Category Archives: Motherhood

For Expectant Mothers ~ Trust in Divine Providence

18 Friday Nov 2022

Posted by in Motherhood

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Painting by Jim Daly

Article by Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik, S.V.D.

Trust in Divine Providence

Dependence upon God is a central point in the life of Christian Motherhood. Being united in marriage, you need not ask your husband the question, as many do, “Shall we or shall we not have children?” Accept with loving arms each little one as it comes along.

Do not worry too much about what you have to eat or drink or how you will clothe these children. Put yourself entirely in the hands of God with complete childlike trust.

This truly Catholic spirit of mothers of yore is fast disappearing from our land. The strength of this nation lies in its manhood and womanhood. It is almost treason for anyone to suggest just how many children the fathers and mothers of America should bring into the world. Yet there are countless women in this country who deliberately deny themselves the privileges of motherhood.

Today Satan’s salesladies roam the country, encouraged by the newspapers. radio, television and women’s magazines, preaching the advantages of birth control and planned parenthood. Their influence must be checked by the generous and self-sacrificing spirit of our Catholic mothers who make confidence in Divine Providence the first guiding principle of their lives.

Your life is in the care of Someone other than yourself, Someone infinitely superior to you and your husband in both wisdom and strength. Life is a gift granted by God, not a gift from yourselves to yourselves. Hence it is unreasonable to seek exclusive control over your own lives.

Your task as a mother is to live according to God’s laws. After that, all the difficulties belong to God. You must live your life according to God’s guidance. The plan of your life is of God’s making, not your own. You can do only the little that is within your power to do. The rest belongs to God — a fact for which Christian mothers have ever been supremely grateful.

God was very good in not delivering your life completely into your own hands. You would never have succeeded in planning the endless details of your life.

Imitation of the Blessed Mother

In everything that pertains to the care of your child, born or unborn, let your mind be raised and your heart enkindled by the Catholic ideal. This ideal is realized in Mary, the Mother of God.

Jesus could have come into this world in many ways; but He chose to begin life like all other men, cradled beneath the heart of a woman. When the eternal God took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary and willed to be the object of a mother’s tender nursing, care, and love, then was motherhood raised to the zenith of splendor and beauty, then was the law of nature made perfect by the law of grace.

A real, perfect Mother of flesh and blood was given to the mothers of the world to show them the glory of their state. She was instrumental to the forming of the Incarnate Christ; you are to be instrumental to the forming of the Mystical Christ. Mary made pregnancy sacred for all time because she gave birth to the Son of God.

You have the privilege of being the mother of the sons of God. Therefore, try to sanctify your pregnancy but patterning it after that of the Mother of God, the ideal of every Christian mother.

Mary’s journey to visit Elizabeth shows not only her loving compassion and charity, but also her desire to share the joy of her own approaching motherhood with her cousin, whose prayers for a child had at last been answered.

Mary will take a personal interest in you, too, if you turn to her often during the coming months. She will console you, help you, and share your joys.

Dedicate these months of your life to Mary in a special manner. Follow Mary to the altar for Mass each morning, if you can, and receive Her Divine Son in Holy Communion as she did after the Ascension of Jesus.

At home raise your eyes frequently in the day to the image of the Mother of God, who can understand your condition better than anyone else. You will find wonderful strength from seeing that Our Lady, too, is carrying an Infant in her arms.

The Rosary, in particular, should take on new importance, for in your humble way you are sharing some of Mary’s experiences. You will spend some of the happiest hours of your waiting in the recitation of the Rosary. It will remind you of the joy Mary felt in her soul knowing she was carrying the Savior of the world.

It will remind you of the words of the angel, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, Blessed art thou among women.” You, too, will remember that you are blessed by God by reason of the privilege He has given you to share in His own creative power and in the tremendous work of giving God a human body which will be the temple in which an immortal soul will dwell, made according to His image and likeness.

The fruit of your womb is also blessed, as Elizabeth said of Our Lady, because it is the work of the Almighty Creator. Ask the Queen of Mothers to pray for you and to help you resemble her more. Ask her to make your child resemble her own Jesus.

Each day during your months of waiting recite the Magnificat, her hymn of praise, in which you will find her sentiments of joyful gratitude for carrying Christ in her womb.

And as you go about your home doing the routine tasks that may seem troublesome, remember that Mary was pregnant and kept house during her months of waiting.

The Church has always had a deep veneration for the Blessed Mother within whose holy body God Himself took flesh. She sees in every mother a type of Mary, in every childbirth another Christmas. in every child something of the Divine Infant born at Bethlehem. No wonder that she would have you turn to Mary, Queen of Mothers. as your model and patroness.

Grateful Joy

Think frequently of the wonderful things that are going on within your body. Science cannot penetrate the depths of the functioning of a single living cell. much less duplicate its marvels. Since a fertilized ovum has neither hands, feet, or tools to use, nor brain to guide it in its complex and mysterious operations, we are compelled to say that its actions bespeak the work of a Supreme Intelligence whose laws guide its movement from a tiny cell to the journey’s end — a full-blossomed human being — your baby!

The marvels, miracles, and mysteries accomplished are far beyond the power of man; they mirror the power and wisdom of an infinite Creator.

Meditating upon this mystery King David exclaimed thousands of years ago: “Thou hast formed me, and hast laid Thv hand upon me. Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me: it is high, and I cannot reach it.”

The tiny baby in the silent darkness of your womb is a greater marvel than any building or work of man. It is a witness to the infinite power, wisdom, and love of God for man. This thought should fill your heart with joy and humble gratitude because your body is now the workshop of God’s wonders, the sanctuary of an immortal soul created by God.

With Our Blessed Mother you can cry out, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior … because He who is mighty has done great things for me.”

Waiting may at times seem like a martyrdom, but remember the words of Our Lord, “A woman about to give birth has sorrow, because her hour has come. But when she has brought forth the child she no longer remembers the anguish for her joy that a man is born into the world” (John 16, 21). What joy will overflow your heart when you hear the first cry of your newborn child. How happy you and your husband will he when you receive into your arms this precious bundle — a part of you, a part of him — a soul fresh from the hand of God!

This child is an expression of your love for one another, since true love seeks to express itself outwardly. God has truly blessed you by giving you this baby and the privilege of parenthood. The rewards of motherhood are indeed very great even in this life.

No mother can determine the future of her children. She must love them and let them go. They are not only her babies; they are new men and women in the great family of God’s children.

Think of your pleasure when you see your child make its first Holy Communion, or the joy you may experience when you see one of your sons for the first time offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or one of your beautiful daughters leave home to become a bride of Christ.

Then think of the weddings in the family. Finally, think of the son or daughter who will take care of you when you have grown old. And when they bring their own children to your motherly arms, you will still be able to see yourself reflected in these men and women of tomorrow.

Thus life goes on and you are joyfully grateful that you had the privilege of helping to spread God’s kingdom and people heaven in the special way God has chosen for you — and that way is MOTHERHOOD.

So much we owe to motherhood. What a grand privilege, then, accrues to every woman who becomes and is a mother after God’s own heart! -Rev. Fulgence Meyer, Plain Talks on Marriage, 1927

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Author Mary Reed Newland here draws on her own experiences as the mother of seven to show how the classic Christian principles of sanctity can be translated into terms easily applied to children even to the very young.

Because it’s rooted in experience, not in theory, nothing that Mrs. Newland suggests is impossible or extraordinary. In fact, as you reflect on your experiences with your own children, you’ll quickly agree that hers is an excellent commonsense approach to raising good Catholic children.

Fr. Lawrence Lovasik, the renowned author of The Hidden Power of Kindness, gives faithful Catholics all the essential ingredients of a stable and loving Catholic marriage and family — ingredients that are in danger of being lost in our turbulent age.

Using Scripture and Church teachings in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step format, Fr. Lovasik helps you understand the proper role of the Catholic father and mother and the blessings of family. He shows you how you can secure happiness in marriage, develop the virtues necessary for a successful marriage, raise children in a truly Catholic way, and much more.

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My Mother ~ Fr. Bernard Vaughan, S.J.

08 Tuesday Nov 2022

Posted by in Motherhood, Parenting

≈ 1 Comment

by Father Bernard Vaughab, S.J., early 1900’s

I was only a little boy when we lost our mother. It was a loss I cannot think of even now, after half a century and more, without a shudder. To all of us she was the very ideal of everything that is lovely and holy.

We thought, and were brought up to think, that she was in every sense perfection. Hence her blessing was more to us even than her caress.

Well do I remember how we used to rush at her coming into the nursery to see who should be the first to kiss her hand with reverent devotion.

Then she would sit on the floor with half a dozen of us clinging to her, while she would give us her little crucifix and medals to venerate and fondle, or perhaps take out her watch, and placing it against the ear of one of us, would say, “Life is passing away just like that tiny ticking watch, but when the little heart stops beating here, we shall all know that God didn’t wind it up anymore because He wanted you home with Him for a never-ending holiday.”

Of course we used to kneel round her lap morning and evening to lisp after her our childlike prayers, and then were carried off, two in her arms, and others clinging to her skirts, to the chapel, where on great feasts we were privileged to kiss the altar-cloth, or even the altar itself.

Our mother reminded her children that, there in the Tabernacle, One who loved us more even than she did, was always abiding, ever ready to greet us when we went to see Him.

She loved her garden, but would have been shocked if the fairest flowers had been sent to her boudoir instead of to the chapel. She herself would gather nosegays for her children to place on our nursery altar or before the statue in her bedroom. When I look back it seems to me she could talk only about God, or the poor, or our father.

She made Heaven such a reality to us that we felt that we knew more about it, and liked it in a way far better even than our home, where, until she died, her children were wildly, supremely happy.

Religion under her teaching was made so attractive, and all the treasured items she gathered from the lives of the Saints made them so fascinating to us, that we loved them as our most intimate friends, which she assured us they most certainly were.

Our mother thought that it was her duty to teach her little ones in the nursery all manner of pious childlike practices, while the bigger children would often have to remind them not to forget God and His presence in their midst.

But it was of Our Lord’s Agony in the garden and His sacred Passion and Death that she never tired to remind us: “Look at those dear Five Wounds,” she would say; “fancy all that pain suffered, and all that blood shed, for you. You must never forget, no matter how long you live, to love more than anything on earth those Precious Wounds. If ever you are naughty and hurt God, it will be because you forget how much you have cost Him.”

What tricks and devices did we not resort to in order to be awake in the night nursery when, after dinner, Mother would pass from cot to cot blessing her children, crossing their hands upon their breast, and lulling them to sleep with such words as “Sweet Jesus, I do love Thee, Holy Mother of God, be a tender Mother to me, My good Angel, watch over me and keep me this night from all sin.”

It was not our mother’s practice to bring us any dainty from the dinner-table. We were never allowed to go down to dessert, our father thinking it might encourage greediness or undue fondness of food. We dined at our parents’ lunch and then were allowed to take what we liked.

I remember one day being offered some dish which I rejected with the incautious remark, “Thank you, Father, I don’t fancy it.” Should I live to the age of Methuselah I shall not forget how he turned upon me and in solemn voice said, “I do not wish any of my boys to indulge in fancies about food; fancies are the privilege of your sisters.”

On another occasion, when I had shown overmuch relish for some dish, my father reminded me that it was a poor thing to be a slave to any appetite or practice. Blushing to the roots of my hair, I ventured to retaliate, saying, ‘Well, Father, how is it that the snuffbox is brought to you every day at the end of dinner? — you always take out a big pinch.”

For a moment he was silent, and then made me fetch the box, and while in the act of tossing it into the fire he said, “There goes the box, and that is the end of that bit of slavery.”  His training was somewhat drastic, but it was a fine counterpart to that of the ever tender mother.

There were some fine customs which our father insisted on; for instance, that we should take our places with the village school children when they were catechized on Sunday afternoon in the chapel; and the chaplain was encouraged to be specially severe with us if we did not answer correctly.

Father liked us to give of what we had, and not merely our used-up toys, to the less well-off little ones, and nothing pleased him more than to see his children trudging off with their mother laden with good things for those who most wanted them.

When people expostulated with her for taking her children where they might catch something worse than a cold she would say, “Sickness would be a small price to pay for the exercise of this Christlike privilege — but God will take care of my children where my love fails.”

Her love of the poor was almost a passion, and but for her own children’s sake she would have parted with everything . Washing the bedridden, changing their bedding, sweeping their rooms, was the sort of thing in which she felt a real pride. Not even when she was very seriously ill would she call in any but the parish doctor, protesting that if he was good enough for her poorer sisters he would do very well for her.

As she herself could not seek perfection in the religious state, she strove to attain it in the sphere of life to which God had called her. I am told that she said the Divine Office daily, and when too ill to say it herself had it said for her. She died while Compline was being said in her room.

As a girl she had spent some considerable time in Paris receiving finishing lessons in drawing, painting, singing, and music, and nothing delighted us more than to gather about her in the round drawing-room, wild with joy, to hear her recite, or sing her own songs or hymns about Heaven as she accompanied herself on the harp. When our enthusiasm was thoroughly stirred she would pause to remind us that all this was but discord compared with what the rapturous music of Heaven would be. She was fond of whetting our appetites for Heaven.

In our mother’s time Courtfield was always so cheery, bright, and holy, that it used to be said in the county, “You nearly break your neck going, but more nearly break your heart leaving there.”

When I look back to those young days so crowded with life I cannot remember any quiet games entertaining us. Birds, dogs, other pets, and ponies were our chief delight. I fear we were dreadfully noisy, loving hare and hounds, blindman’s-buff, snapdragon, and above all theatricals, in which movement was a safety valve for what was called “the Vaughan spirits.”

On the Feast of Holy Innocents, when it was our custom to dress up in the habits of different religious orders, we used to hold high religious functions, and preach one another down till the result was a sort of pandemonium, ending in clouds of incense and a blaze of candles round the schoolroom statue, where we made peace.

I think I have sampled our early life fully enough for even an inordinate taste for childhood’s days, but I cannot end without referring to the irreparable loss that came upon us when God called our mother away. It was a catastrophe.

Personally I was too young fully to understand what had happened; what I do most vividly remember is going down to the library, where the blinds were drawn and everybody was in black.

I recollect my father’s grief-stricken countenance as, amid the sobs of his children, he called my eldest sister, Gladys, to his side, and, placing on her wrist my mother’s simple silver bracelet, with crucifix and medal attached, he told us that our mother had gone to Heaven and that the eldest girl must take her place.

I bit my lips, exclaiming internally, “She never shall with me.”

He said much more, but I did not quite understand what it all meant, or why everybody was crying. I felt sure, even if mother had gone to Heaven, she would somehow be back soon, for she was never away from us for long. It did not seem that one could possibly live without her.

Very gradually the reality of the loss came home to one, and then it seemed that nothing much mattered. We rarely spoke of mother because the mere mention of her name awakened feelings that could not be controlled.

Herbert even to the last was shy of speaking to me of her; sometimes when I ventured to plead for some of his reminiscences of her he would get red and hot, and after saying there was no one ever like her, he would turn to some other subject; and till shortly before his death he kept by him a tiny picture of :—

“That countenance in which did meet

Sweet records and promises as sweet.”

“We all carry two bags—each and every one of us—one is packed with virtue, the other our faults. I’m talking marriage here, when I say that somewhere between courtship and the seventh year many women have shifted their focus from one of adoration to fault finder. We start to analyze, dissect, and over analyze the faults that we find, hoping to reshape our husbands according to our version of the perfect man. Living in harmony requires patience on both sides as we work to rebuild our view of one another.” -The Good Wife’s Guide, Darlene Schacht

Painting by Robert Papp

November – The Month of the Holy Souls in Purgatory

The Suffering Souls are very powerful with God. You take care of them and they will be praying for you!
Novena for the Holy Souls in Purgatory

Prayer to Our Suffering Savior for the Holy Souls in Purgatory

O most sweet Jesus, through the bloody sweat which Thou didst suffer in the Garden of Gethsemane, have mercy on these Blessed Souls. Have mercy on them.
R. Have mercy on them, O Lord.

O most sweet Jesus, through the pains which Thou didst suffer during Thy most cruel scourging, have mercy on them.
R. Have mercy on them, O Lord.

O most sweet Jesus, through the pains which Thou didst suffer in Thy most painful crowning with thorns, have mercy on them.
R. Have mercy on them, O Lord.

O most sweet Jesus, through the pains which Thou didst suffer in carrying Thy cross to Calvary, have mercy on them.
R. Have mercy on them, O Lord.

O most sweet Jesus, through the pains which Thou didst suffer during Thy most cruel Crucifixion, have mercy on them.
R. Have mercy on them, O Lord.

O most sweet Jesus, through the pains which Thou didst suffer in Thy most bitter agony on the Cross, have mercy on them.
R. Have mercy on them, O Lord.

O most sweet Jesus, through the immense pain which Thou didst suffer in breathing forth Thy Blessed Soul, have mercy on them.
R. Have mercy on them, O Lord.

(Recommend yourself to the Souls in Purgatory and mention your intentions here)

Blessed Souls, I have prayed for thee; I entreat thee, who are so dear to God, and who are secure of never losing Him, to pray for me a miserable sinner, who is in danger of being damned, and of losing God forever. Amen.

Written by St. Alphonsus Liguori this novena has prayers for each day which are followed by the Prayer to Our Suffering Savior for the Holy Souls in Purgatory

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Celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas With Your Family available here.

This practice of doing the Twelve Days of Christmas can change your family’s Liturgical holiday life!

Why? Because it will help you make the Christmas Season festive after Christmas has arrived for those twelve specific days (with Epiphany as the 13th Day of Christmas). Knowing you have prepared for this season of Yuletide when it actually arrives will encourage you to focus on Advent more thoroughly so that once you reach the climax of that Penitential season..Christmas…you will be prepared to truly celebrate this amazing time of the Church’s Liturgical Calendar!

Each day has an activity and a lovely coloring page dedicated to it. The activities are simple and doable.

At the beginning of the book there is a checklist for the supplies so that you can gather them throughout the Advent Season. Then you will have everything ready to make the Twelve (actually thirteen, including Epiphany) Days of Christmas special!

So, when all the songs have stopped on the radio, the decorations taken down, the tree thrown out and red hearts begin to appear as everyone anxiously awaits Valentine’s Day, you and your family will be joyfully giving the Baby Jesus His proper welcome into this world!

Women historically have been denigrated as lower than men or viewed as privileged. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand characterizes the difference between such views as based on whether man’s vision is secularistic or steeped in the supernatural. She shows that feminism’s attempts to gain equality with men by imitation of men is unnatural, foolish, destructive, and self-defeating. The Blessed Mother’s role in the Incarnation points to the true privilege of being a woman. Both virginity and maternity meet in Mary who exhibits the feminine gifts of purity, receptivity to God’s word, and life-giving nurturance at their highest.

You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriages. As the author says: If someone were to give me many short bits of wool, most likely I would throw them away. A carpet weaver thinks differently. He knows the marvels we can achieve by using small things artfully and lovingly. Like the carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day the precious bits of wool she s been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love.

This remarkable book will show you how to start weaving love into the tapestry of your marriage today, as it leads you more deeply into the joys of love.

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Are You Available? & New Podcast ~ Sadness: Causes and How to Overcome

10 Monday Oct 2022

Posted by in Catholic Home Life, Motherhood, Podcasts - Finer Femininity, Virtues

≈ 4 Comments

I am a doer. I like to be accomplishing something at all times. I have my to-do list written out (most of the time) and I have a hard time sitting still.

So this book, Hands Free Mama, has been valuable for me. It reminds me of my priorities…what could be more important than my family? To be present to them is the most important thing of all!

So….be available to your children. Work hard on it. It will be the one thing that will matter most to you when you enter your golden years….that you have not put your dear ones on the back burner!

Here is an excerpt from Rachel’s book:

Are You Available?

by Rachel Macy Stafford, Hands Free Mama   Blog: Hands Free Mama

When my daughter received the DVD boxed set of Little House on the Prairie for her birthday, I was nearly as excited as she was. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve cuddling with my family as life in Walnut Grove played out on a static-lined television screen.

Yet when I looked at the discs and realized there were forty-four Little House episodes, my first thoughts were very Non – Hands Free.

I looked at that collection of DVDs and saw forty-four opportunities to be otherwise highly productive. Although my inner drill sergeant doesn’t hold as much authority as it once did, that demanding voice of productivity and efficiency still tries to tempt me to the other side — straight into the arms of distraction.

Just think how much you could get accomplished while the girls watch Little House. They will not make a peep for the entire fifty-minute episode, and in that time you could easily knock several items off your to-do list!

But my Hands Free inner voice gently reminded me about what really mattered. This is your chance to sit your constantly moving body down on the couch, hold your daughters, and be a part of their world. Don’t blow it.

So after dinner the following Friday night, we put on our pajamas, popped popcorn, grabbed the softest blankets we own, and pushed the Play button on episode one, “A Harvest of Friends.” I was the first to find a spot on the couch.

And just as my backside hit the leather, my two children drew to my sides as if they were being sucked toward me by the world’s most powerful magnet. One child magnetized to my left, the other to my right.

Not even the tiniest popcorn kernel, should it fall from our hands, could come between this solid mass of togetherness.

Sit on the couch much, Rachel Stafford? I decided this was not the time to berate myself for not doing more couch time with my children.

It was time to enjoy this moment, the one I chose over dishes, laundry, writing, cleaning, emailing, or multitasking all five activities at once.

I had gotten this choice right. And I got the following forty-three consecutive episodes right too. I stayed true to the promise I made myself.

Little House means family time, and my children are fully aware and delighted that we do this together. For that fifty-minute period, I am not a moving target that my daughters have .01 percent percent chance of hitting.

Instead, I am available to sit there and simply love them. I don’t really like to think about it too much, but my older child will only live in my house for ten more years. Ten years. That’s nothing — the blink of an eye.

And if I continue darting about the house, going from one activity to the next for the remaining ten years, I can be sure of one thing: I will not hear my children’s thoughts, questions, revelations, troubles, or triumphs.

Because here’s some reality: No child wants to talk to the back of a parent’s head. No child wants to make an appointment to get a little of a parent’s time. No child wants to talk to a parent who can’t look up from distraction long enough to make eye contact.

Thanks to an experience shared by a blog reader, I’ve been given some insight about what children do want from a parent.

My eighteen-year-old son who left for college in August called me on Sunday night. After we had the “How are classes going?” conversation, the “How much money is in your account?” conversation, and the “Do you have any clean laundry?” conversation, he said, “I really miss you, Mom.”

I was thinking, Yes, I’m sure you do miss me — washing clothes and making dinner.

It was then that I asked him, “Oh, yeah, what do you miss about Mom?” His answer was simple, but it stunned me. “I miss just talking to you. You know, at the end of the day, when we were both home . . . I miss talking to you.”

Before I knew it, I was crying. Of all the things I had done for him as his mom, the thing he missed the most was talking to me.

A few days after reading this, I was gathering activities for Avery to do while we sat at Natalie’s swim meet. Normally I would have packed my writing folder, but it struck me that maybe this was not an opportunity to check something off the list . . . maybe this was an opportunity to be available.

I left my work at home and instead brought a few of my daughter’s favorite books and a snack to share.

Avery spent a lot of the time just sitting on my lap — a lap that, for once, was empty. We had the most wonderful conversation and snuggle time.

As my legs grew numb under the weight of her body, she turned to me and said nine of the most blessed words I have heard since beginning my journey to live Hands Free. “This is the kind of mom I always wanted.”

By “this” I knew exactly what she meant.

Present

Attentive

Still

Available

 Available

Completely available to love her.

“So even if he’s around most every day, why not light up when he walks in the room? Tell him how handsome he’s looking today…. How glad you are to see him. A big hug and maybe a bit more. Put on your sweet face and say nice things. Be like a breath of fresh air to him.” – Lisa Jacobson, 100 Way to Love Your Husband https://amzn.to/2tyHWTp (afflink)

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Why do we call Christmas songs carols? And is the Christmas tree a pagan symbol? Were there really three kings? These questions and so many others are explored in a way that is scholarly and yet delightful to read. Enjoy learning about the history of the many Christmas traditions we celebrate in this country!
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.

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The Excellence of Motherhood

15 Thursday Sep 2022

Posted by in Motherhood, Plain Talks on Marriage - Rev. Fulgence Meyer

≈ 1 Comment

From Plain Talks on Marriage by Rev. Fulgence Meyer, 1927

Nature’s Great Mystery

The labor of childbirth for the mother remains one of the deepest mysteries of nature. Why something that is so necessary for the preservation of the human race should be coupled with so much difficulty, pain and danger baffles our understanding.

The fall in paradise and the consequent curse inflicted by the Lord upon woman hardly accounts for what we call the natural mystery; for human nature, whilst it dropped from its preternatural and supernatural elevation through the fall, is not worse or otherwise than it would have been, had it never been elevated.

Why then is childbirth naturally so arduous and perilous?

The Excellence of Motherhood

The best explanation seems to be given by the high dignity and sublime prerogative of motherhood. Nature demands a corresponding payment for whatever distinctions and privileges she bestows.

She confers no higher excellence and gives no loftier station than that of motherhood: hence the big price she demands in return in the way of maternal suffering, anxiety and dread.

Her reward for their endurance, however, is also in proportion to their size and intensity.

Our Lord expresses it thus: “A woman, when she is in labor, hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she hath brought forth the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world” (John, 16, 21).

By common consent mankind gives more consideration, appreciation and gratitude to the mother than to the father. We have a fine historical illustration of this in the rapturous exclamation of the woman in regard to our Savior: “Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the breasts that nursed Thee” (Luke, 11, 27).

She centered all her admiration and gave all the credit to the mother. Jesus had no father according to the flesh, of course; yet the woman was not aware of this when she declared her sentiments.

The mother naturally seems also to get greater joy out of parenthood than does the father. She feels a sweeter transport and a higher pride in being able to point to her children and say with the ancient Roman matron: “Behold my jewels.”

In view of all this a sensible woman willingly resigns herself to the ordeal of motherhood when she feels called to it by God.

What Mankind Owes to Motherhood

It was in and through motherhood that one of our kin was elevated to the highest dignity, and endowed with the sublimest sanctity any actual or possible created being is capable of :— at the incarnation of the Son of God.

Through becoming His Mother, Mary at once and forever rose above all the angels and archangels of heaven. Through her divine motherhood she more than repaired the loss inflicted upon mankind by the first woman.

For the paradise Eve deprived us of Mary gave us heaven: a prettier, a more blessed and a more glorious heaven than we should have had, had Eve never seduced Adam to sin.

So much we owe to motherhood. What a grand privilege, then, accrues to every woman who becomes and is a mother after God’s own heart!

Your job is to help them reach this state of full and complete independence in a gradual fashion. And your success as a mother will depend to a great extent upon the amount of emancipation you permit them as they step progressively toward adulthood. Therefore you should try to judge realistically when your children truly need your help and when they do not. -Fr. George Kelly, 1950’s https://amzn.to/2NXlMld

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The Honorable Woman

14 Wednesday Sep 2022

Posted by in Beautiful Girlhood, Fascinating Womanhood, Modesty, Motherhood

≈ 2 Comments

Painting by Claude Monet

by Father Eric Flood

When we consider men and women, we know God created them equal as being human, but with differences to fulfill Divine roles.God endowed each gender with necessary capabilities, and for women, this meant gifting them with a womb to bear children.

We can even consider the Feast of the Immaculate Conception as the day the womb of St. Anne reached its perfection, and the Annunciation as the day the womb of Our Lady reached its grandeur.  At the very foundation of every female’s dignity is her capability of being a mother, and from this stems her honor, her value, and why she deserves respect, care, and protection

Let’s take a fruit tree, and examine when does an apple tree reach its full excellence?  As it is growing? in the springtime, when it has blossoms?  Is it not when the tree is full of ripe fruit?

So too a girl.  When does a female reach her fulfillment:  as she is growing as a child? when she enters the springtime of adolescence?  Is it not when she bears fruit and brings a child into the world.

This marvelous ability confided to women, bringing life into the world, requires a body designed by God to not only feed her child, but with the emotional life which is more caring and compassionate.

When a girl grows in her understanding of this honor, her behavior changes, her self-esteem is lifted up, and she places great value upon herself.  It could be said that possibly everything how women are to act and behave differently than men is rooted in their ability to bear children.

As a result, any attempt to downplay the great role of motherhood, any act to thwart her bringing forth life, injures her dignity.  It replaces her exalted ability and her exalted place in society with lesser goals: pleasure, or the pursuit of worldly achievements or recognition.

So all women, whether mothers or not, deserve to be treated in accord with this dignity, and to encourage this attitude towards are females, we will use the assistance of the image of a garden as a fitting analogy to the womb.

There are grand botanical gardens and arboretums throughout the world, displaying beautiful landscapes and plant life.  The myriad of flowers, plants, and trees arranged to radiate with beauty, splendor, and life.  What could have been a simple plot of land – is made pleasing to the eyes after great labor.

Soil needs great care, diligence, and protection to become an elegant garden, and the womb needs great attention and labor to use the fertile ground to yield the great flowers of children.

Each woman, from her childhood, devotes abundant labor into preparing and preserving her garden.  Plowing, cultivating, and removing stones, making sure the weeds of any secular thought of pleasure over purpose do not take root.

Her heart, too, is greatly involves as it learns that love is beyond a good feeling, but is to be genuinely valued for who she is.  There is an aqueduct between the heart and womb, so what the woman perceives about herself – the degree she rightly loves herself and knows she is loved by God – supplies the womb with the nutrition of charity.

In understanding her true worth, she builds a fence around the garden, enclosing it so animals cannot enter and trample the garden.  This wall is what Catholic spiritual writers call modesty.  Extending beyond clothing, as it encompasses behavior, eyes, words, and demeanor.

We find in the original Garden of Eden, the mention of only 3 persons:  Adam, Eve, and God.   So too, in this garden of the woman, the only persons the woman allows are God and the husband.  God, because He has dominion over all He created.

The husband who is given the keys to the gate of the garden on their wedding day, who has the duty to treasure it rightly as a gardener would show towards a beautiful garden.  On her wedding day, it was as if the bride told him:  “I have preserved my garden, it is precious to me, it is committed to your care, it is a place we can now walk together.

We especially implore, the Immaculate Virgin, to have continuous motherly care over our daughters, so that Our Lady, who preserved her integrity to the perfect degree, will inspire all females here the desire to preserve integrity.

For Our Lady, her garden was immaculate, and now the Gardener would not be any man, but God Himself.  His power overshadowed her (Lk. 1:35), and her womb could not be a less beautiful garden than the original Garden of Paradise.

For women, God does not grant such a noble ability of childbearing without expecting it to be treasured.  So He makes it natural for a girl to esteem her ability to bring life into the world, that from the first instance of recognizing the potential within her, a young girl begins to make a comfortable “home” for her children.

There was a boy who gave a hard boiled egg to a 2-year-old girl thinking she would drop it, then he would peel it.  But what was her reaction:  She carefully held the egg, making sure it would not be injured or broken.  A boy probably wouldn’t do this, he would throw it, to see what would happen, but the girl, it is already within her to protect the precious.

We know that a baby girl is born with all the unfertilized eggs she will most likely ever have in life.  Some speculate more may be made later, but it is a scientific fact that she is born with a tremendous number.

God gave her the eggs at birth, as well as the almost immediate instinctive care of them, like the 2 year old towards the hard boiled egg.  This means, from her infancy, she has to protect them; shielding the garden from enemies, fertilizing the soil by a virtuous life.

Obvious, then, is the importance of appropriate instruction as she matures as to the great gift of childbearing confided to her.  When a young lady understands that her value rests upon this, she more quickly acts and behaves in ways which display the awareness of her dignified position in the world.  Her true feminine dignity shines in all she does in daily life.

From the way she conducts herself around others, to her external appearance, she knows what she does either adds or takes away from her grandeur.  This should be cause for women to consider and meditate how their value, beauty, and honor is built upon, not by what in seen in the mirror, but the ability to be a mother.

Your mind, heart, and womb are so united that everything you do, can be seen in the light of bringing children into the world.  This is why people can be more surprised when women use bad language, sit in a chair like men, are overly aggressive in competition.  These forego a certain elegance of one of such tremendous dignity.

This analogy of the womb to a garden also gives a way mothers can teach daughters about the treasure they hold within.  A little girl easily understand the fragility and preciousness of flowers, and the garden-analogy associates an image of something beautiful in the world to something beautiful within.

As she matures and develops this image of a lovely garden over years of your reiterating it, she will be reassured of keeping the garden beautiful for her future husband and children.  It gives a concrete picture of the place her children will one day play, move, and enjoy living; bathing in the sunlight of motherly love.

It is good to also consider the possibility of the woman who has allowed weeds to grow in her garden?  First, just because there are weeds, it doesn’t stop being a garden.

Second, it can become elegant again; it can still be cultivated into a beautiful garden, but much effort will be required.  With the assistance of the all-powerful God beginning with confession, a vastly arrayed garden can soon flourish.

By His masterful workmanship, God turns the soil into a prosperous garden just as easily as when He took earth which “was void and empty” (Gen. 1:2), created many plants and animals, and the earth abounded with an abundance of life and beauty.

Our Lady was honored to provide a garden for Our Lord, and we extol the tremendous privilege confided to each woman here – whether God has blessed you with children or not.

Since your nobility, esteem, and value are rooted in the ability to have children, this is why it is such a sacrifice for women to become nuns and take a vow of chastity out of love for God.  But they are remembered for it… for all eternity:  for the Church has a special category for saintly women, but not a similar one for men, who made the sacrifice of not having children:  Virgins.

And for those mothers whom God asks to bring children into the world, a tremendous sacrifice is required.  Men know it, and sometimes, they don’t know what to say, but to make a joke, but it is not an easy 9 months, nor the months afterwards, nor the years following.  Why stop there, it is the sacrifice of all your life…  and your very life also.

Your children will always be your children.  Your womb, mind, and heart were so united, that even after they leave the womb, they cannot leave the mind and heart.  They are inseparable from you.

We conclude, then, with the obvious:  men know we have to treat a pregnant woman differently:  there is greater care, compassion, and a certain awe.  The challenge before every man and boy is, since you know how to treat a woman when she is pregnant, then strive to treat every female (mother, sister, daughter) the same way you would as if she were pregnant.  Show continual care, protection, and wonderment; hold her up in high esteem for the way God made her.

And not to leave all women and girls unchallenged, strive to view yourself at all times, whether pregnant or not, as having an elegant garden inside from which life comes forth, so that you live and breathe in accord with your exalted position, with grandeur, nobility, and tremendous value.

Even if not pregnant or elderly, you have a garden inside; giving the importance of behaving, dressing, and acting elegantly all the days of your life.

So that when the years of childbearing pass, the finer part of you, remains – your femininity.  Let the world stand in awe of you.  And when the end of the world arrives, you receive your body back, including your womb – your cherished garden – radiant, elegant, a treasure.

Question: If the home is such a powerful factor in the future of the children of a nation, why are such powerful groups in the nation arrayed against the home?
Answer: Precisely because the home is powerful. If it were not an important institution, the enemies of God and of man would leave it alone. Because the people who control the home control the future, because parents are the first representatives of God on earth, because within the home is the hope of morality . . . . for these reasons the men who wish to control the future, who hate God, and who would for their own selfish purposes wipe out morality attack the home openly or subtly.
-Fr. Daniel A. Lord, S.J.. Questions People Ask About Their Children, 1950’s

 

Coloring Pages for your children….

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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?”

 

 

The Delights of Motherhood ~ Clare Hardess

02 Friday Sep 2022

Posted by in Motherhood

≈ 3 Comments

by Clare Hardess (Australia)

Motherhood is a full-time occupation. Actually, it’s a life time institution under the normal circumstances of married life. You think back, as you walk the floors at night with your first born, and ask yourself whether you knew you were going to live in an institution when you married him. You’re pretty sure he didn’t mention it.

You knew about the love, honour and obey bit, but that was easy compared with stumbling round in the dark, with a SCREAMING 8 lb. bundle of selfishness that you were supposed to be bonding with.

Six or seven babies later, you’re none the wiser, but the number living in the institution has increased, and what’s more, you’re the heart of the happy place. Motherhood has tamed you, softened you, deshaped you, and sent you a bit crazy; but with the joys and delights brought by so many children, you wouldn’t have it any other way. Well, not for long anyhow.

Being a mother, you learn to be smart, among a wide range of other things. You have to be on the ball (no one else wants it), up-to-date (you kid yourself), and one step ahead (on the merry-go-round). People are right when they say there must never be a dull moment. What they don’t know is there are times when you’d give your right arm to have one. Imagine, a dull moment, all to yourself! It would have to be a little foretaste of heaven that we’re all looking forward to.

For the first four babies, I was determined to stay one step ahead. I went flat out all day, fuelled on coffee (ultra-formula), until night time, where occasionally I was rewarded with a “dull moment”. The fact that I couldn’t stay awake long enough to enjoy it didn’t matter. Somehow, I’d got through the day and that meant something.

But with age and experience also comes wisdom. With seven, soon to be eight, children, I don’t try to be one step ahead, anymore. How can you catch up with a merry-go round? In fact, I wake up in the morning planning how I’m going to get back to bed for a rest later that day.

It’s not a matter of not wanting to be in the race, it’s just a matter of arranging a little sleep, here and there, while it’s on. Living in the institution of Motherhood is fine; but we’re talking about survival here, and that’s important for mothers.

I remember, a few years ago, that my dad very generously bought me a wonderful labour- saving appliance, a dishwasher. As it wasn’t Christmas, or my birthday, I was grateful, but puzzled. Mum explained that they were continuingly worried about how hard I was working and how thin I was getting…. and they wanted to make life a little easier for me. Plus, at this rate I might DIE too soon, and they couldn’t handle the thought of having to take over and rear the kids!! Being on the ball, I asked, if I lost another ten pounds, would he consider paying off the mortgage?

There are a few hints along the way in this article which some may find helpful. All methods are 100% Catholic, tried and tested, and have no use-by-date.

Start early for a good day, and pray to the Angels and Saints to help you overcome the obstacles which are designed to send mothers around the twist, making day to day survival a real challenge. Catholic mothers are an endangered species, and we can’t afford to lose any!

Some “dull moments” really have to be planned; others present themselves, but have to be quickly snatched before they disappear. Saturday morning is a great time to organise one.

When you see your beloved husband getting ready to duck off to the hardware and a few other places, snap into action. Children are like American Express Cards. He mustn’t leave home without them! Pile them all in the car and have them ready to go as he wanders out of the workshed. Surely, a guarantee of a dull morning!

Sometimes though, husbands can be one step ahead, too. He sees the family car, all neatly packed with noisy little bodies, and side-steps it to his work-van, calling out, “Going somewhere, honey?” as he leaves. Well, you can’t win them all; but nice try. Next time, hide his keys.

The trouble with taking all the children out is that, without a doubt, you’re going to run into someone. Take last week for example, you went out in a hurry, and hoped, just for once that you’d get away with it. Not a chance. You ran straight into someone you didn’t want to see.

You were already acutely aware of the finger marks on your skirt, and your lipstick being just a little to the left, after a close encounter with the baby. Some of the kids forgot their shoes, and you weren’t game to check for clean faces. You stopped to chat, but were uneasy.

The children are polite, but prone to hanging you in public. One of them remembered the previous day’s religion lesson and asked politely, “Excuse me, but are you a Catholic or a pagan?”

If it’s moments like these you need Minties, hopefully you could choke on one and die on the spot. That at least would override the embarrassment.

It’s not always left up to the children to do the embarrassing, though. There are times you do a pretty good job of it yourself.

Just recently, I was out on my own, enjoying a dull moment, when a shop assistant said, “I know you have children … ” I looked at her. She looked at the floor, and said, “You’ve just dropped your Mickey Mouse handkerchief.” Oh well, that’s motherhood, you were just pleased there was a handkerchief left in the drawer.

Coping with little things like the above is fairly simple. It’s coping with the big troubles in life that tests the mother’s endurance. Things like plagues…. I don’t mean the Old Testament type of locusts and flies. I mean the modern day ones which are so much worse. Things like BUBBLEGUM!

Bubblegum which clings to, adheres to, and leaves its mark on everything with which it makes contact. It loves to stick around the kids; it distorts their faces, and is a cause of dribbling. When inflated it tries to envelope and consume their faces, and creep into their hair. It jumps out of bins and forever onto shoes. Its devastation is incalculable. I detest it.

Other household plagues include whistles, recorders, tissues, stickers, and Poppers. Poppers are designed to leak, squirt and spill. The straw is made to get lost in the box, and it does, everytime.

Recorders, whistles, and children should never mix, except in a large paddock; or when on a picnic and you need someone else’s table. This is the only time when bubblegum would come in handy; a bit in your ears for the few minutes it would take to clear the entire picnic ground. (Hint- once achieved, break the recorder and start the barbecue, and put the gum from your ears up the whistle).

Stickers would be okay if they would self-destruct like tissues do. But they don’t. They have a life expectancy longer than the average human-being and resist annihilation. They hold fast to every surface, and will tear paint from walls rather than give in. Even if you do succeed in removing them, their retaliation is frightening. They’ll leave an impenetrable glue in memory of the battle. Stickers are a real plague!

Tissues are on a par with bubblegum. They are just not controllable in a household full of children. No sooner is the box opened than a massive take-over of bathroom, bedroom, and living room begins. They turn up everywhere a nose has been, or is likely to go. It’s okay while you can see them, but when they hide, the real problem starts. You do a thorough search of pockets and sleeves, and have them all, you think. But one Houdini escapes and as always, makes the same getaway into a load of “darks”.

There, it suicides in the suds, and goes on to plague every item of clothing unfortunate enough to be in that wash. The Egyptians don’t know how lucky they were not to get a plague of tissues. What one on its own can do is enough.

Most of day to day family life is composed of that common substance called “trivia”. Trivia is the link between dull moments, interesting happenings, and major catastrophes. The institution of motherhood is packed with it. It’s what makes the merry-go-round keep going. In our household trivia prevails, but it’s amazing how it tends to develop when let loose.

The most ordinary situation becomes an event, and with so many spectators evolves quickly into a major affair. Comments fly from all directions, opinions are put forth, and the trivial pursuit is on. You would think that killing an insect would rate as a trivial thing. It probably does for the average family. But we’re four times the size of the average family, so killing an insect is four times the event.

Everyone gets in on the act while my husband, Peter, goes karate style with the swatter. The cockroach is chased, beaten unconscious, scrutinised, and finally given swimming lessons, before being waved good-bye down that great waterslide in the bathroom. Few dead bodies could wish for a more celebrated send off.

I was never much good with a swatter, save for Peter’s amusement, so I took to a spray can instead, and had a bit more success and fewer breakages. Once to my annoyance, only the feeblest spray emitted from the new can.

The cocky showed no signs of insecticiding; in fact he seemed to be relishing the attention. Peter was quite amused though, and reckoned it was the best job I’d ever done of waxing anything. After four coats of furniture polish, the cockroach was positively shining. Funnily enough, the next shot I had was at Peter, and for once, I hit target with the swatter. Motherhood teaches you to be fast when necessary.

It reminds me of that saying when we grew up – “the quick and the dead.” There are times when mothers would be quicker, if they didn’t feel so dead. That’s usually a sign that a rest is needed, so you go about organising a little holiday.

Your husband gets the time off work, and as the kids are home-schooled, they’re ready for a break any day. He’s never as excited about the time away as you are, but nevertheless your bags are packed and any day now you’ll be off …… off to hospital, via labour ward, for your annual leave!! Yippee!!

Everyone knows you; you’re their most regular and reliable client. They pre-book your bed the day you leave, knowing you’ll be back the next year. In fact, if you don’t ring them, they’ll call you.

After a week of “dull moments” in hospital, except for the pleasant interruptions of .a· precious new-born, ·you start to miss the institution and all its members. The merry-go-round of motherhood is calling gently, and you feel inclined to step back on and head homeward. Besides, your poor husband is so dizzied by everything, he even walks in circles when he visits. The baby has started calling him “Mum”, and it just doesn’t suit. Much as he adores his family, he’s had enough holiday.

Oh, the delights of motherhood! How they all love you, and need you. There’s a certain amount of glory that goes with being indispensable! I often look at my own parent’s empty nest and realize that the merry-go-round does grind to a halt, and everyone, eventually, does get off, just as we six children did.

And just when you think that your work is done, you become a grandmother. My parents have scored 21 grandchildren in the last 11 years, and had to build a new house just to cope with the visitors. I can wait for that.

The dull moments, the trivia, and the merry-go-round of the institution, are all a part of motherhood.

The wonderful, beautiful Catholic faith puts meaning into your vocation, that nothing else can. God provides for all your needs, even if a test or two is thrown in with all His graces. God knows what family life is like. It was all His idea in the first place.

He loved mothers so much, that he even chose one for Himself, and was so impressed that He gave Our Lady to us, also.

Who, then, could deny the prestigious VOCATION of motherhood? That’s worth thinking about each day as you go about your duties. In fact, that is the biggest delight of Motherhood.

St. Philip Neri, a priest thoroughly knowledgeable in the ways of young people, remarked: “Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and devotion to the Blessed Virgin are not simply the best way, but in fact are the only way to conserve purity. At the age of twenty, nothing but Communion can keep one’s heart pure…. Chastity is not possible without the Eucharist.” -Father Stefano Manelli, Jesus Our Eucharistic Love http://amzn.to/2GqvM3M (afflink) (Picture of Solemn Betrothal of our daughter)

 

“While you stood there in the chaos, Could you see past all the pain?

Past the sword that ripped your soul, To your son’s triumphant reign?

Did the sands there of Golgotha Scratch lines into your face,

Mixing with the blood of Jesus, Dearest Lady, full of grace?

While you stayed beneath his shadow, While he hung there on the cross,

Could you feel your own wounds bleeding, As his blood fell to the rocks?

As the turmoil clutched your saddened soul, Did your heart completely break?

Could you hear the soldier cursing When his hammer hit the stake?

The Prophecy of Simeon, Had it at last come true,

Where the thoughts of many people Would lay bare because of you?

Was it when the earth was quaking That reality set in,

Your son had died to save our souls, Because of all our sin?

I ask you all these questions as I’m leading up to one.

Can you forgive me, Blessed Mother, For the dying of your son?”

― Donna Sue Berry, The Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Lovely items on Meadows of Grace…

Women historically have been denigrated as lower than men or viewed as privileged. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand characterizes the difference between such views as based on whether man’s vision is secularistic or steeped in the supernatural. She shows that feminism’s attempts to gain equality with men by imitation of men is unnatural, foolish, destructive, and self-defeating. The Blessed Mother’s role in the Incarnation points to the true privilege of being a woman. Both virginity and maternity meet in Mary who exhibits the feminine gifts of purity, receptivity to God’s word, and life-giving nurturance at their highest.

You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriages. As the author says: If someone were to give me many short bits of wool, most likely I would throw them away. A carpet weaver thinks differently. He knows the marvels we can achieve by using small things artfully and lovingly. Like the carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day the precious bits of wool she s been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love.

This remarkable book will show you how to start weaving love into the tapestry of your marriage today, as it leads you more deeply into the joys of love.

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Keeping the House ~ The Gentle Art of Homemaking, 1894, Annie S. Swan

22 Monday Aug 2022

Posted by in Motherhood, Organization Skills

≈ 5 Comments

This is a gentle reminder to all mothers to make sure we are teaching our girls the basics of domesticity. It is also a nudge to young, single women,  to roll up their sleeves and do what it takes to learn the basics of homemaking so they can step into marriage with somewhat of a knowledge of how a house is run, etc.

From Courtship and Marriage and the Gentle Art of Homemaking  by Annie S. Swan, 1894

Making the home and keeping the house are two different things, though closely allied. Having considered the graces of mind and heart which so largely contribute to the successful art of home-making, it is not less necessary that we now devote our attention to the more practical, and certainly not less important, quality of housekeeping.

Ignorance of the prosaic details of housekeeping is the primary cause of much of the domestic worry and discomfort that exist, to say nothing of the more serious discords that may arise from such a defect in the fitness of the woman supposed to be the homemaker.

For such ignorance, or lack of fitness, to use a milder term, there does not appear to me to be any excuse; it is so needless, so often willful.

Some blame careless, indifferent mothers, who do not seem to have profited by their own experience, but allow their daughters to grow up in idleness, and launch them on the sea of matrimony with a very faint idea of what is required of them in their new sphere.

It is very reprehensible conduct on the part of such mothers, and if in a short time the bright sky of their daughters’ happiness begins to cloud a little, they need not wonder or feel aggrieved.

A man is quite justified in expecting and exacting a moderate degree of comfort at least in his own house, and if it is not forthcoming may be forgiven a complaint.

He is to be pitied, but his unhappy wife much more deserves our pity, since she finds herself amid a sea of troubles, at the mercy of her servants, if she possesses them; and if moderate circumstances necessitate the performance of the bulk of household duties, then her predicament is melancholy indeed.

To revert again to our Angelina and Edwin of the comic papers, we have the threadbare jokes at the expense of the new husband subjected to the ordeal of Angelina’s awful cooking.

At first he is forbearing and encouraging; but in the end, when no improvement is visible, the honeymoon begins to wane much more rapidly than either anticipated.

Edwin becomes sulky, discontented, and complaining; Angelina tearful or indignant, as her temperament dictates, but equally and miserably helpless. The chances are that time will not improve but rather aggravate her troubles, especially if the cares of motherhood be added to those of wifehood, which she finds quite enough for her capacities.

True, some women have a clever knack of adapting themselves readily to every circumstance, and pick up knowledge with amazing rapidity.

If they are by nature housewifely women, they will triumph over the faults of their early training, and after sundry mistakes and a good deal of unnecessary expenditure may develop into fairly competent housewives.

But it is a dangerous and trying experiment, which ought not to be made, because there is absolutely no need for it.

It is the duty of every mother who has daughters entrusted to her care to begin early to train them in domestic work. A Wise woman will take care to show her young daughters, as time and opportunity offer, every secret contained in the domestic répertoire.

“When the results of life are all gathered up—it will probably be seen that the things in us which have made the deepest and most lasting impressions in our homes and upon our children—have not been the things we did with purpose and intention, planning to produce a certain effect—but the things we did when we were not thinking of training or influencing or affecting any other life!” -J.R. Miller

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Hectic Days for Helen

18 Wednesday May 2022

Posted by in Attitude, by Leane Vdp, Motherhood

≈ 2 Comments

by Leane VanderPutten

The July day was sunny, the scent of petunias wafted in the air. The air was cooling off a bit and the breeze softly wafted through the branches of the trees. Summer was at its peak.

But Helen was not enjoying the breeze or the flowers.

Helen was tired. Not for any particular reason. Yes, it was summer, the kids were done with their home school and, instead of life slowing down, things seemed to have sped up.

June and July had been particularly hot, they didn’t have a pool, so the children spent time indoors during the heat of the day. Without the schedule of school, mayhem seemed to reign with more frequency than Helen liked.

Helen’s husband, Mark, was working lots of hours. Summer was the time his work became very demanding because he was in the construction field. So he was not around much to help out. And when he got home he was tired and even cranky at times.

“Such is life,” Helen sighed. Lately, things hadn’t been working out the way she had imagined. Instead of enjoying the so-called “lazy days of summer” she was fighting inner turmoil.  She was struggling through the days, battling thoughts of self-pity and complaining.

“Why can’t the kids be quiet now on again?”

“Dirty diapers, dishes, it’s discouraging,” she thought. “And life is only going to get more and more hectic as the years go by. I just don’t know if I can do this!”

This day had been particularly trying so when rosary time came around, amid the slouching children and wriggling baby, she implored Our Lady to help her.

The next day Helen woke up with a terrific pain in her side that didn’t want to leave. It was debilitating so she had to call in a babysitter to take over.

That night was sleepless. The next day, after a doctor’s appointment, she started an antibiotic for a bladder infection.

The antibiotic didn’t work so another one was tried. That one alleviated some of the symptoms for a short while but they came back with a vengeance.

The next couple of weeks were harder than ever for Helen. The worst part was the worry. She didn’t know what this mysterious pain was and, since they didn’t have insurance, she wasn’t going to run in and have a bunch of tests done. At least not right away.

So she was stuck worrying. What happens if it was something really bad? She’d find herself looking at her kids and imagine leaving them to fend for themselves in a crazy world.

When her husband came home,  her thoughts wandered to whether he would be left alone… If this was something that could actually take her life? She pushed a lot of those thoughts away but with her melancholic nature, they kept creeping back.

After a very bad night, finally, Helen went back to the doctor….this time a different doctor. He heard all the symptoms and told her that it sounded like she was just trying to pass a kidney stone.

This was news to Helen! She didn’t understand why the first doctor didn’t spot that?

Her step was a little lighter as she left the doctor’s office even though she still had pain. She got home and drank lots and lots of lemon water and took hydrangea tincture.

Within a few of days, she passed that kidney stone and was feeling much better!

The pain was gone, but the best part was that the worry was gone! With all the imaginings of her having a dread disease she had been tied up in knots!
Now that she knew things were OK, her heart filled with joy and thanksgiving!

The following days things began to get back to normal – hectic life came back full force.

But Helen’s heart had changed, indeed!

It still wasn’t easy to drag herself out of bed in the morning, but her heart was filled with thanksgiving because she could actually get up and take care of her children. Were the children any quieter? No. But she appreciated the laughter and the noise instead of always fighting against it. Did hubby come home earlier? No. But she was grateful that her husband had the work that he did and was not upset that he wasn’t around to help.

Her heart sang as she did the dishes.

She still got impatient, things weren’t flawless, but Helen was seeing things through different eyes.

She thought back on that evening when she implored Our Lady, during the rosary, to help her. She realized how much she had helped – maybe not in the way she had wanted or expected but it didn’t matter. She knew it was a gift right from her Mother‘s hands!

The summer days passed quickly. There were many joys in between the rough spots. Helen had learned a lesson. She hoped it would stick. She prayed it would stick.

Those weeks when things got rather dark for her taught her something special besides being grateful for the daily grind. She made up her mind that she would thank God for her crosses as she was going through them, knowing that He had the best possible plan in mind for her and that good would come from them.

It also came home to her that each new day was a gift. She would work hard at tuning her mind into that at the beginning of the day so that when the day ramped up she would have a spirit of gratefulness in spite of everything else.

As Helen sat outside in the early autumn breeze of the evening, amidst the floating aroma of the petunias, she thought to herself, “Indeed, it has been a very productive summer!”

Is it all about being right when we are having a disagreement? Do we need to be on the defensive each time we feel he is being unreasonable? That only seems fair, doesn’t it? Well, go ahead. But your relationship will suffer. It is more important, not that you “win” or that you always come out feeling like you gave the last verbal punch. Like Our Lord, we win through kindness and meekness.
What it comes down to is: Do you want to be RIGHT or do you want to be HAPPY? “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you!” www.finerfem.com

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Father talks about how important our duties of our vocation are, that they are the will of God for us, we need look no further. He touches on the specific duties of each of our different walks of life….

 

 

 

A Tribute to Mothers

08 Sunday May 2022

Posted by in Motherhood

≈ 2 Comments

Happy Mother’s Day to Mothers Everywhere…..to mothers who give and give and then give some more. It is what we were made for, it is what we live for and it will be what we die for. Once a mother, always a mother. We watch them come into the world, we nurture them, try to solve their problems, and then watch them as they leave and embark on their own journeys.

We pray for them, we hurt for them, we rejoice for them. Whether they are near or far, our hearts are entwined with theirs. It is bittersweet…..more sweet than bitter!

“A mother will never desert her child. For she loves them with a love that is as strong and deep as life itself.”

Angelo and Mom (me)

My Mom

A Tribute to Mothers by Rev. John A. O’Brien, 1953

By universal proclamation our nation has added another memorial day to her calendar – Mother’s Day.

It is a day on which we pause to pay the tribute of our love and reverence to our mothers if living, to their memory if dead. It is eminently fitting that we should thus pause for a brief moment in the turmoil of life to give explicit expression to sentiments which have been latent in the hearts of each of us throughout all the days of the year.

It is good psychology to give fitting expression to such sentiments. For instead of allowing them to wane, we thereby strengthen and intensify them.

Such considerations are, moreover, wholesome and salutary for us because they render us more clearly conscious of the debt we owe our mothers.

“Motherhood,” says Frederick A. Stowe, “is the Gethsemane of nature.”

When the child is born the mother begins to die—die for the new life dearer than her own, die in service for another, die in dreams of peaceful valleys she shall not enter, die upon battlefields whose shouts of victory she shall not hear.

No sacrifice for the young is begrudged by the mother. Toward the sun of a new life, all nature turns. The springtide bursts with prodigality but there is not a drop of sap for the autumnal leaf. At the meridian declination begins. Reproduction is the inexorable ambition of the material world.

“In its spiritual aspects, motherhood is isolated because it is great. There is no speculation as to mother’s status. Conceded eminence is as lonely as some crag which lifts its head above the fugitive clouds and defies the furious winds below.

Youth loves to dwell in the warm valleys of patronage. It is eager for adventure and the conquests of blood. It rushes toward prospects and is ever willing to take a chance.

Reflection is the fruit of maturity. We do not begin to bear sense until passions are spent, and Time, which is a strict accountant, demands an audit.”

Various Kinds of Love

There are various kinds of love on this earth. There is the love of a friend for a friend, of a chum for his chum.

It is a beautiful sentiment and one which all the world admires. But friends fall out at times; the love cools and even turns to hatred.

There is the love of sweethearts. It is beautiful and tender and sweet. But sometimes the fancy changes, the romance fades, and sweethearts part.

There is the love of husband and wife, tender true and sanctified by divine grace. But the world witnesses at times the separation even of husband and wife, the pitiful tragedy of a broken home.

Then there is the love of a mother for her child. It is the climax of all human love – as strong as the great rugged Alpine Mountain peaks, as tender as the breath of an angel, as infinite as the measureless waters of the ocean, as changeless as the stars that shine eternally in the skies.

Friends may fall out, the romance of sweethearts may fade, husband and wife may separate, but a mother will never desert her boy. For she loves him with a love that is as strong and deep as life itself.

Aye, it seems to rise above all human love, and to burn with a spark that was caught from the flame of the love that is eternal and divine–the love of God for man.

I like to think that God has given us a foreshadowing and a foretaste of His own infinite love for human souls in the love He has planted in a mother’s breast.

From the Prayer Book Precious Blood and Mother:

There are soft words murmured by dear, dear lips,
Far richer than any other;
But the sweetest word that the ear hath heard
Is the blessed name of “Mother.”

O magical word! May it never die,
From the lips that love to speak it.
Nor melt away from the trusting heart,
That even would break to keep it.

Was there ever a name that lived like this?
Will there ever be such another?
The Angels have reared in Heaven a shrine
To the holy name of “Mother.”

 

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“For years, while raising children, a mother’s time is never her own, her own needs have to be kept in second place, and every time she turns around a hand is reaching out and demanding something. Hence, a mother raising children, perhaps in a more privileged way even than a professional contemplative, is forced, almost against her will, to constantly stretch her heart.”

Fortunate the child whose mother stands by its cradle like a Guardian Angel to inspire and lead it in the path of goodness! – Pope Pius XII

“Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!” 🙂

Richard “Dick” Sargent (1911-1979)

 

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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?”

How To Be a Good Mother ~ Rev. George A. Kelly

06 Friday May 2022

Posted by in Catholic Family Handbook, Rev. George A. Kelly, Motherhood, Parenting

≈ 1 Comment

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Close to Mother’s Day is a good time to think about motherhood.

Timeless advice from a very smart priest!

iphone-summer-2013-211-002 photo-2The Catholic Family Handbook – Father George Kelly

In view of the many social evils resulting from the decline in the father’s influence, one of the most important functions the modern mother should perform is to help maintain or restore the father’s position of authority in the family. In doing so, you will fulfill your own role as a wife and mother to a greater extent than is possible when you permit your husband to be the lesser figure.

This was the secret of the success of olden fathers. Even though they worked twelve hours a day, their dominant role in the home was guaranteed and protected by the mother.

You can make your greatest contribution to your family as the heart of your home–not its head. From you, your children should learn to love others and to give of themselves unstintingly in the spirit of sacrifice. Never underestimate the importance of your role. For upon you depends the emotional growth of your children, and such growth will better prepare them to live happy and holy lives than any amount of intellectual training they may receive.

Most of us know persons who have received the finest educations which universities can bestow, who yet lead miserable lives because they have never achieved a capacity to love.

On the other hand, we also know of men and women whose intellectual achievements are below normal but whose lives are filled with happiness because their mothers showed them how to love other human beings.

It follows that in helping your child to satisfy his basic emotional needs to love and be loved, you give something as necessary as food for his full development. So do not be beguiled by aspirations for a worldly career or by the desire to prove yourself as intelligent as men or as capable in affairs of the world as they.

The father must always remain a public figure. The mother is the domestic figure par excellence. In teaching your child the meaning of unselfish love you will achieve a greater good than almost any other accomplishment of which human beings are capable.

You are the most important person your child will ever know. Your relationship with him will transcend, in depth of feeling, any other relationship he probably will ever have–even the one with his marriage partner.

As noted above, from you he will learn what true love really is. From the tenderness you show and the security you give, you will develop his attitudes toward other human beings which will always remain with him.

However, his dependence on you begins to wane soon after birth–and continues to wane for the rest of your life. In his first years, naturally, he will rely upon you almost entirely–not only for food, but also to help him perform his most elementary acts.

But soon he learns to walk and to do other things for himself; when he goes to school he can dress himself; when he reaches adolescence and strives for the freedom that adults know, he will try to throw off his dependence so violently that you may fear that you have lost all hold upon him.

Your job is to help him reach this state of full and complete independence in a gradual fashion. And your success as a mother will depend to a great extent upon the amount of emancipation you permit him as he steps progressively toward adulthood. Therefore you should try to judge realistically when your child truly needs your help and when he does not.

If you can reach the happy medium wherein you do for your child only what he cannot do for himself, you will avoid dominating him or overindulging him.

The dominant mother makes all decisions for Johnny and treats him as though he had no mind of his own; the overindulgent mother will never permit her Mary to be frustrated in any wish, or to be forbidden any pleasure her little heart desires.

The overindulgent mother may do without the shoes she needs to buy a doll for her Annie; she may stop what she is doing to help Johnny find the comic book he has misplaced; she may eat the leftovers in the refrigerator while she gives the freshly prepared food to her children.

The overindulgent mother is a common character in literature. Probably every American woman has seen movies and television programs, and has read stories in magazines and newspapers, in which these defects were pointed out.

Yet every new generation of mothers seems to practice the same extreme of behavior. Some excuse themselves by saying that they want to give their children every advantage in life.

Such an intention is laudable, perhaps, but the method is impractical. If you want to do the best for your child, let him develop so that he can face life on his own feet. Overindulging him denies him his right to develop his own resources and thus defeats the purpose of your mission as a mother.

Someone once remarked in jest that as part of her education for motherhood, every woman should visit the psychiatric ward of an army hospital. If you could see the countless examples of mental disorders caused largely by the failure of mothers to sever the apron strings to their child, you could easily understand why–for the sake of your child’s emotional self–you must make it a primary aim to help him to develop as an independent person.

Priests and psychiatrists often see problems from different angles, yet they display striking agreement in pinpointing other kinds of maternal conduct which do great harm to the child. Their advice might be summarized as follows:

Don’t be an autocrat who always knows best. Your child may have his own way of doing things, which may seem to be inefficient or time-consuming. Have patience and let him do things his way, thus giving him the opportunity to learn by trial and error.

Don’t be a martyr. Naturally, you must make sacrifices. But do not go to such extremes that your child feels guilty when you deny yourself something which rightfully should be yours, in order to give him what rightfully should not be his.

A typical martyr worked at night in a laundry to pay her son’s way through college. Before his graduation, he asked her not to appear at the ceremony–he said she would be dressed so poorly that he would be embarrassed.

Don’t think you have the perfect child. Some mothers, when their child receives low grades, appear at school to determine, not what is wrong with him, but what is wrong with the teachers.

When such a mother learns that her son has been punished for disobedience, she descends upon the school officials and demands an apology. By her actions she undermines the child’s respect for all authority–including her own.

You will probably be on safe ground, until your child is canonized at St. Peter’s, if you conclude that he has the same human faults and weaknesses that you see in your neighbors’ children.

Don’t use a sickbed as your throne. The “whining” mother feigns illness to attract sympathy and to force her children to do as she wills. Who would deny the last wish of a dying person? In this vein she often gets what she wants–for a while. The usual, final result, however, is that her children lose both sympathy and respect for her.

Don’t be a “glamor girl.” Motherhood is not a task for a woman who thinks that ordinary housework–preparing meals, making beds, washing clothes–is beneath her.

Of course, mothers should strive to maintain a pleasing appearance, but they should also realize that they are most attractive when they are fulfilling the duties of their noble vocation.

You would embarrass your family if you insisted on acting and dressing like a teenager; and, if you adopted a demeaning attitude toward household tasks, you would teach your children that motherhood and its responsibilities are unworthy of respect.

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fall finer fem quote for the day fall
“In the Catholic home there is that modern rarity–fidelity between husband and wife. There is great reverence for parents by the children, great protection of weaker members by the stronger, and a great awareness of the dignity and rights of every member of the family. The Catholic woman has attained a height of respect and authority which cannot be found anywhere else, and the chief factor in her improvement has been the Church’s teaching on chastity, conjugal equality, the sacredness of motherhood, and the supernatural end of the family, in imitation of the Holy Family of Nazareth.” – Rev. George A. Kelly, The Catholic Family Handbook

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