Pondered In My Heart

Ready!

The sets are ready. Here's just a peek at Lady Dendroica's throne room-

Josiah's camera died but he got a new one just in time-

We have lots of ale-

 

And even cheese-

 

 Please feel free to disregard this blog post if you are not the family coming to visit us tomorrow.  But you do get bonus points if you know where the name Dendroica comes from. :-)

Happy Father's Day!

 

Eliza was all over her Daddy at Mass this morning.

 

She was hugging and nuzzling and snuggling and loving him while grinning her little grin that makes her eyes scrunch up and disappear and you think her cheeks are going to burst from grinning so hard.

 

Just being with her Dad made her so happy that every time I caught her eye she just burst into gleeful giggles. We had trouble keeping her quiet in church - she was too happy. It is quite likely that she is so delighted to sit with her Daddy and just love him for an hour every Sunday, but as it is Father's Day I was sentimentally paying much closer attention.

 

Being a most wise judge of character, Eliza has chosen her Daddy as her most favorite, most loved person in the whole wide world. She knows how good he is, and how much he loves her, and her face just tells it all about him. I don't think there can be anything that makes a mother's heart happier than seeing her husband and children love each other. Father's Day is a beautiful day for just basking in that love.

 

(On top of all that, the dude hit a home run at the church picnic.)

Solemnity of the Sacred Heart

Helen has a lovely post up today for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart with some meditations and activities for children. She suggests having the children cut out 33 red hearts and write prayers on them, following St. Margaret Mary who was asked by Our Lord to adore Him 33 times upon the cross.

 Helen also mentions the 'Jesus meek and humble' prayer, and I immediately thought of combining the two. You already know how I love to put little prayer cards around the house for Lent and Advent as frequent, visual reminders to stop and pray many times throughout the day. So using supplies I had on hand we made 33 red heart prayer cards. (Call me predictable, but my need for incessant prayer is quite constant.) We are midway through June but they would be nice to have out for July as well, the month of the Precious Blood.

 

Here is a pdf of the prayer cards if you would like to make them: Download Meek Hearts The text is in red, as at first I thought I'd like to use a light colored paper. If you want to print on red paper as I did, just change to black and white before you print.

 

We cut the hearts out and glued them onto patterned scrapbook paper. I was tempted to stop at the craft store for cross stickers, but ended up sticking with things we had on hand. We cut crucifixes out of catalogs and glued them on top, reminiscent of the Sacred Heart image. We are reminded of Our Lord's meekness and humility even as He suffered His passion, and it is through His sacrifice that we beg the graces to become like Him always.

 

 

 

Thank you, Helen, for your inspiration, as always. And if there is anyone out there who doesn't already subscribe to Helen's daily Mary Vitamin, today would be a wonderful day to sign up!

Jesus meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine!

(Edited to add: I can't figure out why the heart pictures are coming up blurry and I have no more time to fiddle with them. If you click on them to enlarge you can see them clearly. Sorry!)

Wordless Wednesday: Strawberry Edition

  

 

 

(signing strawberry)

 

Solemnity of Corpus Christi

 

Today we celebrated the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ. The Church has ordered the feast days following Easter - after we celebrate the Resurrection, the Ascension, the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, we have Corpus Christi. As the Lord ascended He declared He would be with us always, even to the end of the age, and the Eucharist is how He remains with us. Our Lord Jesus is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. At every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass He keeps His promise to stay with us always. As the Holy Father said in his address today, the Eucharist is proof that God is love. The simple explanation I have for why we attend daily Mass is this:  if Our Lord Jesus is willing to come to us every day in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, how can we not go and receive Him?

We had a beautiful Eucharistic procession after Mass today - traffic halted, passersby stopped to watch, people came out of doorways, and rose petals were strewn on the pathway as Our Lord was carried through the streets, followed by the faithful. Josiah has put up a lovely video compilation of highlights of the procession on his blog.

O God, who under a wonderful sacrament hast left us a memorial of Thy passion, grant us, we beseech Thee, so to venerate the sacred mysteries of Thy Body and Blood, that we may ever perceive within us the fruit of Thy redemption.

(From the Collect)

Wordless Wednesday: Always Kiss Me Goodnight

 

 

 

(I do know it's really Thursday, but I took the pictures last night.)

First Friday in June, Month of the Sacred Heart

June is the month dedicated to the Sacred Heart. In the year 1672 Our Lord Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and asked her to promote a special devotion to His Sacred Heart as a symbol of His love and mercy for us. (You can read more about this devotion here and here. ) We had our First Friday gathering here today and so our theme was the Sacred Heart.

As it is Pentecost Friday (surely you've seen this story about Paul VI and the Octave of Pentecost) and also during Embertide, we made these flame cookies:

Lydia and Anna made sugar cookies, and then iced them with a mix of yellow and red to resemble flames. I took an extra holly leaf cookie cutter that I had (a fifteen cent Christmas clearance item) and bent it a bit to make the flame shape like so:

For the younger children I printed out some nice coloring pages found here. They look very nice glued onto red construction paper like so:

The older children's Sacred Heart craft is seen above. Now, I must tell you that I just came up with this idea last night. All week my children were asking me what our craft was going to be and I would say, "Something for the Sacred Heart".  As we dashed off to the craft store last night half an hour before it closed my girls kept asking, "But what are we going to buy?" And I repeatedly insisted, "I have no idea." I told them we'd figure it out when we got there, and I reminded them of Mrs. Gunther who says she walks through the aisles of the craft store praying to the Holy Spirit for inspiration. Mary Rose remarked it was like the book she just read, in which the family was having twins but didn't have a van large enough for the family, but the Dad said if God gives the twins He will also provide for all their needs. She concluded if God is giving us the party with our friends, He would also provide the inspiration.  "Yes, that's it exactly," I told her.

So I sang Veni Sancte Spiritus under my breath as we walked into Michaels and the first thing we saw was a large display of wooden frames. I told the girls to grab a stack and we were on our way to our craft (I think my girls were quite relieved that I didn't need to sing the next line). The frames come in ovals and rectangles and have a little peg stand included and are only a dollar apiece. We found small heart plaques and a few other items and we were soon dashing home to make the prototype. Here is Lydia's sample project:

Start by using a wood burning tool to create the crown of thorns. I had Josiah do the crowns on some extra hearts so the younger children wouldn't have to do it themselves. Start with the wavy lines and then add the thorns.

Next we painted the heart with red acrylic paint watered down to a transparent 'wash' consistency. A paper towel is adequate for blotting on the wash, and you can add a second layer of paint around the edge of the heart to add more depth to the look. By using the watered down paint the crown is still clearly visible.

The frames were painted with plain acrylic paint and left to dry. The flames were cut from some neat crinkly orange scrapbook paper I found, and the crosses from gold paper. I purchased one of those gold metallic paint pens for the writing and it worked very nicely. The hearts are simply glued onto the frames with craft glue, and then the flame and cross are glued on as well.

I always enjoy seeing the variety of the children's finished projects as they add their own unique creativity and special touches.

 

They make a very nice addition to our June altar.

 

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!