over you, and “He shall sustain thee.”
“Think of Me,” said Our Lord to St. Catherine of Sienna, “and I will think of thee.”
And centuries later, in the convent of Paray-le-Monial, He promised St. Margaret Mary that to those who were particularly devoted to His Sacred Heart, He would grant success in their undertakings.
Happy the Christian who acts according to this maxim of the Gospel. He seeks God, and God takes his affairs into His omnipotent Hands; and what can be lacking to him?
“The Lord ruleth me and I shall want nothing.”
Practice the solid interior virtues, and thus avoid the disorders, the sins and the vices which are the most common causes of failure and ruin.
Praying for Our Temporal Necessities
Confidence, such as we have described, does not dispense us from the obligation of prayer. In all our temporal necessities, it is not enough to expect help from God; we must also ask Him to grant it to us.
Jesus Christ has left us in the Our Father a perfect model of prayer. Therein He makes us ask for our “daily bread”:
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
Do we not often neglect this great duty? What imprudence and what folly! By our carelessness, we thus deprive ourselves of the divine protection that alone is supremely efficacious.
The Capuchins, the legend says, never die of hunger because they always say the Our Father devoutly. Let us imitate them, and the Most High will never leave us lacking in the necessities of life. Let us ask, then, for our daily bread. It is a duty to ourselves imposed on us by faith and charity.
Can we increase our claims, however, and ask for riches? There is nothing to prevent our doing so, provided that our prayer is inspired by supernatural motives, and that we remain fully submissive to the will of God.
The Lord does not forbid us to express to Him our desires; on the contrary, He would have us act as children with their father. However, let us not expect that He will gratify all our fancies; His goodness prevents Him from doing this.
He knows what is good for us. He will not grant us earthly riches unless they will serve for our sanctification.
Let us, then, abandon ourselves completely to the guidance of Divine Providence, and repeat the prayer of the wise man: “Remove far from me vanity and lying words. Give me neither beggary nor riches; give me only the necessaries of life. Lest perhaps being filled, I should be tempted to deny and say: ‘Who is the Lord?’ or being compelled by poverty, I should steal, and forswear the name of my God.”
Never weary in cheering your family with your smile. It is not enough to avoid depressing them; you must brighten them up and let their spirits expand. Be especially vigilant when the little ones are around. Give them the alms of a smile, hard though it be at times. What a pity when children have to say, “I don’t like it at home.” – Christ in the Home, Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J.
Visit My Book List for some great reading suggestions!
These are great and momentous days for the young people! It is up to us to instill in their hearts just how great they are!
First Confession is practiced and sins are talked about. And when the great day arrives, and the sins are washed from the soul of the little person, we celebrate by letting them choose any ice cream on the menu at our local restaurant….hot fudge sundae, banana split… it doesn’t matter. It is a great day!
First Communion should be approached as the best day of your children’s lives! Because it is! Much studying is done to know all the Catechism questions before being quizzed by Father. Much to-do is made getting the prettiest dress for the little girl and the crisp and dapper suit for the little boy.
And when the great day comes….Mom and Dad, brothers, sisters, Grandpa, Grandma, cousins and friends are present as Our Lord Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is consumed for the first time by our little loved one!
And then…we feast!
Zaelie is ready!
Last-minute photo with Mom!
Juliette is ready, too!
They are both very excited!
After the First Communion Mass, Father explains to the children about the Brown Scapular before they are enrolled.
They receive the Brown Scapular! What a grace-filled day!
Group Photo!
Grandma congratulates Juliette. Annie gets in on it! 🙂
Gin and Juliette
Confirmation is made special by the studying and the feasting, too! The young men and women must know what it means to have the Holy Spirit come to them in this special way. They are now soldiers of Jesus Christ! It is no little thing!
Then there is first Confession. To turn such a day into a “holy day,” we parents should prepare ourselves for it by special study and much prayer in order to be able to give the child an even deeper understanding of what he is going to do when he kneels down and confesses—not to Father So-and-So, but to God Himself—all the wrongs that cloud his young conscience.
When he is going to hear for the first time the momentous words, “Your sins are forgiven!” we help him realize with chalk and blackboard what will happen to him. We write down a list of sins such as a child may commit, and then we take a wet cloth and erase them completely and ask the child, “Can you still read what was there? Just like this, God will erase your sins from His memory. He will forgive them completely.”
We cannot do enough to impress the young soul with the tremendous happening at the moment of the Ego to absolve (I absolve you). Of course, the child should remember the day of his First Confession and always later celebrate this anniversary as a private feast day just between himself and God.
FIRST HOLY COMMUNION
Then comes the great day when the young soul is for the first time invited to the heavenly banquet—the day of the first Holy Communion. It is a pity that this sacred day so often degenerates into a show, the child being showered with gifts and distracted with amusements, so that this solemn, holy feast turns into a day of much outward excitement.
Again, there is much that we Christian parents have to learn to do better. The preparation for this day, the first Holy Communion of our children, should be a holy rite and duty for every mother.
We can learn from the family of St. Therese of Lisieux how the older sisters saw to it that the younger ones were prepared sufficiently for their great day.
Of course, the whole family should join the child at the Communion Mass, everybody wearing his Sunday best. Not only the table, but the house or apartment should be decorated.
For the rest of his life, the child will remember this day. Instead of many worthless trinkets, one might buy a beautiful medal or a little cross for the child to wear, or a picture for his room, a reproduction of the old masters, or a beautiful statue.
These are formative years, and it is our privilege to school the taste of our children, directing them away from the sweetish, coy plaster art, toward genuine art.
CONFIRMATION
Another great day is the day of Confirmation, the spiritual coming of age of the young Christian. Much could we learn here from the Orthodox Jewish families and their way of celebrating the Bar-Mitzvah on the boy’s thirteenth birthday, when he becomes of age before the law.
The coming of the Holy Spirit, the sacrament of Holy Ordination for us laypeople, cannot receive enough attention. It is a great joy to help the child prepare for this, his very own, Pentecost.
With him we study the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit; we read together such books as Father Grandmaison’s We and the Holy Spirit or the chapters pertaining to the Holy Spirit in The Spiritual Life by Adolphe Tanquerey; unforgettable hours are thus spent, in which we accompany our sons and daughters on their road to spiritual maturity.
We have always tried to mark the day of Confirmation by a gift or an event that stresses the new status of the child as a person capable of independence and responsibility; for instance, by giving him a desk of his own, or, if possible, a room of his own. (It is a custom to give a watch on Confirmation Day, to remind the young Christian that from now on he is responsible for the use of his time.)
These are the commanding high points in the lives of the young, and I feel that one can never do enough to make them into memorable events, keeping them alive in the memory of our children by celebrating the anniversaries of these days.
Children who have experienced the joy of being feasted will want to reciprocate. All the love and attention that is showered on them they will try to return just as lovingly and gratefully as their young hearts prompt them to do.
“The objection that a child should wait until he can understand what he’s doing when he receives Holy Communion is no objection at all. He understands as well at seven as at seventy. The Holy Eucharist is a mystery as profound and unfathomable as the Trinity. One does not understand how Christ can assume the form of bread and wine. One believes.” -Mary Reed Newland, How to Raise Good Catholic Children
One of the powerful weapons in spiritual combat is the St. Benedict medal. Used for centuries, this medal has been associated with many miracles, as well as with powers of exorcism.
St. Benedict medals are used in many ways, but always as a protection against evil. Some people bury them in the foundations of new buildings to keep them free from evil influences, while others attach them to rosaries or hang them on the wall in their homes. But the most common way to use the St. Benedict medal is to wear it. The medal can be worn by itself or embedded in a crucifix.
Regardless of how it is used, the medal should always be blessed with the special St. Benedict blessing. While, in former times, only Benedictines could bless the medal, now any priest can.
To the modern mind, the concept of poverty is often confused with destitution. But destitution emphatically is not the Gospel ideal. A love-filled sharing frugality is the message, and Happy Are You Poor explains the meaning of this beatitude lived and taught by Jesus himself. But isn’t simplicity in lifestyle meant only for nuns and priests? Are not all of us to enjoy the goodness and beauties of our magnificent creation? Are parents to be frugal with the children they love so much?
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.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
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
Doilies by Rosie!
These are beautiful, lacy, handmade doilies made with size 10 crochet cotton. They have been blocked and starched and are ready to decorate and accent your home decor. “The quality & workmanship of this crocheted doily is suburb! And the beauty even more so–I am so happy to be able to purchase a handmade doily just as lovely as my grandma used to make…” Available here.
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.
Celebrate the Faith with your kids all year round!
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.This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
“If you suffer with Him, you will reign with Him. If you cry with Him, you will have joy with Him. If you die with Him on the Cross of tribulation, you will possess the eternal dwelling place in the splendor of the saints. And your name, written in the Book of Life, will be glorious among men.”
St. Clare of Assisi
Words cannot describe the excitement and emotion we felt on the news of Sister Wilhelmina’s exhumation and apparent incorruption!
We were told while attending a Baptism at our parish in Maple Hill, KS ~ a mere 2 hour jaunt from the convent…and many of us were overcome with emotion.
Sister Wilhelmina and the Benedictines of Mary hold a very special place in our hearts. It is the Order that Rosie joined in 2018. She didn’t stay there long as she became ill but the nuns left a remarkable impression on all of us. They are a dedicated and saintly group of women and I will always hold a particular respect and love in my heart for what they did for Rosie.
Rosie praying at Sister Wilhelmina’s temporary gravesite in 2020.
In the brief time Rosie was with the sisters, she learned of Sister Wilhelmina and experienced her presence in short intervals as Sister was elderly and needed much care. She did not take part in many of the activities of the convent.
Rosie told us of the time when Sister Wilhelmina came to recreation. The kindly sisters wheeled her to the center of the room and all gathered around her, with two sisters sitting at her feet, resting their heads on her knees. All eyes were fixed on Sister as she told them stories… Sr. Wilhelmina seemed to soak in and relish the time with her beloved community.
She also remembered that the sisters would fondly call Sister “their saint” and Rosie, in hindsight, is honored by the fact that both she and Sister Wilhelmina were wheeled up to the Communion Rail together in their wheelchairs, side by side.
One story that particularly stuck in our minds, and of which Rosie was witness to, is of when Sister was transferred from her wheelchair into her bed. This movement would frighten Sister because she no longer had good balance and she would feel like she was falling. So… as two sisters would secure her under her arms, they would start singing one of Sister’s favorite folk songs with much gusto. Sister Wilhelmina would join in on the song at the top of her voice knowing all along that the sisters were doing their best to distract her from her fears, so she would not focus on the “trip” to her bed. Sister Wilhelmina would continue to finish the song as cheerfully as ever, even after being safely transferred to her bed…
Such love the sisters showed toward her! After all, she was “their saint”. And what joy Sister Wilhelmina always carried with her!
After we heard of the possible incorruptibility of Sister Wilhelmina we decided we would go as soon as we could to venerate her. We were inclined to believe that this could get big…and we wanted our chance to visit and touch our rosaries, etc. to her!
Here are some photos of that visit:
Gemma
Our son, Dominic
Devin and Theresa’s family
Rosie
This picture of Angelo was used for the article by Catholic News Agency and the National Catholic Reporter…
The statue that touched Sr. Wilhelmina is in the grotto that Angelo is working on. I walk to it each day during clement weather and say my prayers.
There was a procession to where Sister Wilhelmina was laid to rest on Monday, May 29th…Memorial Day. All the kids at home went back to the convent on Monday to witness it.
From the book written about Sister Wilhelmina, GOD’S WILL:
As a novice, Sister Mary Wilhelmina eagerly studied the rule and history of her community. She developed a deep and trusting abandonment to Divine Providence. As an old nun, she would walk the halls of the convent, beating time with her cane and chanting her “Marching Song”:
God’s will, God’s will,
God’s will be done!
Praise be the Father!
Praise be the Son!
Praise be Divine Love,
Lord, Holy Ghost!
Praise be in union
With the Heavenly Host!
We are all wending our way through the book.
As you learn in her biography, Sister was an advocate for the traditional habit and the traditional Mass.
Sister, along with our other special intercessors from the past, is our go-to now for these very issues and all the issues that rock our Church today. We pray to her that modernism be overcome within the Ark of Peter!
We know the gates of hell will not prevail. But we need Sister’s powerful intercession for Reverence in the Liturgy, Communion kneeling and on the tongue and for all of the Holy Traditions and Customs of many centuries to be restored! These traditions that need to, once again, penetrate every aspect of our Catholic faith.
The Sisters have written a biography of Sr. Wilhelmina. It is a beautiful book…much history and beautiful photos with vibrant colors! Sister Wilhelmina’s thoughtful and prayerful poems are scattered throughout the book. So much worth the read! You can purchase it here.
If you would like to support the Sisters, you can donate here.
The Christian family will not be restored, nor will it be maintained, without the restoration and the maintenance of Christian practices—the noblest practices surely, and the most obligatory, but likewise the most insignificant in appearance. – Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J., Christ in the Home
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Chaplet of the Holy Face ~ Wire-Wrapped, Beautiful and Durable! ~ Prayer Card and Chaplet
During the 1840’s Our Lord appeared to Sister Marie de Saint Pierre and spoke to her about spreading throughout the world the devotion to His Most Holy Face. According to Sr. Marie de St. Pierre, Our Lord was greatly sorrowed by blasphemy, and also by the profanation of Sunday by our work and failure to go to Mass and general disregard for God’s will of keeping the day holy.
Sister Marie: “Our Lord then made me visualize the act of blasphemy as a poisoned arrow continually wounding His divine heart. After that He revealed to me that He wanted to give me a ‘Golden Arrow’ which would have the power of wounding Him delightfully, which would also heal those other wounds inflicted by the malice of sinners.”
The Devotion to the Holy Face is also especially used as a powerful weapon to combat the errors of Communism.
In With God in Russia, Ciszek reflects on his daily life as a prisoner, the labor he endured while working in the mines and on construction gangs, his unwavering faith in God, and his firm devotion to his vows and vocation. Enduring brutal conditions, Ciszek risked his life to offer spiritual guidance to fellow prisoners who could easily have exposed him for their own gains. He chronicles these experiences with grace, humility, and candor, from his secret work leading mass and hearing confessions within the prison grounds, to his participation in a major gulag uprising, to his own “resurrection”—his eventual release in a prisoner exchange in October 1963 which astonished all who had feared he was dead.
Powerful and inspirational, With God in Russia captures the heroic patience, endurance, and religious conviction of a man whose life embodied the Christian ideals that sustained him…..
Captured by a Russian army during World War II and convicted of being a “Vatican spy,” Jesuit Father Walter J. Ciszek spent 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia. Only through an utter reliance on God’s will did he manage to endure the extreme hardship. He tells of the courage he found in prayer–a courage that eased the loneliness, the pain, the frustration, the anguish, the fears, the despair. For, as Ciszek relates, the solace of spiritual contemplation gave him an inner serenity upon which he was able to draw amidst the “arrogance of evil” that surrounded him. Ciszek learns to accept the inhuman work in the infamous Siberian salt mines as a labor pleasing to God. And through that experience, he was able to turn the adverse forces of circumstance into a source of positive value and a means of drawing closer to the compassionate and never-forsaking Divine Spirit.
He Leadeth Me is a book to inspire all Christians to greater faith and trust in God–even in their darkest hour. As the author asks, “What can ultimately trouble the soul that accepts every moment of every day as a gift from the hands of God and strives always to do his will?” This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
Father Lovasik mentions in here that a wonderful prayer for young people is the Holy Rosary. I think if couples say the rosary together during courtship and carry that “habit” throughout their married life, they are setting themselves up for a successful life together. After all, we have all heard it, “The family that prays together, stays together.” I firmly believe the rosary has helped our family tremendously and I am thankful we were in the habit of saying it before we got married so there was no problem carrying it through our marriage and our family life!
Prayer
Prayer is an unfailing means of grace and salvation. Our Lord said, “Ask and you shall receive. ”
It is a particularly strong defense in time of temptation, for God will come to your aid when you call upon Him in your struggle against the serpent of impurity. Try to be always on friendly terms with God by getting into the good habit of praying frequently during the day by means of little ejaculatory prayers and aspirations.
If you regularly spend some time with God each day, you will find it easy to call upon Him when you need Him. Prayer lifts you above the sordid things of this world. It purifies your mind and strengthens your will. It keeps your soul seeking after God alone—the real purpose of life!
With the weapon of prayer at your disposal, you are invincible.
Prayer will keep you very close to your best Friends—Jesus and Mary. Never let a day pass without asking them to keep you from sin.
Never go on a date without first asking their blessing and protection and presence.
A powerful prayer that has always kept young people pure and happy is the Holy Rosary. Pledge yourself to say it daily, especially if you are contemplating marriage.
You can hardly make a better preparation.
Keep your conversation with God, Our Lady, the angels, the saints; and you will walk among the stars!
Self-Denial
A general spirit of self-denial is manifested by self-control. This is most important if you want to keep your dating chaste and happy.
Self-control can be exercised in these ways:
I. Though you cannot prevent feeling pleasurable sensations and disturbing imaginations, and cannot at times get rid of them, yet your will can refrain from consenting to and approving them; it can refrain from any external action that these things may urge you to do.
Your will can avoid even the sources of stimulation so that the sexual passions not even aroused, e.g., questionable books and movies, improper speech and intimacies.
II. Keep interested in something; otherwise you may easily turn to amuse yourself with conduct that is either sinful in itself or that quickly leads to sin.
This will keep you from developing morbid interest in sex.
III. Cultivate a sincere, wholesome attitude that sees other things in life besides sex, so that you may not react readily to sexual suggestions.
IV. Never let a day pass without denying yourself some lawful pleasure in eating, drinking, or entertainment for the love of God. If you can deny yourself in little things, you will be able to deny yourself in time of temptation.
Your cross in life is these temptations, these forbidden yet attractive pleasures. But Christ said, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me . . . he that shall save his life shall lose it; and he that shall lose his life, for My sake, shall save it.”
By the cross of Christian chastity you will most assuredly suffer, but you have nothing to lose but everything worthwhile to gain.
Hold fast to the glory of your shining innocence! Nothing you can ever gain will compensate you for its loss. Your fidelity to your ideals may cost you much in money, in friends, in sacrifice.
But the surrender of your ideals will cost you more. For a passing gain you will barter eternity. A good conscience will be your sure reward. Only the heart without a stain knows perfect peace and joy.
“It is difficult for a child to be better than his home environment or for a nation to be superior to the level of its home life. In fulfilling its double purpose – the generation and formation of children – the home becomes a little world in itself, self-sufficient even in its youngest years. It is vital that you, as a mother or father, make of your home a training ground in character-building for your children, who will inherit the world’s problems. Home is a place in which the young grow in harmony with all that is good and noble, where hardship, happiness, and work are shared.” – Father Lawrence G. Lovasik, Catholic Family Handbook http://amzn.to/2sDb6hw (afflink)
These books give us some lovely rhymes that can, and should, be committed to heart by your children. Not only will they provide all the benefits of reading and memorizing, but they will supply some simple reflections that will turn those little minds to what is most important in their life….their Catholic Faith…. Available here.
This booklet contains practical advice on the subjects of dating and choosing a spouse from the Catholic theological viewpoint. Father Lovasik points out clearly what one’s moral obligations are in this area, providing an invaluable aid to youthful readers. Additionally, he demonstrates that Catholic marriage is different from secular marriage and why it is important to choose a partner who is of the Catholic Faith if one would insure his or her personal happiness in marriage. With the rampant dangers to impurity today, with the lax moral standards of a large segment of our society, with divorce at epidemic levels, Clean Love in Courtship will be a welcome source of light and guidance to Catholics serious about their faith.
Save
Save
Sav A Frank, Yet Reverent Instruction on the Intimate Matters of Personal Life for Young Men. To our dear and noble Catholic youths who have preserved, or want to recover, their purity of heart, and are minded to retain it throughout life. For various reasons many good fathers of themselves are not able to give their sons this enlightenment on the mysteries of life properly and sufficiently. They may find this book helpful in the discharge of their parental responsibilities in so delicate a matter.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
This is a beautiful excerpt from a beautiful book. What power we have, as mothers, to instill in our children the habits and general dispositions they will tend toward as they grow older. It causes us to “pull up our socks”, once again. We have such great influence over our children’s lives! And what a noble calling motherhood is! We are blessed to realize it.
Omnis honos, omms admiratio, omne studium ad mrtutem et ad eas actiones
qucB virtuti sunt consentanece refertur.
“All honor, admiration, and zealous endeavor is referred to virtue and to the actions which are conformable to it.” CICERO
It is said of one of the most celebrated men of the last century, that, when a mere babe, he was made to love flowers and all beautiful things in nature. His father, a distinguished naturalist, would take the child with him into the garden, and while he was busied watering the plants and examining how it fared with each of them, he would place in the child’s hands and on his lap bunches of the loveliest flowers.
Whether or not it was an inbred disposition in the child, he would, so the story of his life relates, amuse himself with the bright and fragrant things, admiring and studying them more and more as he grew up, till this pursuit became an irresistible fascination; and thus, from botany to other departments of natural science, the student progressed, revealing to his fellow-men the wonders that he had discovered, and leaving behind him an immortal name.
Even so is it possible to place in the hands and keep before the eyes of childhood some of the loveliest and most fragrant flowers of goodness, purity, and heroism which bloom innumerable in the Church of God, and thereby awaken in the innocent soul the sense of moral beauty, till the study and pursuit of all that is ennobling and elevating becomes an absorbing passion.
Virtues of a Mother
Generosity, devotedness, self-sacrifice are the characteristic virtues of woman: in Him they shine forth with surpassing splendor; and, next to Him, the Blessed Mother, so near and dear to Him, is the most perfect mirror of womanly perfection. She is the “Woman clothed with the Sun.”
She gave him the Sacred Body in which He practiced the sweet human virtues befitting childhood, boyhood, and manhood, the deeds which graced the lowly home of Joseph and Mary at Nazareth, and those which adorned the three years of his public life, till His work was consummated on the cross.
Enlightened and warmed by this close and continual union with Him, who is the true Sun of Holiness, during the thirty years of intimacy at Nazareth, this Mother, blessed among women, could not help reflecting more perfectly than any other human being the thoughts, the aims, the sentiments, the humility and the self-sacrificing charity of her divine Son.
Thus her life was invested from this most privileged intimacy, with such a light of supernatural holiness, that it vividly pictured the life of Jesus. She had been closest, nearest, and dearest to Him, had studied Him most attentively and lovingly, had followed faithfully in His footsteps from the manger to the cross, and was, when He ascended to heaven, the living image of her crucified love to all who believed in His Name.
We are all the children of these great parents, and are therefore bound to become like to them in mind and heart and conduct. None can attain to the eternal glory of the children of God in the life to come, but such as will have acquired this living likeness by generosity in imitating God’s incarnate Son.
“Always act patiently and answer graciously. That it takes the ‘patience of an angel’ to rule vigilantly over the little world of the family is beyond question. Affability is essential. By good will you will gain hearts and souls without exception. Loving much is the key to gain all.” -Christ in the Home, Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J., 1950’s
Memorial Day ~ Wartime Prayer Book ~ Fulton Sheen:
“O God, the author and lover of peace, to know whom is to live, to serve whom is to reign; shield Thy suppliants from all assaults, so that we who trust in Thy protection may fear no foe. Amen.”
“I am not fighting for a freedom that means the right to do whatever I please but for a freedom that means the right to do whatever I ought. Oughtness implies Law; Law implies Intelligence; and Intelligence implies God.
I am not fighting from freedom from some thing; but for freedom for some thing: the glorious freedom to call my soul my own and then to save it in cooperation with God’s grace.”
REVIEW:
This ‘maglet’ is absolutely wonderful with important topics for the Catholic wife from a traditional Catholic perspective. The booklet is very pleasing to the eye as well as very pleasing to read. It was shipped in a very timely manner. I haven’t had a chance to read through it all yet; however, from what I have read thus far I know I will thoroughly enjoy this and be able to apply what I read towards my own life. It is difficult nowadays to find any sort of literature that is positively and specifically written for traditional Catholic women in general. We are out there and I certainly appreciate finding such a gem of a publication! I highly recommend this maglet for any traditional Catholic wife and those becoming a wife. I look forward to ordering other publications by Leane VanderPutten. Highly recommended!
💖💙This Maglet is for you, lovely wives, who have dedicated your life to your faith and to your husband.
If it is in God’s providence you bring children into the world, your goal is to raise a wholesome, dedicated Catholic family…in an ungodly world. This is a seemingly insurmountable task considering the obstacles before us.
Our first line of defense is the bond we must have with our husband. Besides our spiritual life, which gives us the grace to do so, we must put our relationship with our husband first. It is something we work on each day.
How do we do this? Many times it is just by a tweaking of the attitude, seeing things from a different perspective. It is by practicing the virtues….self-sacrifice, submission, thankfulness, kindness, graciousness, etc.
The articles in this maglet will help you with these things. They are written by authors that are solid Catholics, as well as authors with old-fashioned values.
Take this information to heart and your life will be filled with many blessings!
Prayers for use by the laity in waging spiritual warfare from the public domain and the Church’s treasury. The book has an imprimatur from the Archdiocese of Denver.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
Few persons have a correct idea of this virtue. It is frequently confused with servility or littleness.
To attribute to God what is God’s, that is to say everything that is good, and to ourselves what is ours, that is to say, everything that is evil: these are the essential characteristics of true humility.
Hence it would appear at first sight that simple good sense ought to suffice to make men humble. Such would be the case were it not that our faculties have been impaired and vitiated in their very source by pride, that direful and ineffaceable consequence of original sin.
The first man, a creature owing his existence directly to God, was bound to dedicate it entirely to Him and to pay continual homage for it is as for all the other gifts he had received.
This was a duty of simple justice. The day whereon he asserted a desire to be independent, he caused an utter derangement in the relations of the creature with his Creator.
Pride, that tendency to self-sufficiency, to refer to self the use of the faculties received from God—pride, introduced into the soul of the first man by a free act of his will, has attached itself as an indelible stigma to the souls of all his descendants, and has become forevermore a part of their nature.
Thence comes this inclination, ever springing up afresh, to be independent, to be something of ourselves, to desire for ourselves esteem, affection and honor, despite the precepts of the divine law, the claims of justice and the warnings of reason; and thus it is that the whole spiritual life is but one long and painful conflict against this vicious propensity.
Divine grace though sustaining us in the combat never gives us a complete victory, for the struggle must endure until death,—the closing chastisement of our original degradation and the only one that can obliterate the last traces thereof.
As God drew from nothingness everything that exists, in like manner does He wish to lay the foundations of our spiritual perfection upon the knowledge of our nothingness. Saint Bonaventure used to say: Provided God be all, what matters it that I am nothing!
When a Christian who is truly humble commits a fault he repents but is not disquieted, because he is not surprised that what is naught but misery, weakness and corruption, should be miserable, weak and corrupt.
He thanks God on the contrary that his fall has not been more serious.
Thus Saint Catherine of Genoa, whenever she found she had been guilty of some imperfection, would calmly exclaim: Another weed from my garden!
This peaceful contemplation of our sinfulness was considered very important by Saint Francis de Sales also, for he says: “Let us learn to bear with our imperfections if we wish to attain perfection, for this practice nourishes the virtue of humility.”
Some persons have the erroneous idea that in order to be humble they must not recognize in themselves any virtue or talent whatsoever.
The reverse is the case according to Saint Thomas, for he says it is necessary to realize the gifts we have received that we may return thanks for them to Him from whom we hold them.
To ignore them is to fail in gratitude towards God, and to neglect the object for which He gave them to us.
All that we have to do is to avoid the folly of taking glory to ourselves because of them.
Mules, asses and donkeys may be laden with gold and perfumes and yet be none the less dull and stupid animals. The graces we have received, far from giving us any personal claims, only serve to increase our debt to Him who is their source and their donor.
Praise is naturally more pleasing to us than censure.
There is nothing sinful in this preference, for it springs from an instinct of our human nature of which we cannot entirely divest ourselves.
Only the praise must be always referred to Him to whom it is due, that is to say, to God; for they are His gifts that are praised in us as we are but their bearers and custodians and shall one day have to render Him an account for them in accordance with their value.
The soul that is most humble will also have the greatest courage and the most generous confidence in God; the more it distrusts itself, the more it will trust in Him on whom it relies for all its strength, saying with Saint Paul: I can do all things in Him who strengtheneth me.
Saint Thomas clearly proves that true Christian humility, far from debasing the soul, is the principle of everything that is really noble and generous.
He who refuses the work to which God calls him because of the honor and éclat that accompany it, is not humble but mistrustful and pusillanimous.
We shall find in obedience light to show us with certainty that to which we are called and to preserve us from the illusions of self-love and of our natural inclinations.
“We should be actuated by a generous and noble humility, a humility that does nothing in order to be praised and omits nothing that ought to be done through fear of being praised.”—Saint Francis de Sales.
It is even good and sometimes necessary to make known the gifts we have received from God and the good works of which divine grace has made us the instruments, when this manifestation can conduce to the glory of His name, the welfare of the Church, or the edification of the faithful.
It was for this threefold object that Saint Paul spoke of his apostolic labors and supernatural revelations.
“Lord, You know my weakness; every morning I make a resolution to practice humility, and every evening I acknowledge that I still have many failures. I am tempted to be discouraged by this, but I know that discouragement also has its source in pride. That is why I prefer to put my trust in You alone, O my God. Since You are all-powerful, deign to create in my soul the virtue for which I long”. – St. Therese of the Child Jesus
Are you hungry to learn? Do you want to grow in your faith and improve in your vocation?
Me, too! And I am hungry to have my children learn! Any help I can get I am grateful for and so I feel very blessed to have such an availability of the many resources on the web for Catholics to learn about the Faith!
There are snippets of time which are wasted that we could use to grow spiritually by listening to something…. a sermon, a podcast or a conference on apologetics… that would help us become a better Catholic, help us to better answer others who are searching for the truth or just to give us a lift, some inspiration for our own vocation and our own lives!
Now to prepare a gift for each member of the family that will remind us all year to use the gifts so that we may bear the fruits.
We first heard of this idea through a friend of a friend of a group of Sisters. As Pentecost favors, they make bookmarks in the form of white doves cut from parchment and threaded with red satin ribbons for markers.
On one wing, or on one page of a tiny folder held in the dove’s beak, is lettered a gift of the Holy Spirit; on the other, a fruit. They are placed all together in a basket, and each Sister chooses one.
The gift written on her dove is the gift the Holy Spirit wishes her to work on for the year. Sometimes it is the same gift year after year. In such a case, one can hardly fail to get the point!
We varied this custom by cutting two-piece doves and stapling the wings on so that they are three-dimensional, then hanging them in a flock by red ribbons of varying length. Pentecost morning we each chose a dove, blindfolded. A gift and a fruit were lettered on the wings of each.
They were a brilliant display of “Holy Spirits,” and we let them hang there through the Octave. Lots of people who came into the house asked questions.
Red, or an orange-flame, is the color for table decorations on Pentecost, the color of divine love. Red cut-outs of candles, or red paper cut-outs of doves for place cards or Grace-before-Meals cards, are easy to make with construction paper.
Doves pasted to tongue depressors or lollipop sticks, or mounted on wire or drinking straws, can be anchored in individual clay bases or all together in a larger one to make a fine Pentecost centerpiece.
Little children can make place favors with red Lifesavers stuck with frosting on cookies and a tiny red birthday-cake candle. Lighted when Grace is said, they burn for a few minutes to remind us of the “tongues of fire.”
During the preparation for the feast, children can learn the gifts and fruits by making their own mobiles with wire clothes hangers. Tie a wire clothes hanger to a string, use it as is or bend it into an interesting shape, or suspend additional hangers from it.
Let the children cut doves, candles, flames, circles, or other shapes from heavy paper and letter on them the gifts and the fruits. Suspend them at varying heights with black threads, sometimes with small objects to weight them so they will swing slowly in space.
Jamie made a beautiful mobile of the Holy Spirit and His work in us. An odd piece of wire bent to an interesting shape had suspended from it an orange cut-out of a dove; the sheet of orange paper from which the dove was cut (thus giving also a space dove surrounded by paper); a piece of transparent plastic that changed the color of the dove when it swung in front of them; a shell – because He comes to us first in Baptism; a small candle to symbolize the light He brings us as well as the tongues of fire on the first Pentecost; and a silver button that the children thought looked like a strawberry recalled to them the fruit of the Holy Spirit effected in us if we bid Him welcome and use His light.
This took him only about an hour to dream up and assemble, and it is an eloquent meditation as well as a work of art.
We have also a mixture called, quite inelegantly, Gook. It is sometimes called Muck. This is not much of an improvement over Gook. If this is to be used in preparation for the feast, plan the work session with it a week ahead of time in order that the objects you make will have time to be thoroughly dry.
Most mothers will recall using it at one time or another in their childhood, at arts or crafts class, in the Girl Scouts or Campfire Girls.
It is a mixture of salt, cornstarch, and water cooked, which dries as hard as a rock – most of the time. We have concluded that the few times it didn’t were due to insufficient cooking.
If you are an adventurous family and like inexpensive media for creating, do try it. Work with it in a place where the mess can be easily cleaned up afterward.
GOOK
1 cup table salt
½ cup cornstarch
½ cup boiling water
Mix salt and cornstarch in saucepan. Add boiling water, and stir until well mixed. Hold over burner, and stir rapidly until mixture is thick and of a consistency for modeling. Let cool a few minutes after removing from pan.
Avoid modeling anything too delicate, or rolling too thin for the cookie-cutting. Individual batches of it may be colored with vegetable coloring.
This mixture takes about five minutes to prepare. We have modeled doves, inserting a candle in each dove for the “tongue of fire.” We have cut doves out of it with a cookie cutter, affixing a candle.
We have used it as well to cut Christmas-tree ornaments with cookie cutters, for making beads, Indian “wampum,” for modeling simple little figures, for homemade beads for rosaries on which little children may “learn” by counting out the beads and stringing them properly in decades.
Round balls stuck full of toothpicks are porcupines. Round balls stuck half-full of toothpicks are turkeys.
We have used it for homemade jewelry, for little fruits to go in boutonnieres, and on rainy days for just plain old something-to-do. It takes poster paints admirably and, if necessary, shellac.
Pieces that are to become beads or ornaments must have the appropriate holders, holes, threads, or wires, punched in or affixed before they are dry. These may be decorated with glitter or gilt paint.
It will take more than one Pentecost celebration, even when we are well prepared, for us to learn what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
But even one observance will teach us what our Lord meant when He told His Apostles of the mission of the Holy Spirit: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name. He will teach you all things and bring to your mind whatever I have said to you.”
This Holy Spirit is His love. His love for His Father, returned to Him by His Father. It is their gaze of love, their delight in each other, out of which came their desire for us. Let us say together, often:
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful;
And kindle in them the fire of Thy love.
Send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created,
And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.
“Don’t allow sadness to dwell in your soul, for sadness prevents the Holy Spirit from acting freely. If we insist on being sad, then let it be a holy sadness at the sight of the evil that is spreading more and more in society nowadays.” – Padre Pio
Running a house, while schooling, making meals, etc. is no little task. So…we roll up our sleeves and dig in each day. THIS is what we are called to. Let us not get distracted thinking we should be doing great things, learning about great matters of the world. NO. St. Therese calls us the do the “little things” each day. And really, it is a great thing to accomplish all the “so-called” little tasks….
🌺🌺Surrender Novena Prayer Card and Wire Wrapped Chaplet🌺🌺
This chaplet is designed to be prayed with the Surrender Novena, which was given to Servant of God, Fr. Don Dolindo Ruotolo. Each link is handmade and wrapped around itself to ensure quality.
SURRENDER TO THE WILL OF GOD ~ “Jesus, You take over!”
Prayer by Father Dolindo Ruotolo 1882-1970 – Servant of God, Man Who Padre Pio Called a Saint!
Great prayer against worry, fear, anxiety, depression and stress!
Many miracles have been obtained through this novena.
Do you want to get closer to Jesus? To align your thoughts, will, and actions with Him?
There is no better way to Christ than through His Mother. That’s why St. Louis de Montfort’s Traditional Method of Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary is the time-honored, saint-tested way to grow to closer to Our Lord.
This is the traditional method devised by St. Louis de Montfort himself. And now, we’ve made it available in a single, deluxe vinyl volume, perfect for preparation for the Total Consecration and for yearly renewal.
Inside you will…
Gain a deeper understanding of what it means to Consecrate yourself to Jesus through Mary
Begin to realize the profound joy and peace that comes with giving your will over to Jesus through His Mother
Discover the deep connection between Mary and Her Son, and how that bond can improve our own spiritual life and intercessory prayer
Have access to all the tools, prayers, and Scripture needed to consecrate your household to Jesus through Mary
Beautiful and durable, you’ll come back the wisdom of Saint Louis de Montfort again and again as you live out your consecration. This classic and revered devotional is an essential for every Catholic home.
Though nothing historical is known of her, she was declared a Saint in 1837, only 35 years after discovery of her relics. Here is the whole incredible story, plus many accounts of her tremendous favors and miracles. Another St. Jude to call on in our desperate needs.
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I wish I had learned long ago about the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We did learn the names of them, that is true, but we never went further than that; and because, all strung out in a row, they merely sounded like the virtues of nice people, we took it for granted that they came automatically with being “good.”
Like patience, for example. Anyone could consider the quality of patience and see that there was a great gap between patience and being patient; but most of the time, we were convinced that those who were patient were born that way. We had no real conviction that you could get that way. It was all very vague.
After a while, even the names of them got mixed up with the names of other things. We couldn’t remember if they were fruits, or gifts, or virtues, or what. It was safe to say that they were nouns.
Now we discover that the whole struggle between the flesh and the spirit could be changed if we understood about the fruits of the Holy Spirit – and acted on that understanding.
It is the most encouraging thing yet to realize that the fruits are the effects of using the gifts, not just something you grit your teeth and vow to acquire or bust. It is hard to explain why we never put the same practical sense to work applying the Gospels as we did applying other things. Like seeing a sign that said “Turn right,” and we turned right.
Our Lord talked about the fruits enough, in the Gospels, but for some reason, we never took Him literally, the way we did the traffic signs – for all we believed it was important to get to Heaven, and these were apparently the directions for getting there.
Just as we never dreamed that what He said about abiding in us applied literally to His indwelling, so we also missed what He said about the trees and vines bearing or failing to bear fruit. We had ears to hear, but we did not hear.
We listened to His parables year after year from the altar and supposed He was saying over and over again that good Catholics go to Heaven and bad Catholics don’t – never realizing that, instead, He was giving the directions for being a good Catholic.
It would take too long and more space than we have here to discover why – but that isn’t necessary. What we can do at once is explain to our children that He means what He says literally, most of the time. (There are a few exceptions, such as cutting off your hand or plucking out your eye.)
He means literally that the fruits of the Holy Spirit are fruits that grow in the soul that strives to use the gifts, and – joy of joys – that the gifts are that, gifts, freely given when the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us at Baptism.
Living in Christ, reborn after Baptism, we could do great things with these gifts – if we would use them. Great things – such as being saints.
At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes down upon us in an abundance of grace. Could we not beg Him, in our preparation for His feast, to enable us to understand and use the gifts, that we may bear fruits?
We prepare first in prayer, imitating our Lady and the Apostles, who spend the nine days between Ascension and Pentecost in prayer.
A family novena to the Holy Spirit invites Him to prepare our souls to receive best the great graces to come. Novenas to the Holy Spirit are available in booklet form, or the family may prefer to put together favorite prayers to the Holy Spirit, Psalms, hymns, and readings, and use these for the nine days.
Then there must be the story of Pentecost found in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. It is full of excitement and intriguing details that children love, and is both good reading and good telling. Acquaintance with it ensures a thoughtful meditation each time the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary come around.
And then, after prayers and a retelling of the story, it is easy to direct conversation to the gifts and fruits of the Spirit, so that we may consider in a practical way how they apply to our lives and our duties.
Lastly, in order to extend this lesson through all the year, we prepare a gift for each member of the family and decorations for our feast day that will enable all of us to remember that we must use the gifts if we would bear the fruits.
First, the story.
There were Jews from all over that part of the world in the city at that time because it was the Jewish feast of Pentecost and they had come to celebrate the harvest. Pentecost is a Greek word meaning “fifty” – the fiftieth day.
On the seventh week following the Passover (and one of its ceremonies had been the waving of a sheaf of grain before the Lord as a communal offering), the Law said that male Jews were to reassemble in Jerusalem and present to the Lord at the Temple two loaves of bread made from the fine white flour of the newly harvested wheat.
This feast was also to commemorate the promulgation of the Law. As always, the time for the event that was about to take place in the Church seemed to have been chosen for the significance of the season, for it was to herald the coming of Love Himself to dwell, a living Law, within the new Church, and its outcome that very first day was to mark the beginning of the harvest of souls.
Some spiritual writers have called it the birthday of the Church. Others, like Leo XIII, describe it as an Epiphany: The Church, which, already conceived, came forth from the side of the second Adam in His sleep on the Cross, first showed herself before the eyes of men on the great day of Pentecost.
And always, our Lady was at the heart of it. If we are to prepare for and celebrate the feasts of our Redemption well, we must unite ourselves to her first, the chosen one of the Holy Spirit, His bride and His beloved. She was at the heart of all these comings forth, from the first one to the last. In her, the Word was uttered and became came Flesh.
She brought Him forth in Bethlehem. She held Him in her arms at the first Epiphany so that the Gentiles might see this Jewish God who would graft them to Himself.
At her word, He proceeded at Cana to His first act in creating a Church that He would build by teaching and miracles for three years, then leave in the hands of men.
To her He entrusted His Church from His travail on the Cross: “Behold thy Mother.” She alone understood His promise of birth in glory out of the tomb. And now there gathered about her the ones He had chosen to sanctify in the life-giving fire of the Holy Spirit, that they might go forth and preach to all men the need and the way to be born again.
There came the sound of a great wind, so loud that the Jews outside in the city were attracted to the scene; and the zeal kindled by the tongues of fire in the souls of those men was so great you might say they were exploded out of the Upper Room.
The gift of tongues, the quality of their enthusiasm, was so far beyond the comprehension of the crowds that the scoffers assured themselves they were drunk. But it was only nine o’clock in the morning!
St. Peter said to them that men do not get drunk so early in the day. This was not drunkenness, but the fulfillment of a prophecy from the prophet Joel: “. . . and I will pour out my spirit in those days, upon my servants and handmaids, so they will prophesy.”
He preached to the Jews about David, who prophesied that one of his sons would God set upon his throne, that he would not be left in death, but be resurrected, and His body would not see corruption.
They were the witnesses themselves. They had seen that God raised this Jesus from the dead; and He had this day poured out His Holy Spirit, “as you can see and hear for yourselves.”
Indeed they could, in their own tongues – Parthians, Medes, Elamites; those from Mesopotamia, Judaea, Cappadocia, Pontus or Asia, Phrygia or Pamphylia, Egypt or the parts of Libya around Cyrene, some from Rome, some Cretans, Arabians…. “When they heard this, their consciences were stung; and they asked Peter and His fellow apostles, “What must we do?”
“Repent and be baptized, in the name of Jesus Christ, to have your sins forgiven; then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
And there was a harvest that day of three thousand souls. Three thousand to whom the Holy Spirit came – and with Him His gifts.
It IS interesting, isn’t it, how, in the last decades, women are made to feel as if they are being “losers”, “nobodys” if they are dedicated to the home..They are not using their talents if they aren’t out working in the world.
Truly, I find that illogical. How many talents does it make to run a pleasant home, raise good children, have a healthy relationship with someone you rub shoulders with night and day? That, in itself, is a full-time job…not to mention if some are homeschooling, seeking out healthy alternatives, helping with their parish life, etc., etc.
No, it takes a brave, committed, responsible, hard-working adult to do what it takes to raise a Godly family in today’s society. -Finer Femininity
Painting by Alfred Rodriguez
Excellent and consoling sermon!
Woman’s Lovely Veil/ Chapel Veil/ Traditional Head Coverings
Old World Veil and Capelet. A beautiful twist on the normal chapel veil. Ties with a ribbon in front..made with care and detail from chiffon and lace. Available here.
Lovely book, worth the time and money! This book will inspire you with ways to live the Liturgy within your home!
In this joyful and charming book, Maria Von Trapp unveils for you the year-round Christian traditions she loved traditions that created for her large family a warm and inviting Catholic home and will do the same for yours….Mary Reed Newland wrote numerous beloved books for Catholic families, but The Year and Our Children is her undisputed masterpiece. Read it, cherish it, share it, put it into practice and give your kids the gift of a fully lived faith, every day and in every season….
It is true that in general we are creatures of habit. We walk, talk, work, eat, write according to habits we have formed, when or how we no longer remember.
We derive great advantage from habits because in virtue of them we can do things easily and quickly. We are indeed a mass of habits, “imitators and copiers of our past selves.”
Some of the habits we have acquired are very complex and wonderful. Some habits we acquired with difficulty and others with great ease. Some habits we gained unconsciously or almost involuntarily, some with full deliberation.
It is of the latter that I wish now to speak, and especially of those which are both voluntary and evil. It is, we know, easy to acquire an evil habit and very hard to get rid of one.
The first time we performed the evil act that eventually became a habit we brought about a physical change in ourselves. It may have been a bitter word of sarcasm, or a blow struck in anger, or a deliberate lie, or an act of stealing or of immodesty. Whatever it was it left a physical trace behind.
We may have repented of it bitterly, and made atonement for it, but nevertheless the trace of that sin remained in our nature and it was easier to do it a second time. We were no longer the same as before.
Then perhaps a second time we deliberately committed the same fault. The trace grew deeper. Again we committed it and this time it was much easier to do it, and we felt much less repugnance. The habit was formed. And now, perhaps after very many falls we find that the evil habit is very strong.
We have tried from time to time to rid ourselves of it, but we have failed. It is there still, and now once more we want to rid ourselves of it. What are we to do?
If we do not overcome it, it will ruin our lives and bear us irresistibly toward a destiny so terrible that we dread to think of it. What are we to do? Can an evil habit be overcome? And if so, how is it to be overcome?
Yes! an evil habit, no matter how strong and how deeply embedded in our nature, can be overcome, but naturally it costs much to overcome it.
There is a sure means, and only one means, and that is the formation of a new habit, a good habit which runs counter to the evil one. “Habit is overcome by habit.”
If you are habitually deceitful and false, you must little by little build up a good habit of sincerity and truth. If you are habitually idle and lazy, you must build up the virtue of industry and of working energetically.
If you are habitually sensual and immodest, you must build up the good habit of self-denial and delicate modesty.
But how are such new habits to be formed? How am I to become sincere and truthful, seeing that I am constantly telling lies and deceiving people? Is it sufficient on several occasions to tell the truth and to be open and frank?
No! The mere repetition of such acts would not be sufficient to form a strong counter-habit. You must very deliberately, very methodically, very resolutely, and with all the strength of your Will set yourself to will truth and frankness.
And here we return to the principles we laid down in the section on Resolutions. We form new habits by means of Resolutions strongly made and faithfully kept, and tenaciously persisted in and repeated.
We must build up the virtue of frankness and truthfulness, part by part, bit by bit, just as we pointed out the way to acquire the good habit or virtue of punctuality.
There is no need here to go through the form we prescribed in the section on Resolutions, but it must be faithfully adhered to if a strong new counter-habit is to be formed that will eliminate or render insignificant an existing evil habit.
Hence the secret of overcoming evil habits lies in the art of forming good habits by means of Resolutions. In this matter, of course, we must, more than in any other, seek aid and grace by prayer and the Sacraments.
Some evil habits are so strong that no mere natural force of Will could overcome them. But force of Will aided by God’s grace succeeds and can always succeed, and force of Will, as the best natural means, must be called up and used to the fullest extent.
I need not, I think, dwell upon the importance of overcoming evil habits at the very earliest date. The longer we indulge such habits, the harder it becomes to conquer them. We must get rid of them at once. After-remedies come too late.
There must be no delay in this matter; we must lay the axe to the root while the root is not too strong.
From your own experience of life, from the examples of others, you know how terrible a thing it is to be a slave to an evil habit, for instance to be “a slave to drink.” Such a one is wretched beyond words. He brings misery and shame on himself and on those with whom he lives. His weakness of Will makes his life on earth a hell.
He hates his vice. He hates his slavery. He longs to be free — but again and again he falls helplessly, as often indeed as occasion presents itself.
For you, there may be many minor evil habits that you should rid yourself of —habits that will tell against you in after life, and habits that are unbecoming.
Perhaps you have a bitter way of criticizing others, perhaps you have a habit of betting, or of swearing, or of working in a slipshod way, or of roughness and untidiness or of selfishness and self-indulgence — whatever faulty or improper habits you may have, the sooner you get rid of them the better, for later on you will find it very hard to do so.
When fighting against an evil habit we are up against an insidious and unrelenting foe.
This of course applies more particularly to evil habits in the strict sense, which are founded in passions. We have to fight with all the courage, constancy, and wisdom we command. Half-hearted efforts are of no avail.
We must fight with all our Will-power and keep up the fight to the end, in spite of defeats and failures. We must never lose heart even though we seem to have lost. We must still fight on and regard our failures as additional and powerful motives for fresh efforts.
“If you want to abolish a habit and its accumulated circumstances as well,” writes Dr. Oppenheim, “you must grapple with the matter as earnestly as you would with a physical enemy. You must go into the encounter with all the tenacity of determination, with all the fierceness of resolve — yea, even with a passion for success that may be called vindictive.
No human enemy can be as insidious, as persevering, as unrelenting as an unfavorable habit. It never sleeps, it needs no rest. . . . It is like a parasite that grows with the growth of the supporting body, and like a parasite it can best be killed by violent separation and by crushing.”
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Do you know that there are so many people in this world who are lost? They are confused and they don’t know where they are going. And did you know that you and I have the map that we can give them in order for them to find their way out?
I want to become a saint; it will not be easy at all. I have a lot of wood to chop, and it is as hard as stone. I should have started sooner, while it was not so difficult; but, in any case; ‘better late than never.’ – St. Zelie Martin
Chaplet of the Holy Face ~ Wire-Wrapped, Beautiful and Durable! ~ Prayer Card and Chaplet
During the 1840’s Our Lord appeared to Sister Marie de Saint Pierre and spoke to her about spreading throughout the world the devotion to His Most Holy Face. According to Sr. Marie de St. Pierre, Our Lord was greatly sorrowed by blasphemy, and also by the profanation of Sunday by our work and failure to go to Mass and general disregard for God’s will of keeping the day holy.
Sister Marie: “Our Lord then made me visualize the act of blasphemy as a poisoned arrow continually wounding His divine heart. After that He revealed to me that He wanted to give me a ‘Golden Arrow’ which would have the power of wounding Him delightfully, which would also heal those other wounds inflicted by the malice of sinners.”
The Devotion to the Holy Face is also especially used as a powerful weapon to combat the errors of Communism.
Hands Free Mama is the digital society’s answer to finding balance in a media-saturated, perfection-obsessed world. It doesn’t mean giving up all technology forever. It doesn’t mean forgoing our jobs and responsibilities. What it does mean is seizing the little moments that life offers us to engage in real and meaningful interaction. It means looking our loved ones in the eye and giving them the gift of our undivided attention, living a present, authentic, and intentional life despite a world full of distractions.
With his facile pen and from the wealth of his nation-wide experience, the well-known author treats anything and everything that might be included under the heading of home education: the pre-marriage training of prospective parents, the problems of the pre-school days down through the years of adolescence. No topic is neglected. “What is most praiseworthy is Fr. Lord’s insistence throughout that no educational agency can supplant the work that must be done by parents.” – Felix M. Kirsch, O.F.M. https://amzn.to/2T06u28 (afflink)
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by Emerson Hynes St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota
The Following are Wonderful Words of Wisdom on the Virtue of Humility taken from
Celebrating Pentecost ~ Mary Reed Newland, 
