… and these Thy gifts …

“Our hearts were made for Thee, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in Thee.”
“Sero te amavi pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova!” (Late have I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new!)

Lots of reading and activities here.

Today, we are remembering St. Augustine. Yesterday, it was his mother’s memorial. These are two of my favorite saint stories — the mother who prayed unceasingly for her wayward son, soooo unwaveringly faithful, that he turned away from sin and became a saint. Here’s what St. Augustine had to say about his own mother. How can a parent not be inspired?

I keep wondering what St. Augustine and St. Monica and all the rest of them are saying up there in heaven after his words have been severely misused by those down here.

And for those of us who are just that wee bit crazy about Latin, here’s a very timely lesson (w00t! This will take us several weeks to dig into!) from Context, Pelosi. from Aliens in this World. Gotta say though, if Pelosi reads Latin, I can’t help but be mighty impressed. But then again, as the Spartans said, *IF*.

We are lucky enough to be the owners of a couple of older volumes by St. Augustine, found at a book sale, they used to belong to a priest! DD-17 has been reading parts of Confessions for her Theology of the Body class, so this is great timing. Especially since she’s graduating at the end of the week, she’ll have PLENTY of time to delve into more of St. A’s works.

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A Blessed Easter to all of you!!!

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Good friend e-mailed last night and asked what Lent looks like in our home, and I realized I hadn’t gotten around to putting our plans here. And since putting stuff here helps us with accountability….

what we do, or at least try to do, in no particular order:

- purple tablecloth at the dinner table
- grapevine wreath on the cocktail table
- little wreaths for the kids, spiked with toothpicks — the kids (and this year, mom too) take out the toothpicks and replace with flowers — the thorns/toothpicks=our sins; the flowers = reparation, sacrifice, mortification, growth in virtue; so by Easter hopefully puro flowers na
- reading/discussing/small activities/crafts for lenten season saints, like st. valentine
- daily Mass, though we’ve been failing lately esp. with the cold front and me getting sick, we’ll start back again on Monday
- daily Rosary
- stations of the cross every Friday, usually at home, with “homemade” stations (coloring activity from 2004, “housed” in popsicle stick frames) — we also use the prayers from the Fourniers’ book, which we cut out and laminated
- meditative readings for kids and adults (i’m using In Conversation with God, and we’re trying to reread Hidden Power of Kindness, Bong got a booklet of meditations at church last weekend so he’s following that)
- major purging of rooms/closets for donations/getting rid of “stuff”
- trying to practice silence (my major failing) at home, trying to keep peace and harmony at all times (ha! we wish)
- if aisa feels like it this year we might do some pysanky (ukrainian easter eggs) — she took a pysanky class a few years ago and taught us how — i’d love to learn how to make this
- aisa sings at choir, so Holy Week there’s Tenebrae, then the Triduum…. somehow we didn’t have these in BF at our parish — what a loss.
- mostly we follow suggestions in the book by the Fourniers — samples here: Domestic Church + Catholic Culture + Catholic Mom; we don’t try to do EVERYTHING, but try to add one or two things every year.
- I also printed out new rosary and stations of the Cross cards from Kathryn’s website
- and a Lenten calendar from Julie — the pages say “2007″, but they’re downloadable, editable pages, so all you’ll have to do is change dates and the year. An awesome resource!

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Today is the Feast day of the First Christian Martyr (Proto Martyr), Saint Stephen, for whom I am named. He’s actually my mom’s saint as today is her birthday, but when I was born they chose his name for me.

The Stoning of St. Stephen by Pietro da Cortona

Read about St. Stephen here

St. Stephen’s Day Night Prayers

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