Now if you will face honestly the facts about your own destiny, then almost automatically you will rear your children to face honestly and bravely the facts about theirs. And if you do that, you will have prepared your children properly for life – for this life and life everlasting…. An article from The Family and the Cross by Joseph Breig, 1959
St. Francis de Sales on the company we keep: “Be very careful, therefore, dear reader, not to have any evil love, because you will in turn quickly become evil yourself.
Friendship is the most dangerous of all love. Why? Because other loves can exist without communication, exchange, closeness. But friendship is completely founded upon communication and exchange and cannot exist in practice without sharing in the qualities and defects of the friend loved.”
by Cardinal Mercier:
I am going to show you a secret to holiness and happiness. For five minutes every day let your imagination be quiet, close your eyes to everything they see, and shut your ears to of all the world’s noise so that you can withdraw into the sanctuary of your baptized soul, the temple of the Holy Ghost.
And speak to that Holy Spirit and say to Him:
“Holy Spirit, soul of my soul, I adore Thee. Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen and comfort me. Tell me what I ought to do and order me to do it. I promise to submit to anything that Thou requirest from me, and to accept everything that Thou allowest to happen to me. Just show me what Thy will is.”
If you do this your life will be quiet and peaceful, and comfort will abound even in the middle of troubles. For grace will be given to match any stress together with strength to bear it, grace that will take you to the gates of Paradise, full of merit. Such submission to the Holy Spirit is the secret of holiness.
This is a unique book of Catholic devotions for young children. There is nothing routine and formal about these stories. They are interesting, full of warmth and dipped right out of life. These anecdotes will help children know about God, as each one unfolds a truth about the saints, the Church, the virtues, etc. These are short faith-filled stories, with a few questions and a prayer following each one, enabling the moral of each story to sink into the minds of your little ones. The stories are only a page long so tired mothers, who still want to give that “tucking in” time a special touch, or pause a brief moment during their busy day to gather her children around her, can feel good about bringing the realities of our faith to the minds of her children in a childlike, (though not childish), way. There is a small poem and a picture at the end of each story. Your children will be straining their necks to see the sweet pictures! Through these small stories, parents will sow seeds of our Holy Catholic Faith that will enrich their families all the years to come!
This revised 1922 classic offers gentle guidance for preteen and teenage girls on how to become a godly woman. Full of charm and sentiment, it will help mother and daughter establish a comfortable rapport for discussions about building character, friendships, obedience, high ideals, a cheerful spirit, modest dress, a pure heart, and a consecrated life.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
But you ask me…At what time should I pray? I answer. Begin in the morning when you first get up. Then you are beginning a new day. A great number of things will take place during that day. It may turn out very much to your soul’s advantage, or it may be quite the other way. Then it is well early in the morning to make a good start for the day.
If a good thought, a holy resolution, or a pious wish gets entrance first into your soul, it will go far to keep everything right during the day and make it a fruitful one for the love of God and virtue. Then, as soon as you can after waking, try to think some pious thought or make some pious wish.
For example: “God keep me from sin this day,” or “May I pass this day so that I shall be more secure of heaven at night!”
When you wash your face and hands, say “Wash me more and more from my sins.” When you dress, say, “Clothe me with justice, with true virtues, that I may be pleasing in Thy sight.” Such practices are very good; they have a greater effect than they seem to have at the time, and prepare the soul for prayer.
When you are dressed, try to get a little time to kneel down and make a prayer to God, to recommend yourself to Him, to beg His protection for the day, to make a good intention to please God in all you do or have to suffer.
“Oh! but I have no time for this. My work is so hard and so pressing. The breakfast must be got so early; I must get off to my work in a hurry.”
Well, I know this will often be the case—a poor girl will hardly have time, as they say, to turn around; but for all that, take a little time to pray. God will accept a little under such circumstances and give as much grace as if you had spent more time, for He sees that you have trouble to give Him even that little. Get up five minutes earlier and give Him that five minutes, and you cannot tell what a benefit it will draw down upon your soul.
If you had a dear friend who was going away early in the morning, how gladly you would leave your bed half an hour earlier to bid him goodbye. Why not, then, devote at least a few minutes of your sleeping time, in order that you may talk with the Blessed Savior, and get your heart bent and inclined to spend the whole day cheerfully and joyfully in His service.
But sometimes one gets up, as they say, wrong foot foremost—that is, one feels so out of sorts, so cross and ill-natured, that one hardly knows what to do with one’s self. At such times everything looks dark, and is likely to go wrong; and many a poor girl who has not the habit of turning to God in prayer is turned all that day to evil, to passion, to dark and melancholy and wicked thoughts.
Many a one has lost a good place by simply giving way to such feelings. It is on such occasions, and they will happen to everyone sometimes, that we see the power and loveliness of the habit of offering one’s self with fervor to God in the morning.
As soon as this dark and melancholy humor comes over one, this offering changes it all into a sweet and calm resignation to the holy will of God. The dreariness of the world inspires a longing for God and heaven, and all that would foster sin and evil habits of passion now only draws and unites one more closely to God, according to Holy Scripture: “All things work together for good to those who love the Lord.” (Rom. viii. 28).
Then never mind how you feel in the morning; if you are out of sorts, if you feel ill-humored and cross, if you feel even wicked and inclined to evil, if praying is burdensome to you—go right on, all the same; cast yourself on God your Savior; tell Him that at least you desire to be good; that you will not give way to these evil feelings, that you cannot help them; but you wish to be always mild, and good, and gentle, and ask the grace that you may go on and do your duty, and imitate your Lord the same as if you felt ever so devout.
I cannot tell you how much you gain by such a course. These are the very times when we triumph over the devil, when we are dearest to God, advance the most in virtue, and go farthest in fixing the soul, so that it cannot be moved, in all that is good.
Then, on no account, though your occupation may give you little time, never omit this offering of yourself to God in the morning, and unite yourself to Him with fervor and with your whole soul.
All this is not so easy at first because you are not accustomed to it. But it will soon become easy, and you will get so used to it and so fond of it that you would as soon lose your breakfast as to omit it.
If called away suddenly from your prayers, your heart would continue to speak to God, though your hands and feet were occupied with something else, and you would perhaps pray with more fervor than if you had plenty of time at your own disposal.
NEW PODCAST… At the end of the day, you need to first and foremost be patient with yourself….look back on the day and see the energy you DID EXPEND for your family….
Children pray the rosary in Ukraine for peace in their country….
Thank you for all the lovely and encouraging comments on my Giveaway Post. You are wonderful and I continue to do this for all of you (and for me, too!), so we may bring back wholesome femininity to this broken world of ours. And any prayers are so much appreciated!
And now…the Winner of the Finer Femininity Giveaway is…..
Congratulations, Crystal! I have sent you an email.
New! The Lenten Way of the Cross Picturesque and Prayer-Filled Cards with Handcrafted Wooden Card Holder ~ Family/Children Activity!
Help make Lent more meaningful for you and your family with the Lenten Way of the Cross Cards!
Follow along with your family and prepare your hearts for the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord each year at Lent and Easter using these special picturesque and prayer-filled cards to help keep your mind and heart focused each day There are 41 cards in total.
Keep the cards in a visible spot in your home as a reminder to you and your children.
Comes with the handmade wooden card holder. Cards are approximately 7″ X 4 1/2″. (The wooden card holder is made with the wood from 100 year old pews that were made by boys in a Catholic School in the 1800’s! *While supplies last on this one).
You can look up more details on the Lenten Way of the Cross here.
This journal will lay out some simple activities in which your children will be doing their sacrifices and will have a tangible means of “counting” them for Jesus. You, Mom, will have a place to put a check mark if that the activity is remembered and completed for the day. This journal also includes a place for you to check off whether you are fulfilling your own personal resolutions…your Spiritual Reading, your Family Rosary, etc.
We live in an age characterized by agitation and lack of peace. This tendency manifests itself in our spiritual as well as our secular life. In our search for God and holiness, in our service to our neighbor, a kind of restlessness and anxiety take the place of the confidence and peace which ought to be ours. What must we do to overcome the moments of fear and distress which assail us? How can we learn to place all our confidence in God and abandon ourselves into his loving care? This is what is taught in this simple, yet profound little treatise on peace of head. Taking concrete examples from our everyday life, the author invites us to respond in a Gospel fashion to the upsetting situations we must all confront. Since peace of heart is a pure gift of God, it is something we should seek, pursue and ask him for without cease. This book is here to help us in that pursuit.
Reverend Irala here addresses ways to promote mental and emotional well-being to help increase one’s health, efficiency and happiness. He speaks on topics such as how to rest, think, use the will, control feelings, train the sexual instinct, be happy, and choose an ideal. Included are also many practical instructions on dealing with mental struggles of all kinds. This book is most useful in our present times of worldly confusion.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
Many persons fail to make a distinction between the presence of God in their souls and the consciousness of this adorable presence, between faith and the sensible feeling of faith.
This shows a great want of discernment. When they do not realize God’s presence dwelling within them, they suppose He has withdrawn himself through some fault of theirs.
This is an ignorant and hurtful error. A man who endures martyrdom for love of God does not think actually and exclusively of God but much of his own sufferings; and yet the absence of this feeling of faith does not deprive him of the great merit due to his faith and the resolutions it caused him to make and to keep.
Your vocal prayers should be few in number but said with great fervor. The strength derived from food does not depend upon the quantity taken but upon its being well digested.
Far better one Our Father or one Psalm said with devout attention than entire rosaries and long offices recited hurriedly and with restless eagerness.
If you feel whilst saying vocal prayers—those not of obligation—that God invites you to meditate, gently and promptly follow this divine impulse.
You may be sure that in doing so you make an exchange most profitable to yourself and agreeable to God from whom the inspiration comes.
Prepare yourself for prayer by peaceful recollection and begin it without agitation or uneasiness.
St. Francis de Sales has this to say on the subject: “Some little time before you are going to pray, calm and compose your heart, and be hopeful of doing well; for if you begin without hope and already devoid of relish, you will find it difficult to regain an appetite…. The disquiet you experience in prayer, accompanied by great eagerness to discover some object that can fix and satisfy your thoughts, is of itself sufficient to prevent you finding what you seek.
When a thing is searched for with too great eagerness, one may have his hands or his eyes almost upon it a hundred times and yet fail to perceive it. This vain and useless anxiety in regard to prayer can result in nothing but weariness of mind, and this in turn produces coldness and apathy in your soul.”
Be careful not to overburden yourself with too many prayers, either mental or vocal. As soon as you feel uncontrollable weariness or distaste, postpone your prayers, if possible, and seek relief in some pleasant pastime, or conversation, or in any other innocent diversion.
This advice is given by St. Thomas and other learned Fathers of the Church and is of the utmost importance. Follow it conscientiously, for lassitude of mind begets coldness and a kind of spiritual stupor.
Never repeat a prayer, even should you have said it with many distractions. You cannot imagine the innumerable difficulties in which you may become entangled by the habit of repeating your prayers. Therefore I beg of you not to do it.
*In St. Ignatius’ time there was a certain religious of the Society of Jesus who was a victim of this kind of scruple. The recital of the daily Office always kept him much longer than was necessary because he would repeat again and again and for hours at a time any passage that he suspected had not been said with sufficient attention.
St. Ignatius tried to correct him by various means, but in vain. At length the thought occurred that one scruple might be cured by another.
He therefore commanded the poor Jesuit, under pain of sin and in virtue of religious obedience, to close his breviary every day at the end of a specified time, this being just enough to allow him to read the Office through once and rather quickly.
The first day the religious was obliged to stop before he had half finished. This caused him such intense regret that ere long the fear of not being able to say the entire Office made him contract the habit of finishing it within the allotted time.
* Begin your prayer with the desire of being very recollected. This is all that is necessary. “A desire has the same value in the sight of God as a good work”, says St. Gregory the Great, “when the accomplishment of it does not depend upon our will.”
During these involuntary distractions God withdraws the sensible feeling of His presence, but His love remains in the depths of our hearts. St. Theresa, in the midst of dryness and distractions, was wont to say: “If I am not praying I am at least doing penance.”
I should say: you are doing both the one and the other: you do penance by all that you are suffering, you pray by the desire and intention you have to do so.
You should never repeat a prayer nor a point in your meditation even if you have had in the inferior portion of your soul ideas and feelings at variance with the words pronounced by your lips or with the sentiments you wished to excite in your heart.
Nay, do not be induced to do it, even were these ideas and feelings injurious to God. Under such conditions, be careful not to give way to anxiety and agitation and do not try to make reparation for an imaginary offense.
Continue your prayer in peace as if nothing had disturbed it, not taking the trouble to notice these dogs that come from the devil and that can bark around you while you pray in order to distract you, if may be, but that cannot bite you unless you let them.
“This temptation should be treated exactly the same as temptations of the flesh: do not dispute with it at all, rather imitate the children of Israel who made no attempt to break the bones of the paschal lamb but cast them into the fire.
You need not answer the enemy, nor even pretend to hear what he says. Let the wretch clamor at the door as much as he wants to, it is not even necessary to call: Who is there? What you tell me is no doubt true, you say, but he annoys me and the uproar he makes prevents those within from hearing one another speak.
That makes no difference. Have patience, prostrate yourself before God and remain at his feet. He will understand from your very attitude, although you utter no words, that you are his and that you crave his help.
Above all, however, keep yourself well within and do not on any account open the door, either to see who it is, or to drive the importunate fellow away. Eventually he will tire of shouting and will leave you in peace.”
St. Augustine says that the devil is a formidable giant to those who fear him, but only a miserable dwarf to those who despise him.
“As a family, try to lead a hidden life with Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. Through holy Mass, offer yourselves through Mary’s hands as a sacrifice with Jesus; at Holy Communion, you will be changed into Jesus by divine grace so that you may live His life; by your visits to the tabernacle, you will enjoy His friendship in the midst of the many problems of life.” -Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik. The Catholic Family Handbook (Photo from our daughter’s wedding)
Why did the Saints love to pray? Just because they knew and they felt that they were talking to God. Therefore, far from being wearisome it was an immense joy for them to pray… From Father Paul O’Sullivan, How to Be Happy, How to Be Holy
On the twelve days of Christmas my true love sent to me the feast of St. Stephen and the story of King Wenceslaus, the feasts of St. John the Evangelist and the Holy Innocents, the feasts of the Circumcision and the Holy Name of Jesus, and the feast of the Epiphany. And on through the feast of the Holy Family and the commemoration of the Baptism of Christ.
If you are loath to bid farewell to Christmas even then, you may continue it without interruption until Candlemas Day, February 2. However you keep it, long or short, it is a far longer season for the Catholic child than the world understands.
For him festivity is not officially over with the last wrapping torn off the last gift, or the last nut retrieved from the last toe in the last stocking.
The Church would have us enjoy this season now that it is here, and celebrate the feasts that follow. In order to indulge exhausted parents already drained of their grandest efforts for Christmas, try keeping Christmas-week feast days simply, using Christmas treats for desserts, and storytelling, reading aloud, and charades for entertainments.
A Prayer for the Sixth Day of Christmas
Eggs are an almost universal symbol of new life. The “laying” geese, therefore, stand for the six days of creation (Gen. 1:31-2:2).
A Prayer for the Sixth Day of Christmas, based on the prayer “His Priorities” in The Power of a Praying Wife:
Dear Blessed Mother, you are my example and my inspiration. Please help me to seek Our Lord first in everything I do. Please help me, as this New Year sets in, to set my priorities in perfect order.
Please help me to love my husband and put him before the other people and things in my life….before my children, my work, family, friends, activities and hobbies.
Please help me to strengthen the bond with him and let him know that he is a priority in my life. Please heal the the times I have caused my husband to doubt this.
Please show me how to prioritize everything so that whatever steals life away, or has no lasting purpose, I will have the grace to eradicate from my life.
I pray for my husband – that his priorities will be in perfect order, also. May he make you the King of his heart more each day. May he simplify his life so he will be able to place You first.
Please help him, also, to place me and our children in greater importance than his career, his friends and his activities.
May we both seek you FIRST and submit our all to You. When we do this, Lord, I know that the other pieces of our lives will fit together perfectly.
Amen.
Happy Sixth Day of Christmas! 💝❄️ Be kind to those who cross your path. If someone you meet today is cross or rude, if someone makes a mistake or shows contempt, give them the benefit of the doubt. You never know what is going on inside a person or what they are going through. Offer it up for that person. It is the most loving thing you can do. -Finer Femininity
The Catholic Church is a Church of Martyrs: Homily on the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Fr speaks about the Christmas song “the 12 days of Christmas” & the meaning behind the carol.
This Maglet (magazine/booklet) is for you…dear young (and not-so-young), Catholic, Feminine Soul. It is a compilation of traditional, valuable Catholic articles on the subjects that touch the hearts of serious-minded Catholic young ladies. There are articles on courtship, purity, singleness, vocation, prayer, confession, friends, tea parties, obedience, etc. This information is solid, written by orthodox Catholic writers (most of them gone to their eternal home) that cared about the proper formation of a young Catholic adult in a confused world. Take this information to heart and your journey through adulthood will be filled with many blessings! It is 40 pages, packed with information.Available here.
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.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
A Favorite Christmas Novena ~
The St Andrew Novena
The Christmas Novena, the St Andrew Novena (November 30th – December 24th), is I believe, one of the most popular Catholic Advent prayers.
My family and I love to say this novena each year in preparation for Advent. We offer the intention as a family intention, one we wish to gain for the family as a whole, and also a private intention, one that each one of us would like to gain like a particular virtue or help in fighting against a vice.
Because the prayer is longer than nine (9) days, and not quite 27, it’s technically not a novena or a set of novenas, but, because it is prayed ‘novena style’, that is, repeatedly for a set amount of days, it is referred to as a novena.
In my family, we have found that we remember to say the novena best when we attach it to our daily Rosary. We set the slips of paper that we have written or printed the prayer out on next to our Rosary bowl. I do know other families say this novena with their grace before dinner while they light the candles as part of their Advent wreath prayers.
The prayer can be said at anytime during the day, but if you have a regular time the whole family is together like for the Rosary, morning/night prayers, or at meals, it might be a good idea to say the novena at a set, regular time.
Imagine a child who loves you…he is willing to do just about anything in his power to please you.
NOW imagine the Christ-Child. He too is willing to do just about anything for you. Everything is in His power to do and to give, as long as the petitioned favor isn’t contrary to what Our Lord deems necessary for your eternal salvation. This is an important caveat that I have trouble remembering! 😉
In this Advent season of preparing for Christ’s coming, the St Andrew Christmas Novena is a loving way to prepare ourselves and our families.
St Andrew holds the honor of being the first apostle to be called by Christ to follow Him.
This novena is a bit different in that it does not invoke the intervention or aid of the saint himself, but is adoring, glorifying the hour of Christ’s birth and seeking aid from God Himself!
The novena is begun on the Feast of Saint Andrew, November 30th, and is said thru Christmas Eve, December 24th.
**(If you start late, or if you miss a day do not be discouraged! Catch up by saying the extra prayers you missed along the way….Jesus will bless every effort!)
St Andrew Christmas Novena
Hail and Blessed be the hour and the moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God, to hear my prayer and grant my desires through the merits of Our Savior Jesus Christ and of His Blessed Mother. Amen.
Recite 15 times per day. It is permitted to break it up and pray 5x’s in the morning, afternoon and evening, but for the sake of missing one of the times and forgetting, I prefer to say them all at once.
Prepare for Miracles!
This Advent Chaplet is to keep track of your 15 Christmas Novena prayers. It has a lovely brass crucifix, is durable and wire-wrapped to last for many Advents to come! Limited quantity. 🙂 Included is a laminated prayer card with the novena prayer on it. If you are interested click here.
Review: “Quality materials and workmanship. There will be no losing beads because the wire is beautifully woven in and around each bead itself. The box it came in had a handmade flower glued on it, inside a little ribboned gift bag with the prayer card. It could have been gifted as is. Shipped quickly.
An aside: This chaplet was quickly and accidentally adopted by my four year old because “It’s pretty so its prayers will be pretty.” Well, that isn’t quite the point but I love how little kids’ minds make connections. We prayed 15 Glory Be prayers that day, and the next day 15 little Acts of Faith, Hope, and Charity.”
NEW! December Planner Printable! Print & Use each year!
Review: “I have been looking for a couple of years at getting a pretty pricey Catholic planner. I had a very hard time justifying the cost because, “what if it wasn’t actually useful?” When I saw this I was super excited. I have a printer and the price point was perfect. Even going and buying a fancy binder and pretty paper doesn’t have me close to the other price. Some days I use every aspect and every blank and other days I’m lucky to get one line filled out. Because it is so beautiful and yet so price friendly I do not even have to feel guilty about those days I mostly miss! This has been a Godsend and I am eagerly awaiting the December download! Thank you Leane for another wonderful product!”
For those who have the Advent Journal, this is your November 30th page that has the heart that can be checked when you have said your novena for that day. Don’t forget! Printable Journal Available Here.
“Children must be taught constantly from their tenderest years to have a real love and friendship for their Angels, to have boundless confidence in them. They must be accustomed to feel and realize the personal presence of their Angels, to call on them in all their fears and troubles.” -Fr. Paul O’Sullivan, All about the Angels
Leane and Theresa from Finer Femininity discuss the lovely Catholic customs and traditions in the home during the Advent and Christmas season…
A unique gift! Make a statement with these lovely and graceful handcrafted aprons….fully lined….made with care. Aprons tell a beautiful story…..a story of love and sacrifice….of baking bread and mopping floors, of planting seeds and household chores. Sadly, many women have tossed the aprons aside and donned their business attire. Wear your apron with joy….it is a symbol of Femininity….”Finer” Femininity! Available here.
24 Windows to Open
Find a Picture & Corresponding Bible Text Behind Each Window
Glitter on the Front
A Great Family Tradition
11″x14″
24 Windows to Open
Find a Picture & Corresponding Bible Text Behind Each Window
Glitter on the Front
Sits Easily on a Tabletop or any Flat Surface
Folds Out to Over 18″x9″
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
Daniel A. Lord, S.J., Thanksgiving After Holy Communion, 1950’s
The following prayers are suggested as simple forms of prayer that are modeled on direct conversations with the Eucharistic Christ. Basically, they are acts by which the one who has received Holy Communion:
1. Thanks the Savior for three things.
2. Expresses sorrow for three things.
3. Asks Him for three things.
4. Talks three things over with Him.
5. Promises Him three things.
The form of the prayers is unimportant. The important thing is the calling of the Savior’s attention to matters of deep concern to us and hence to Him.
The number three is purely arbitrary and can be reduced or increased according to the wishes of the one making the prayer.
No words are necessary. A simple consideration of these points will lead easily and naturally into the conversational prayers suited to the thoughts aroused.
Example…
“I Thank You.”
Lord Jesus Christ, present in my heart, I thank You for all You have done for me. Surely I am, almost beyond all others, Your favorite child. My life has been a succession of gifts from Your loving hands: my birth in a Catholic home and a Christian country; my adoption in Baptism as the child of Your Heavenly Father and as Your brother (sister); the care and protection and love that surrounded my infancy; the health and training and soundness of mind and body that marked my growing years.
You gave me yourself in the joy of my first Communion, as You gave me the Holy Spirit to be my strength and light in Confirmation. And when I sinned against You, You forgave me in Confession and took me back into Your love and grace. I have been fortunate in my friends, happy in my associations.
Catholic education and training have been mine. And to my natural life You have added the far more important supernatural life of my soul. This moment I am part of Your Mystical Body. For all this I am grateful from my heart. But this morning I thank You especially for these favors:
1. [Mention some favor recently received.]
[Mention a favor that came to your family, to some close friend or relative.]
[Mention some favor lately given to the world, the Church, or some group of people.]
2. “I Am Sorry.”
Yet, in spite of your great generosity to me, I am deeply conscious of the fact that I have been ungrateful, cruel, ungracious, mortally sinful. By my sins I have used Your gifts of mind and heart and tongue and hands to offend You. Through my fault Your kingdom upon earth has been retarded and kept back in its advance.
I know very well that I have deserved the endless pains of hell. Surely I never deserved the eternal joys of heaven. Because of my sins I should spend long years in Purgatory and merit punishment on earth. But not for any of these reasons do I now tell you my sorrow for sin.
I am sorry because Your gifts have failed to win my heart. I am sorry, because You have been so good and I so ungrateful and criminal. I am sorry because my sins have crucified You, my best friend and most generous benefactor.
My sins of the flesh have scourged Your back; my sins of the mind have crowned You with thorns; my sins of tongue have cried aloud for Your crucifixion; my sins of pride have put a red rag upon Your shoulders and a reed into Your hand; my sinful loves have driven the lance into Your side; my dishonesty has nailed Your hands to the cross. Forgive me for what I have done to You, Who are so good and merciful. But this morning I am especially sorry for the following:
1. [Beg pardon for some recent sin of your own commission.]
2. [Beg pardon for some one sin of your past life.]
[Beg pardon for some sin common throughout the world to-day, or for some sin committed by a member of your own family who does not repent.]
3. “I Ask You.”
Never during Your life on earth, Blessed Savior, did You refuse any request. Your goodness to me personally is just another guarantee that that generosity is as true today as it was then.
Largely through my own fault, and because I have neglected the graces You gave me and because I have sinned, I am weak and poor and needy in soul and body. But You are infinitely rich and powerful, and You love me.
May I ask again? Your generosity is bounded only by our willingness to accept and use Your favors. Dear and generous Savior, You know better than I the things that I most need and that are for my good. In Your wisdom grant me these.
You know, too, the things I desire for myself, for others, for the Church, for the sinful world. If they are for our good, grant them, O Lord.
Especially I beg virtue for my soul, strength against temptation, a closer union with You through grace, more faith and hope, firmer strength. And watch over my life, that it may be lived in accord with Your wishes and Your law. But this morning I am asking especially for these things:
1. [Ask for some favor for yourself.]
2. [Ask for some favor for those dear to you or connected with you through friendship or dependency.]
[Ask some important favor for the Church, or for the world.]
4. “May I Talk It Over With You?”
Blessed Savior, life is full of problems, and difficulties. There are temptations to be met, decisions to be made, work to be done. There are the difficulties that arise from association with people, from misunderstanding, neglect, unpleasant dispositions.
There is the need of walking through the attractive world without falling in love with it. In all these things I need Your wise counsel and direction, Your strength, Your constant help and support.
Unaided, I make recurring mistakes. I decide unwisely and with unfortunate results.My work is spoiled or half done because of my limitations of mind and heart and body.
So I come to you as to my wisest friend and best counselor, asking You what I am to do and how I am to do it. I know You are interested in my life, its problems and successes. You are concerned with my doing well the things You have entrusted to me.
You want my conduct to be a help and not a hindrance to others. And in your life upon earth You met and solved all the problems that ever could be mine. You see just how I can overcome temptation and what decisions I should make. Give me Your guidance and light.
And give it, too, to the world’s leaders, to those who hold the destiny of the Church in their keeping, to my friends and associates. Especially this morning I wish to consult You about the following things
l. [Discuss some temptation or trouble and how to overcome it.]
2. [Discuss some problem or decision connected with family, friends, associates.]
3. [Discuss some problem connected with your work.]
5. “I Promise.”
Lord Jesus Christ, my life in the past has been continuously disappointing and unsatisfactory. I have failed again and again, seen my best resolutions dissipated, my best plans collapse.
But the strength and light gained from this Holy Communion gives me hope for the future. Give me greater hope for what lies ahead. I have drawn my strength from You, the source of all strength; I shall not fail again.
You have given me new light and courage: I cannot but do better. It is my hope to live my life worthy of Your gifts and Your love. I want to go back to my daily life carrying You with me in my heart. Let me take You with me to my work and play, my home and occupation, among my friends and associates, everywhere and with whomever I go.
My work shall be done for You; my friends shall be loved for You; my amusements shall be worthy of You. I promise You I shall first of all avoid the occasions of sin. I promise to make my morning offering faithfully, so that the day, with all its actions, may belong to You.
I promise to make my life more like Yours. In this I cannot fail, since I have held You in my heart. And in my association with people I shall try to live so perfectly that through me they will be drawn to You, to the Faith, to goodness. Especially this morning I promise You these things:
1. [Promise something regarding sin and its occasions.]
2. [Promise something regarding your attitude toward home or friends.]
3. [Promise something regarding your work or casual associates.]
First Communion.In the 1940’s.
The truly religious wife finds God at Mass and from Him receives the strength to become the ideal helpmate to her husband. She does not leave God at church but keeps Him with her every minute of the day in every nook and cranny of her home. Each menial, repetitious task she must perform is a work of love for her husband and children, and through them, a work of love for her Creator. – Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J. 1950’s
Sign up for the Advent Giveaway by following this link!
Coloring pages for your children….
Reflections on Purgatory By Rev. F.X. Lasance. A Complete Prayer-book Including Special Prayers and Devotions in Behalf of the Poor Souls in Purgatory Imprimatur, 1922, 442 page book. Originally printed by The Benziger Brothers. A Rare and Unusual Book! It is hoped that this book will cultivate a special devotion to the holy souls in Purgatory. This devotion, while it solaces the Holy Souls, in whose behalf it is directly exercised, is eminently pleasing to God, and beneficial to ourselves. It is hoped that the “Reflections” contained in the first part of this little book will stimulate the pious reader to make frequent use of the prayers and devotions which are found in the second part for the solace of the suffering souls in Purgatory.
This is an excellent prayer book.
Originally published in 1908 by the venerable Benziger Bros., this book has everything–all the basic prayers, litanies and Order (now known as Extraordinary Form) of the Mass. It also has excellent meditations for Eucharistic meditation and prayers for reception of Holy Communion.
The distinguishing feature of this prayer book, however, is that it is chock-full with helpful meditations and inspiring quotes for living the full Christian life. Father Lasance was obviously a very wise man and a holy priest. -T. Berry
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
Here is a simple outline to ensure we are carrying out our daily duties as best we can on this road we travel as Catholic women. This is my own list of what I deem the basics of a successful day. It is an ideal I strive for. You may have your own plan, and I hope you do. If this can help in any way, then I have accomplished my goal with this video. Link to My Morning and Night Prayers. Link to My Journals.
I have included the transcript for the video below:
I’m here to talk to you today about Two Simple Steps for a Successful Day.
I think that most ladies would like a simple outline that they can stick to each day to ensure we are carrying out our daily duties as best we can on this road we travel as Catholic women.
This is my own list of what I deem the basics of a successful day. It is an ideal I have strived for. I have successes, I have failures but at least I know this plan, it is burned into my mind so I can get back to it if I am floundering!
You may have your own plan, and I hope you do. If this can help in any way, then I have accomplished my goal with this video.
#1 ~ STAYING GROUNDED WITH PRAYER
#2 ~ STAYING GROUNDED WITH A LIST
#1 – Our Prayers. Starting with our morning prayers.
Our Morning Offering is one of the most important prayers of the day. Imagine a bunch of zeroes, let’s say 9 of them on a blackboard. How much are nine zeroes worth? One big fat zero.
Now put a one if front of them. Do they become a lot more valuable? Yes they do. Kind of changes the picture, doesn’t it?
Our Morning Offering is like that one. All of a sudden, all our thoughts, words, actions, sufferings of the day have value. Before our Morning Offering, they are not worth as much. After our Morning Offering, they are so much more valuable.
All is used as an offering to Our Lord for our own happiness and salvation, and for those we love.
I know that we often hit the ground running…nursing a baby, helping our toddler, or our alarm didn’t’ go off and we are running to school or work late. Let’s make sure we get that Morning Offering in. It’s very important.
We should try to say our whole Morning Prayers….
And I will include a link in the comments below that may be able to help you with your Morning and Night Prayers…they are what I have said throughout the years.
You should have a few other simple time slots for prayers throughout the day. Not too much and not too long. But enough to keep us and our family grounded all day long.
I usually stop midday, 3:00 to say with whoever is at home at the time our Mercy Chaplet. You could do any prayer you wish here. Maybe a Litany? Maybe the Holy Wounds Chaplet? I have a lovely book with many different chaplets in it. You could switch it up each day if you like. Maybe a special prayer honoring our Lords crucifixion because the hour is 3:00?
When my kids were younger we would say the Mercy Chaplet…that took 5 minutes…then I set the timer for 15 minutes for quiet time. Then I would give them 3 choices.
They could read a spiritual book. If they were young that would mean looking at the pictures of a children’s spiritual book.
They could pray.
They could rest. And yes, sometimes they fell asleep.
It was very valuable…that quiet time with the kids. Because we lose our taste for spiritual things if we do not nourish ourselves each day. And once again, this is building a great habit with your children they can carry on throughout their lives.
So we have our Morning Prayers, our Midday prayers…then our daily rosary and our night prayers. Daily Mass if we can.
So…number one…staying grounded with prayer. Let’s keep that prayer life alive and well!
Just a note…Make sure you say simple morning and night prayers with your little people so they get in the habit of this. This is very important!
I said my own morning and night prayers by myself…hopefully before the kids got up, but not necessarily. And then I would gather the little people who weren’t old enough to say their prayers yet, I would sit down and have them kneel before me and say their prayers with them. They were simple and eventually they memorized them and could say them on their own.
This got them in the habit of morning and night prayers. Because I have met Catholics who know the necessity of saying the daily rosary and they do that. But they find the morning and night prayers daunting…because they weren’t trained as youngsters! So do that for your children…
This is the basis of a successful day! We now have the grace to do what we need to do for the rest of the day. To make the right decisions. To get our work done, To deal with any crosses, etc.
#2. STAYING GROUNDED WITH A LIST.
Make a List!
I sure notice a difference when I get back to making my list! I accomplish so much more…and I don’t forget so many things. I get myself a lovely journal-type book and then I turn to it during the day when I am floundering and getting distracted with things I don’t need to get distracted with…not talking about my family. They are one big blessed distraction…a good one and one that needs attending to.
But you know those other distractions….the ones we could do without…or that make us put off our priorities…until later…and then we’re too tired.
Making your list the night before is helpful. But if you haven’t done that, snag a few moments as early as possible the next day to write your list.
I use shortcuts to write mine down, For instance, MPR is morning prayers, NPR is night prayers, MCHAP is mercy chaplet. This makes the list writing quicker. And since I know the basics well, I know what I am talking about.
Many of the other items I write the whole thing out. I have made the mistake of doing shortcuts on the other non-basic things on my list and when going back to it, I couldn’t remember what it was I was writing down. J
This list, which is my #2 step of a successful day, will help you with your #1 step – Staying Grounded with Prayer…because you write down your spiritual items at the top….After all they are top priority!
Morning Prayers, 3:00 prayer, Rosary, Night Prayers.
And if I go to daily Mass, I will come home, write down daily Mass and then check it off. Check these spiritual items off when you are done.
If you have accomplished those by the end of the day, you have accomplished the most important work of the day…because these very prayers will give us the grace to accomplish the other duties of the day!
And even if it is one of those days and we get nothing else accomplished…because of a child being sick, an unexpected visitor, a fridge that needs tending to because it quit working, etc, we still have those prayers, that time with God. And He will bless that! And will help us to embrace these other things that throw us off-kilter!
As you think of things throughout the day, add them to your list. But don’t overwhelm yourself. Stick to the priorities and a few other items. For me, I put down even the little things…like take out garbage. Then I can check it off and it does give one a feeling of accomplishment and it energizes me!
The most important ones need to be checked off by the end of the day….like make dinner, do laundry, make lunches, check on mother, etc. Write them down!!
And for those ones you think of during the day and don’t get to… Transfer them to the next day!
To get into these habits….Prayers, List-Making…is very valuable.
I want to show you a couple of examples of my list. Here’s one day.
Something must have come up this day because I don’t have much checked off. Maybe I just got distracted. That’s ok…I don’t beat myself up for that. I especially like to get my spiritual part of the list done.
Most of my days don’t have the night prayers checked off because I forget to check them off in the evening. And sometimes I do forget!
Here’s another day.
Now this day looks better! I can walk away from that day and say, “Wow, I was able to get a lot done and it looks good to have all those check marks!” There were some things I didn’t get done and I will transfer those to the next day,.
These habits help us to train our will. Regularity, order…it is the making of a saint. The daily little things are the important ones! Saying those short prayers with your kids every day, morning and night, is teaching them invaluable lessons about regularity and good habit-making.
I want to remind you that in the comments I have a link to my morning and night prayers.
I also have a link down there for my journals. I think using a journal for while can be quite helpful.
I have an Advent Journal, Lenten Journal, a Gratitude Journal and then a 30 Day Journal for boys and one for the girls. Those last 2 are in color and quite lovely! And those will help those children to stay on track for 30 days and carry some of those habits with them throughout life!
These are very good tools to help us on this journey of getting our lives in order. The link for those are in the comments.
In conclusion, I would like to say that I am still on this journey. It is never perfect and life throws at us its curve balls. Sometimes we cause the curve balls! It’s not our failures that are the important thing…we are human, we will fail. It is how quickly we pick ourselves up!
So let’s remember the 2 basics of a successful day:
#1 Staying grounded with prayers
#2 Staying grounded with a list
Thank you for tuning in today. God bless you!
A mother should make it one of her important responsibilities to keep a clean and organized home. This is not always possible, especially at certain phases of child-bearing years, and she must be patient with circumstances and with herself. At the same time, it should be one of her priorities. -Finer Femininity
Make a statement with this lovely and graceful “Strawberry Soda” handcrafted apron….fully lined….made with care. Aprons tell a beautiful story…..a story of love and sacrifice….of baking bread and mopping floors, of planting seeds and household chores. Sadly, many women have tossed the aprons aside and donned their business attire. Wear your apron with joy….it is a symbol of Femininity….”Finer” Femininity! 🌺 💗 Will fit most sizes…
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?”
No one insisted more than St. Margaret Mary that devotion to the Sacred Heart must not be limited to individual piety, profound as this might be. Nor was Our Lord’s “burning thirst to be honored by men” to be restricted to worship in churches.
“He has much greater plans,” she wrote, “which can be put into effect only by His almighty power, which can accomplish whatever it wills. It seems to me He wishes to enter with pomp and magnificence into the homes of princes and kings, to be honored there to the extent He has been outraged.”
In other words, He wished to establish His loving rule over human society by being acknowledged as true Head of every family, from the highest one down. The divine request was supposedly transmitted at the time to King Louis XIV, but if so, nothing came of it.
The King continued on the disastrous course of secular glorification which eventually produced the French Revolution, and now Marxist tyranny. One by one the nations of the world have said, “We will not have this Man to reign over us!” (Luke 19:14).
The world has now reached the point that the very laws of nature are being ignored, if not outright repealed. Based on the false principle that power comes from below, a giant mechanism of organized disorder has been erected where the bond-woman Hagar habitually and by law dictates to her mistress Sarah. No one knows his proper place, because it can’t be found.
Money manipulators who should be the hired servants of politics and economics are in fact formulating government policies—and that on an international level. Schools are laying down the law to parents, the family itself now the puppet of the state designed by God to serve it. Publishers determine what authors shall write. Manufacturers condition the consumer to the goods they produce.
Agriculture, the sovereign human art, is indentured to industrial production, made to follow factory methods and objectives. The sovereignty of nations themselves is being absorbed into an artificial super-State organized on purely rational lines.
Needless to say, the members of Holy Mother Church, already weakened and divided by the “reforms” of the so-called Reformation, are falling prostrate before the scourges of the New Order, apparently powerless to rise and protest. How to establish the rule of the Sacred Heart in such contrived chaos?
As St. Margaret Mary saw long before the French Revolution, only God’s omnipotence can accomplish a task of this proportion. Exactly how He will do it is His secret, but do it He will.
“What are you afraid of?” He asked her. “I shall reign in spite of Satan and all opposition.”
If His past methods are any precedent, however, He will use as His instruments the same “little ones” in all ranks of society He has always used to confound the wise of this world. St. Margaret Mary in fact predicted this: “He gave me to understand,” she wrote to her Superior Mother de Saumaise, “that He does not need human power for that, because the devotion and reign of the Sacred Heart will be consolidated only by subjects poor and contemptible, amid contradictions, so that none of it can be attributed to human potential.”
As always, He will scatter the proud in the conceit of their heart, putting down the mighty from their seat and exalting the humble, filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty (Luke 1:51-53).
Until then they need only remain in His Sacred Heart, attentive to its every beat, careful to follow its manifest directives. He will tell them what to do, even though for the time being the fulfilment of His magnificent promises remains blocked by the malicious authority of the great ones of this world.
Things being as they are, about the only unit of temporal government left to us that can be brought under the sway of Christ is the private home. Furthermore, for some of us it may be the only place of worship we have left outside the privacy of our own souls. For which God be thanked, for that is exactly what a home is designed by God to be: a domestic economy over which God presides, where He is praised by its members.
If home is where the heart is, then the Christian home must be where the Sacred Heart is.
Rediscovering this truth may be one of the greatest blessings He means to draw from the wanton destruction of parishes and parliaments. It’s a beginning.
At home Christians can still share the “one heart” which God promised Jeremiah He would give His people, “and one way, that they may fear me all days: and that it may be well with them, and with their children after them” (32:39).
The Acts of the Apostles relate how “the multitude of believers had but on heart and one soul; neither did any one say that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but all things were common unto them” (4:32). This “one heart” of saints who lovingly share all they possess is today in open confrontation with the “one world” of androids intent on robbing one another of even the most elementary right to private ownership. There can be no co-existence between the two.
We cannot repeat too often that devotion to the Sacred Heart, promulgated from the very first as a devotion for the latter times, is now only beginning. What has been achieved so far is the merest preparation or predisposition for a fullness yet to be even suspected. It would be ridiculous to think our Lord hasn’t foreseen and provided for all the deprivations we are facing—the desecration of Churches, suppression of sacred images and sacramentals, the defections from the priesthood…
We have noted already that devotion to the Sacred Heart has established once and for all the primacy of the interior life. What it does for the individual in his own soul it is equally prepared to do for society, in the home. We start where we can.
Is there any reason why what our Lord requested of worldly monarchs can’t be accorded Him by lesser heads of families? Let those who preach “power to the people” beware of that power when it is brandished in the service of God! What is to prevent exposing and honoring the picture of the Sacred Heart in our homes—is only because “wherever this holy picture should be exposed to be honored He would lavish His graces and blessings”?
Better still, why not satisfy at home our Lord’s longing to be adored in the Blessed Sacrament? That Benediction has all but disappeared from the liturgy, or that the Church doors are locked, or that the Sacrament itself may no longer be reserved, can be seen to be no excuse at all when we look deeply into the matter.
One of the first to see this was the late Fr. Mateo Crawley-Boevey, of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, who initiated the movement for Enthronement of the Sacred Heart in the home. With truly prophetic insight he began preaching Eucharistic Adoration as a practice most proper to the home. Already in the late 1920’s he was signing up families for one hour a month of night adoration, at a time when the Real Presence was taken for granted in every Catholic church and expected to continue there until the end of the world.
Fr. Mateo may not have been so sure. He wrote, “We are in fact on the brink of an abyss of social corruption; the home already undermined in its very foundations by this upheaval of immorality; a good part of the portion of society which by right is considered the best, the most Christian, seriously affected by the contagion of unbridled sensuality… What is sadder still, the enemy has now penetrated into our own ranks; the wolf is encountered with unheard of cruelty in a full sheepfold. More, he is tolerated there, even encouraged by the cowardice of friends. This Satan and the world have without pity struck and scourged their God and their Lord. His very bones might be counted through His wounds, for there is no soundness in Him.
Urging reparation to the Sacred Heart, his practical suggestions for domestic adoration are very instructive: “In large families the adoration may be arranged in such a way that each member of the family watches in turn before a picture of the Sacred Heart. If the Sacred Heart has been enthroned in the home, then the adoration should take place before the enthroned picture of the Sacred Heart, around which lighted candles and flowers have been placed, if this is possible and practical…
The adoration should be made as far as possible on one’s knees, in a spirit of salutary penance… It should be throughout a Eucharistic Adoration, in spirit and in truth. It makes His Passion ours: “The same love which made Me suffer such extreme pains and affliction for the salvation of men, makes Me also suffer now in your heart, immortal and impassible as I am, by the intimate compassion with which it is penetrated for the salvation of my elect, in consideration of my afflictions and bitterness. Therefore in return for the compassion which you have had for my sufferings, I give you the whole fruit of my Passion and death, to insure your eternal beatitude.”
Spoken to St. Gertrude, these words make plain what meditation on the Sacred Heart is meant to lead to. Fr. Mateo suggested prayers for the following intentions during hours of home adoration: “our Holy Father and Pope, peace, the clergy, the members of your family who may have gone astray, those in their agony this night, the Social Reign of the Sacred Heart, particularly through the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart in the home. Oh, be true angels of Gethsemane in this nocturnal adoration, you who have an advantage over the angel from heaven, since you are able to suffer and to weep in union with the agonizing Heart of Jesus!”
Most significantly, Fr. Mateo urged adorers to begin their hour by uniting themselves in spirit with the priests who at that moment might be offering the Holy Sacrifice anywhere in the world. He wished them if possible to recite the Canon of the Mass in view of a spiritual Communion, all the while adoring, praising, petitioning and atoning “through Him, with Him and in Him.”
Aware of the importance of Fr. Mateo’s latter day apostolate, Popes Benedict XV, Pius XI and Pius XII each accorded the Apostolic Benediction to those engaging in it. In his enthusiasm Pope Pius XI dubbed it “the actualization of my Encyclical” Miserentissimus Redemptor, on the Sacred heart.
With such encouragement from the highest Authority, why not adore at home kneeling in spirit before our Lord’s true sacramental Presence in all Churches or places where It may still be found? Isn’t it this Real Presence that the image of the Sacred Heart is precisely meant to evoke in our homes? Wouldn’t our Lord intend to follow His Heart’s image personally into any place where it was lovingly exposed? If not, how could devotion to the Sacred Heart make any real sense?
Prayer to the Sacred Heart:
May all the words that I speak be dipped in the Blood of Thy Sacred Heart, O Jesus, that they may be so many arrows to pierce the hearts of all who hear them with love for Thee. Amen. -The Precious Blood and Mother Prayerbook, Painting by Gregory Frank Harris
“It often struck me that if cleanliness is next to godliness, cheerfulness is a near relation. The cheerful are truly benefactors of the world in which we move…” – Fr. John Carr, C.SS.R.
In the words of this humble seventeenth-century lay Carmelite, “we must trust God once and for all and abandon ourselves to Him alone.” This difficult task necessarily requires perseverance and continual conversation with God in all activities great and small: “speaking humbly and talking lovingly with Him at all times, at every moment, without rule or system…” In reading these conversations, letters, and spiritual maxims, we learn the key to endless joy.
In short, this little spiritual classic — in its fresh, contemporary English translation — renders the simple wisdom of Brother Lawrence accessible to every Christian who yearns for the fullness of life….
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you kindly for your support.
Who knows the heart of a woman better than our Mother, Mary? She will help to heal all things through Her Son.
Monday:
Blessed Mother, help me to be a good wife today. Please help me to be kind, long-suffering and willing to bear all things. Please take my old habits, my erroneous ways of thinking and change them into patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Please help me to show my husband today that he is number one in my life, even if I do not feel it.
Tuesday:
Dear Blessed Mother, please help me to know myself, especially in regard to my husband. I pray that you will help me not to be unloving, critical, angry, resentful, disrespectful or unforgiving. Please help me to put all those aside and forgive him. Please help me to be an instrument of peace in our marriage today.
Wednesday:
Dear Blessed Mother, please help me to be my husband’s helpmate and companion, his friend and his support. Please help me to make my home a beautiful place for him to come home to. I pray that I can take care of myself and stay attractive to him. Please help me to be a creative and confident woman, one that he can be proud to say is his wife.
Thursday:
Blessed Mother, please help me to not expect so much of my husband. Please help me to seek your Son to fulfill areas of my life where my husband cannot. Please help me to accept him today just as he is and love him for who he is.
Friday:
Dear Blessed Mother, today I would like to especially pray for my husband and all his needs, spiritual, physical, financial and emotional. You know what they are so I leave that in your hands. I pray that he will be open to receive our Lord’s grace in order to be a strong and godly husband and father.
Saturday:
Blessed Mother please help my husband and I to be a team and to work together. Please bring unity between us so that we can labor together in harmony. May we become like-minded in our faith, towards one another and in raising our children.
Sunday:
Blessed Mother, please help my husband and I to be more and more committed to you and to your Holy Catholic Church. Please help us to grow in faith and to pass that faith onto our children. May it permeate every aspect of our life so there is no question Who we put first in our lives so our children see this and learn from it. Thank you for our Faith, may we never take it for granted.
Some are called to religious life, others to the priesthood and others to marriage. Marriage is not the state of life of “non-calls”! Marriage is a vocation, an invitation from God, a specific road of sanctification…the way that God has called that person to live holiness. ~ From o lar edifcado
Make a statement with this lovely and graceful “Madonna and Son” handcrafted apron….fully lined….made with care. Aprons tell a beautiful story…..a story of love and sacrifice….of baking bread and mopping floors, of planting seeds and household chores. Sadly, many women have tossed the aprons aside and donned their business attire. Wear your apron with joy….it is a symbol of Femininity….”Finer” Femininity! 🌺 💗
A wonderful book showing how the angels have visited people innumerable times in the past, how they do so today, and would do even more if we asked them. Also, how they prevent accidents, comfort us, help us, and protect us from the devils. Contains many beautiful stories about St. Michael, St. Raphael and St. Gabriel; plus, angel stories from St. Gemma Galgani, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Bosco, etc.
Save
Save
A very optimistic book showing how an “ordinary” Catholic can become a great saint without ever doing anything “extraordinary”–just by using the many opportunities for holiness that to most people lie hidden in each day. Written with an assurance of success that is totally convincing and infectious. Many easy but infallible means of reaching great sanctity.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
On the twelve days of Christmas my true love sent to me the feast of St. Stephen and the story of King Wenceslaus, the feasts of St. John the Evangelist and the Holy Innocents, the feasts of the Circumcision and the Holy Name of Jesus, and the feast of the Epiphany. And on through the feast of the Holy Family and the commemoration of the Baptism of Christ.
If you are loath to bid farewell to Christmas even then, you may continue it without interruption until Candlemas Day, February 2.
However you keep it, long or short, it is a far longer season for the Catholic child than the world understands.
For him festivity is not officially over with the last wrapping torn off the last gift, or the last nut retrieved from the last toe in the last stocking.
The Church would have us enjoy this season now that it is here, and celebrate the feasts that follow.
In order to indulge exhausted parents already drained of their grandest efforts for Christmas, try keeping Christmas-week feast days simply, using Christmas treats for desserts, and storytelling, reading aloud, and charades for entertainments.
A Prayer for the Sixth Day of Christmas
Eggs are an almost universal symbol of new life. The “laying” geese, therefore, stand for the six days of creation (Gen. 1:31-2:2).
A Prayer for the Sixth Day of Christmas, based on the prayer “His Priorities” in The Power of a Praying Wife:
Dear Blessed Mother, you are my example and my inspiration. Please help me to seek Our Lord first in everything I do. Please help me, as this New Year sets in, to set my priorities in perfect order.
Please help me to love my husband and put him before the other people and things in my life….before my children, my work, family, friends, activities and hobbies.
Please help me to strengthen the bond with him and let him know that he is a priority in my life. Please heal the the times I have caused my husband to doubt this.
Please show me how to prioritize everything so that whatever steals life away, or has no lasting purpose, I will have the grace to eradicate from my life.
I pray for my husband – that his priorities will be in perfect order, also. May he make you the King of his heart more each day. May he simplify his life so he will be able to place You first.
Please help him, also, to place me and our children in greater importance than his career, his friends and his activities.
May we both seek you FIRST and submit our all to You. When we do this, Lord, I know that the other pieces of our lives will fit together perfectly.
Amen.
Happy Sixth Day of Christmas! 💝❄️ Be kind to those who cross your path. If someone you meet today is cross or rude, if someone makes a mistake or shows contempt, give them the benefit of the doubt. You never know what is going on inside a person or what they are going through. Offer it up for that person. It is the most loving thing you can do. -Finer Femininity
The Catholic Church is a Church of Martyrs: Homily on the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Fr speaks about the Christmas song “the 12 days of Christmas” & the meaning behind the carol. For more please go to http://www.reginaprophetarum.org & please say 3 Hail Marys for the priest.
This Maglet (magazine/booklet) is for you…dear young (and not-so-young), Catholic, Feminine Soul. It is a compilation of traditional, valuable Catholic articles on the subjects that touch the hearts of serious-minded Catholic young ladies. There are articles on courtship, purity, singleness, vocation, prayer, confession, friends, tea parties, obedience, etc. This information is solid, written by orthodox Catholic writers (most of them gone to their eternal home) that cared about the proper formation of a young Catholic adult in a confused world. Take this information to heart and your journey through adulthood will be filled with many blessings! It is 40 pages, packed with information.
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.
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
Why did the Saints love to pray? Just because they knew and they felt that they were talking to God. Therefore, far from being wearisome it was an immense joy for them to pray… From Father Paul O’Sullivan, How to Be Happy, How to Be Holy
– by Mary Reed Newland in 
The Catholic Church is a Church of Martyrs: Homily on the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Fr speaks about the Christmas song “the 12 days of Christmas” & the meaning behind the carol. 
This Maglet (magazine/booklet) is for you…dear young (and not-so-young), Catholic, Feminine Soul. It is a compilation of traditional, valuable Catholic articles on the subjects that touch the hearts of serious-minded Catholic young ladies. There are articles on courtship, purity, singleness, vocation, prayer, confession, friends, tea parties, obedience, etc. This information is solid, written by orthodox Catholic writers (most of them gone to their eternal home) that cared about the proper formation of a young Catholic adult in a confused world. Take this information to heart and your journey through adulthood will be filled with many blessings! It is 40 pages, packed with information. Available 
The Christmas Novena, the St Andrew Novena (November 30th – December 24th), is I believe, one of the most popular Catholic Advent prayers.
THANKSGIVING ~ The Five Simple Prayers.
Now this day looks better! I can walk away from that day and say, “Wow, I was able to get a lot done and it looks good to have all those check marks!” There were some things I didn’t get done and I will transfer those to the next day,.
