A few Devotions for the Holy Souls
Each day between November 1 and November 8, this gains a plenary indulgence that can only be applied to the Poor Souls in Purgatory. Any other time of year this gains a partial indulgence.
We were blessed to be able to attend Mass AT the cemetery this morning! In the Catholic section of the cemetery there is an old altar and our wonderful retired priest said Mass there for the souls in purgatory! It was beautiful! My hubby and boys got to serve the Mass as well.
I couldn’t resist taking this darling picture of the girls as well.
When we got home, we finished reading Father Philip tells a Ghost Story. I HIGHLY recommend this book. It was well written and really explained to the kids the need to pray for the departed souls. This is yet another of the wonderful suggestions in Catholic Mosaic.
Before saying our rosary this evening, the kids and I made this poster from a recommendation in CHC’s A Year with God. On each stone we listed the name of a dear friend or relative that we especially want to pray for this month. We will offer one rosary for each person, starting with “Nino” tonight.
My hubby put together a great little post on other devotions for this month as well.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
In Honor of the Saints
Being the Feast of All Saints today, I thought I would take a few minutes and tell you all a few ways in which we honor the Saints on a monthly basis in our home.
Each morning, before we begin school, the children get to place a magnet on their calendar
During dinner each night my dear husband reads a short story of the Saint of the day from Saints for Young Readers for Every Day of the Year. He had one of them (Vol 2 – covering the second half of the year) from his childhood, and after much searching I was able to find the orignal edition of Volume 1. I was SO excited! Pauline Books has reprinted these books (with a few revisions and new pictures), so here is a link to Saints for Young Readers Vol 1
On special feasts days, we try to do something “extra” to foster a greater love of the saints in our children. Cay Gibson has published a beautiful guide called Catholic Mosaic, which I mention often, and absolutely LOVE!! I am working on building up our personal library with the suggestions in her book.
I also LOVE A Year with God by Catholic Heritage Curricula. It is rather expensive, but I have gotten so many wonderful ideas out of it. A couple other books I draw from are: Cooking with the Saints
Women of Faith and Family has a great page that has info on the current liturgical year that is also very helpful!
I also find so many wonderful ideas from a few of my favorite blogs including: By Sun and Candlelight, Sweetness and Light (she just did a wonderful post on this very topic!) and Real Learning. These women never cease to amaze me!
Here is a bit of what the Church teaches on the Saints as quoted from “The Catechism of the Catholic Church”:
957. Communion with the saints. It is not merely by the title of example that we cherish the memory of those in heaven; we seek, rather, that by this devotion to the exercise of fraternal charity the union of the whole Church in the Spirit may be strengthened. Exactly as Christian communion among our fellow pilgrims brings us closer to Christ, so our communion with the saints joins us to Christ, from whom as from its head issues all grace, and the life of the People of God itself.
We worship Christ as God’s Son; we love the martyrs as the Lord’s disciples and imitators, and rightly so because of their matchless devotion towards their King and Master. May we also be their companions and fellow disciples! (Martyrium Polycarpi, 17:Apostolic Father II/3,396)
The Catechism also says:
956. The intercession of the Saints. Being more closely united to Christ, those who dwell in Heaven fix the whole Church more firmly in holiness…they do not cease to intercede to the Father for us, as they proffer the merits which they acquired on earth through the one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus….so by their fraternal concern is our weakness greatly helped.
So, this is a bit of what we do over here to learn about, and hopefully imitate, the Saints of the Church… I would love to here what you do! Feel free to leave any ideas or links to your own posts in the comment section!
Our Cast of Saints
Our All Saints Party was quite a success once again! It just gets better each year! The kids all had such a wonderful time dressing up, carving pumpkins, playing games, and just having lots of fun and lots of sugar!
Saint Magnus – Earl of Orkney
Blessed Jose Luis Sanchez del RioThis is one of Rascals favorite saints. We also learned of this saint from a CD story “My Battle Name is Jose Luis” by Glory Stories. Blessed Jose Luis was a Christero and was sentenced to death by his godfather at the young age of 14. I had been a little stressed about putting this costume together (I can’t sew and costumes have NEVER been my forte). I went to Walmart to try and find a Mexican flag. I asked the woman… and she looked at me funny and said, “Um… NO.” So I came home and saw my felt box. I started to sew, and finished by hot gluing 3 pieces of felt together and adding a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe from one of hubby’s old t-shirts. It worked perfectly, and Rascal was THRILLED!
Saint Cecilia ~ Patron of Church MusicTwinkle Toes wanted to be St Cecilia. She loves pink, and St. Cecilia is depicted wearing pink in our Picture Book of Saints. I was trying to figure out how to come up with a miniature harp, but I was able to make one at the last minute. Doesn’t she look darling?
Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha
Peanut didn’t dress up… It was all I could do to get the other kids costumes together… But I couldn’t leave him out of the line up… This is a picture of him with his Great Auntie. She stopped by to see the kids! I love this picture!
This last picture is of the whole group! We had a TON of wonderful costumes this year… I’m sure the Saints were smiling!
Oh! And don’t forget to check out our “Saint-O-Lanterns” here and here!
We have a winner, or THREE!
The results are in on our pumpkin carving entires! Last year, Hubby and Captain entered a pumpkin they did “together,” and they won first place… This year they carved their own pumpkins and each came home with first place in their categories!! Rascal’s pumpkin came in second place in his category. (He was in the same category as Captain)
Honestly, I was quite surprised that hubby placed at all! He did make a few revisions to his pumpkin before the competition. (See the picture below.) I think the changes helped quite a bit. Our pastor walked over to the “Adult Carved” table, took one look at “Bernini Columns” and said, “Your husband carved that one didn’t he?” Who else would come up with Bernini’s Columns?
Carved by Hubby
Carved by Captain
Carved by Rascal
You can view a couple other pumpkins that placed over at Regina’s blog: Mary and First Communion. They were pretty cool as well! I really thought Tug should have won for his carving of Mother Teresa, but then again I thought mine was pretty good too 😉 Maybe next year!
Saint-O-Lanterns
In keeping with our family tradition, we carved “Saint”-O-Lanterns with the kids to take to our All Saints Party tomorrow night. This, however, was the first year that the boys were able to carve theirs by themselves!! (New categories for the contest prompted this.) I was actually really surprised at just how well they did. All I did to help them was to draw the lines on the pictures they drew to show them where to poke holes, and then helped them scrape the few areas that needed scraping!! There were a few times I needed to help them get their knives started as well… But they qualify for “mostly kid carved”. Here are a few pictures… I’ll let you know how they do!
The cleaning began — last year they refused to do this… 
This is Rascal outlining his design.
The actual carving of the pumpkins, hubby joined in once again with another interesting design.
Captain choose to carve the “Last Supper”
Rascal carved “The Birth of Christ”
I used Twinkle Toes pumpkin and carved a ship,or rather “The Bark of Peter”
(A ship was a symbol of the early Church)
Hubby carved “Bernini’s Colonnade” at St. Peter’s in Rome
It was quite fun and actually quite a bit easier this year with the boys carving their own!
And I think they turned out pretty good, don’t you?
Reminising
Later tonight I will try and post this years Saint-O-Lanterns!!
A trip to the Pumpkin Patch
Sunday, after Mass, we took the kids to the Pumpkin Patch.
Here is Daddy with Snuggles.
The boys, with a couple of their friends, going on a wagon ride.
The boys each got pony rides… We tried to get the girls to get on, but they refused. Chiquita did pet one of the ponies, but Twinkle Toes wouldn’t go anywhere near them. However, when it was time to leave she said, “But I haven’t ridden the pony yet!” So… Maybe next time.
ALL the kids loved climbing on the hay stack!
There was an area to feed some animals, a corn maze, a sunflower maze and many other things for the kids to do.
Then it was off to find our pumpkins!
The search began.
The deal is, they have to be able to carry their pumpkin…
Looks like Twinkle Toes found hers!
Over all we had a wonderful day!A Basket of Books!
Today, after months of being closed, our Library opened back up!! So, after school, I loaded the car up with four of the kids and we headed to town to pick up some books. Chiquita was napping, so she stayed home with Daddy. She was VERY excited to see the new books that she woke up to. And dove right in..
We also got Autumn: An Alphabet Acrostic since the boys just learned about Acrostic poems. We have been thinking about making a state lapbook, so I thought we would start by reading B is for Beaver.
Now our library basket is full, and we can enjoy some new books during these cozy fall evenings!
A Saint and his Lion
Today, our Catholic Mosaic study lead us to read A Saint and His Lion: The Story of Telka of Ethiopia. The kids all loved the story, and were especially intrigued by the lion that St. Telka befriended.
After coloring their stained glass pictures, from the Catholic Mosaic Coloring companion-Fenestrae Fedei, of St. Telka and His Lion, the kids made these darling paper bag lions, or rather, “Anbassa” puppets from Martha Stewart’s website.
Then they headed back outside, to rake leaves with daddy and enjoy more of this BEAUTIFUL fall weather we have been having, while I made dinner.
As we were finishing up the lion puppet I hear Twinkle Toes say to Chiquita,”I’m scared of lions cause they will bite me… their suppose to bite me, Right? But daddy will save me cause he has a gun.” Poor thing!! Why would she even have to worry about lions!
The kids will paste their coloring pages into their Liturgical Notebooks on Monday and add a bit of copywork, but here is a picture anyways.
Colored by (from left to right) Captain, Rascal, Twinkle Toes and ChiquitaUpdate on Peanut
Well, maybe I should just call my little Peanut, Peanut Butter! Or PB as in Peanut Butter or Paul Bunyon! He had his 4 month check up today, and measured in at the 75 percentile for height!! Now, for those of you that do not know us, this is so ABNORMAL for a child of mine… Most of my children have been falling off the bottom of the charts, with Rascal holding the previous record by barely hitting the 50% mark for weight and only 25% for height.
Maybe its in the genes. I was just looking at this picture of my husband with his family. His siblings get taller as they get younger… (There’s Hubby right between two of the Black Robes) I wonder how long it will take Peanut to pass up his siblings in height… Probably not very long at this rate!
0 Comments