Celebrating Catholic Family and Faith with crafts, Catechesis and traditions!
This has been a labor of love! No really!
I have just released the NEW Fast, Give, PRAY the WAY of the CROSS Craft Kit for a brand NEW Lenten Devotion based on The Way of the Cross.
The Fast, Give, PRAY the WAY of the CROSS PDF includes 14 full-page illustrated Way of the Cross Stations with Fasting, Almsgiving and Prayer Challenges, to cycle through the hours of Ash Wednesday or Good Friday, OR to cycle through each day of Lent.
This Catholic Craft Kit offers black and white templates to help you GIVE, PRAY and LOVE through the days of Lent (year after year!), with:
-one double-sided letter-sized (8.5″x11″) calendar of Lenten Practices
Sacred Supper: A Christian Guide to the Jewish Seder Supper is a 24-page illustrated booklet presenting the significance of this Jewish Tradition while drawing connections and insights from a Christian perspective.
Checkout our Cathletics Craft Kits, packed with Sacraments, Saints, Liturgical Seasons, Catechism and Prayer! Click on a Craft Kit to read more about it in its Featured Post!
A fresh way to prepare for the Sacraments! Scrapbook your way with our Kelly Saints and custom Catholic clipart, Catechism and Reflective prompts!
This is our monthly summary of crafts and family traditions related to the Monthly Devotion, Key Feast Days, and the appropriate Season of the Liturgical Calendar. As our kids get older, our activities and commitment to Catholic crafts have changed and adjusted (at least for our last TEEN and young adult kids)! While we haven’t exactly been adding a lot of Catholic crafts around here, we do enjoy pulling out the crafts and programs we’ve developed over the years, sometimes sharing them with younger families in our parish!
Something that has become more and more apparent as my kids one-by-one enter adulthood, is that while my vocation as Mom never ends, it does change! I remember those days of mothering with littles running around the house. They needed me for the physical things; food, drink, shelter, safety, comfort, and clothing, and they were learning so much in terms of basic skills and interests, subjects at school, and picking up prayers, Bible stories and beliefs of our Catholic Faith.
My eldest daughter Emily just got married a few days ago! My next daughter Kelly gets married next summer! My eldest son, Joseph is a brand-new engineering grad, my youngest daughter Bridget has just started University and the youngest of my five kids, Adam, just started high school!
With their increasing independence, my role as hero-support is changing too. Sometimes it’s a little bit of tug-a-war. They’re grasping for more independence, but sometimes still huddling close for the comfort of reassurance or a helping hand.
For the most part, I’m excited to help them! I particularly enjoy contributing where my gifts coincide. Throughout the prep time for this last wedding, I was confident in my ability to tackle creative projects, coordinating Kelly’s artwork with Emily’s passion for the wedding theme and the ensuing complexity.
My heart feels different some days. I love it when they come to me for my perspective, but sometimes it stings when they reject it, but still rely on me to make their way work.
Sometimes I’m torn, trying to meet the needs of one of my adult kids, while called and stretched to meet the needs of another.
I can get preoccupied trying to over-plan, anticipate glitches, and take precautions to help things go smoothly for multiple grown-up kids at a time. Their needs and their plans are adult ones and the urgency of their needs often takes priority over my own.
And getting to know them as they mature in their beliefs and hopes and Faith is an honor! We’re still learning from each other, all of us so heavily influenced by our personal experiences.
My husband and I are called upon, often in very different situations for the unique perspective and support we can each give them. When we reflect and talk things through together, my husband and I can form an even clearer picture of the amazing and fascinating young adults our children have become!
While we don’t always have the answers to give them in the moment, and our responses are often strikingly more articulate hours or days after difficult conversations, we strive to streamline our response: to pray. We pray together with them and with each other and our most important advice to them should always be to reach out in prayer directly to Jesus.
Our circumstances, relationships, interaction and peace of mind can be ever-changing, but Jesus remains constant.
We are once again reminded that Jesus loves them even more than we parents do. He knows the intricacies and implications way beyond what we know. He knows exactly what is to come and how it will impact their souls.
He wants the best thing for each one of us.
It’s yet another new season of motherhood for me, and incidentally yet another opportunity for a new prompt to pray!
Every time I begin getting overwhelmed, tempted to worry, and tugged into the familiar habit of over-planning, anticipating what could possibly go wrong, and pre-emptive troubleshooting, I am prompted to pray:
Please soften my heart and all of our hearts to pursue Your Blessed Will.
St. Benedict taught about Prayer in The Rule. He recommended specific times throughout the day and night for study and prayer, often as a community: reading, teaching, memorizing and singing passages of Scripture. Other times of private, personal prayer were certainly also recommended for a deep and intimate prayer life and relationship with God.
St. Benedict recommended a balanced lifestyle of work and prayer, and living simply. He insisted that we should pray as we begin to work and as we work, with humility and reverence.
From various writings of St. Benedict on prayer, I think the most unique and specific approach to prayer was his recommended practice of prayer and work simultaneously. St. Benedict steered away from compartmentalizing these two fundamental aspects and practices so that one did not interrupt the other, and by consistently praying during work, study, rest, and while serving others, one could truly pray unceasingly.
To make it easier to understand and keep it straight from the teaching on Prayer of other Saints and Theologians I have been studying, I put together a little Summary Sticky-Note and compiled my notes on St. Benedict’s Writings on Prayer including ‘prayer-requisites’ and Prompts to Pray, based primarily on The Rule of St. Benedict and his other writings summarized in this book: Augustine on Prayer by Fr. Thomas Hand
St. Benedict also spoke about the necessity of humility, reverence, silence, Scripture, perseverance, and continuity in this prayer from the heart.
And St. Benedict even had a specific Prompt to Pray as he lived at the Monastery of Monte Cassino!
More info in the St. Benedict PDF Note Bundle.
I will be adding over 30 PDF Note Bundles gradually to this NEW
Saints’ MasterClass on Prayer Series over at Arma Dei!
Following a brief introduction of St. Benedict and his teaching on Prayer, I present Prayer-Requisites: important virtues, dispositions, and practices for personal prayer, based on the Key Writings of St. Benedict.
Each PDF Note Bundle includes a Summary Sticky-Note, along with insights into prayer and how St. Benedict might prompt us to pray.
Prompt me to pray without ceasing, St. Benedict.
St. Augustine (354AD-430AD) was the son of St. Monica.
He spent many years living an immoral life, and renouncing Christianity. By the prayers of his mother and through the influence of St. Ambrose, he converted and became a theologian, philosopher, and the Bishop of Hippo, Roman North Africa.
While St Augustine’s teaching on prayer is found across his many writings, sermons and letters, we find prayer to be the primary focus of his letter to a Christian Roman noblewoman named Anicia Faltonia Proba.
St Augustine wrote the letter in response to Lady Proba’s questions to him on how she could pray better and pray as God would want her to pray. He assured her that she must already have a profound trust in God, as she was being prompted by the Holy Spirit with this desire to pursue better prayer.
I’ve been studying St. Augustine’s Teaching on Prayer, primarily from his letter to Lady Proba and through this awesome book Augustine on Prayer
To make it easier to understand and keep it straight from the teaching on Prayer of other Saints and Theologians I have been studying, I put together a little Summary Sticky-Note and compiled my notes on St. Augustine’s Writings on Prayer including ‘prayer-requisites’ and Prompts to Pray!
I will be adding over 30 PDF Note Bundles gradually to this NEW
Saints’ MasterClass on Prayer Series over at Arma Dei!
Following a brief introduction of St. Augustine and his teaching on Prayer, I present Prayer-Requisites: important virtues, dispositions, and practices for personal prayer, based on the Key Writings of St. Augustine.
Each PDF Note Bundle includes a Summary Sticky-Note, along with insights into prayer and how St. Augustine might prompt us to pray.
St. Augustine might prompt us to pray:
The Tradition of reciting The Jesus Prayer is referenced as early as 270 AD, in monastic communities, and was first introduced and practiced by the Desert Fathers.
This simple prayer combines adoration of the Glory of God with humble recognition of our sin.
The Jesus Prayer is a form of meditation, without relying on mental images or intellectual understanding but focusing on being attentive; recognizing the continual Presence of God, listening intently for His Response, and recognizing His Action in our lives. The intention of this prayer is to pursue holiness (through humility and purification) and union with God, rather than attaining insights into theological Truths.
The Jesus Prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me” is a statement of Faith, confession of sin, and a plea for God’s Mercy, all at the same time. Through simple and constant repetition of this prayer, we try to maintain awareness that we are in God’s Presence. We are to prioritize attention with the heart over the mind. We are encouraged to recite the prayer thoughtfully and intentionally, without bringing to mind a visual image, and believing that the Lord sees us and listens to us at all times.
I’ve been studying The Desert Fathers’ teaching on Prayer, primarily through this awesome book
The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology*
Arma Dei Shoppe
Popular Posts
my take on the Grace of Yes!
Kelly Saints Cathedral Clipart
Sacrament Craft Kit Accordion Scrapbook!
Reconciliation Prep Printable
Rome Posts
Painted Saints Links
FREE Birthday Party Printable!
Secret Portal
