… 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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Well, it’s official. The Summer Cold has invaded our family. Three of us are down. Tonight we allowed our 12-year-old to skip the family Rosary so he can sleep early — we were praying quite late because Dad and I got home around 9:30 from our dinner date (celebrating 18 years and 7 months of wedded bliss, yeah, baby!!). Well, the 6-yo who got it first pleaded that she couldn’t lead her decade because she’s got a severe case of the sniffles. Her Hail Mary’s sounded like this:

[sniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiif] Hail Mary, full of grace [sniffffffffffffffff], the Lord is with thee.

9-yo volunteered to take over and we were grateful… problem is, he’s got the sleepies, and his Hail Mary’s sounded like this:

Hail Ma[yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwnnn]ry, full of grace, the Loooo[yawwwwwwwwnnnnnn]rd is with thee….

it was one slow Rosary, I tell you. I wonder if the Saints who were hovering near were stifling yawns as well. Wait, there isn’t sleepiness in Heaven, is there?

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One of the things I promised myself to do this Lenten season is to learn how to pray the Divine Office. As a poorly catechized Catholic, I still get things mixed up, so I *think* the Divine Office is the same as the Liturgy of the Hours, and the Breviary, but please don’t take my word for it.

For two years we subscribed to Magnificat, which is a beautiful publication, but I found that I was the only one really using it, because it would go on my desk or my bedside table or my purse… I need something that the whole family can use and that we can share. Of course, I can’t just get anything without doing my research bit…

So today I googled “breviary” at the 4real site and found several links. I won’t share those here because the point of this post is to sift out the stuff that we do need and will use. But look at what I stumbled on right away:

What a blessing! Jenn linked to Elizabeth’s post: The Rhythm of Prayer in one of the threads. God bless her, I feel like she wrote the post just for me! It contains all the answers to the questions I have on my list, and links to the books I’ve been planning to check out. Don’t you love it when these things happen?

We have the Patmos missal for children and it is just beautiful, there’s no doubt in my mind the other Patmos publications will be beautiful as well. I will be asking dh and kids which ones I should get first /which ones we are most likely to use together, so I may amend this post with more links as need be…

A primer on what it’s all about

ETA 2/25/08: Someone from the CTNGREG list sent this link to his project:

The Divine Office in Latin! With English…. Beautiful.

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