Truly Rich and Blessed

How to Have a Meaningful Holy Week

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philstar.com-first photo

Holy Week is upon us! While many of us may be making plans for going back to the province or getting some R&R during the holidays, let’s not forget the true reason for the break, i.e. to have some time to reflect on the passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus.

Without further ado then, here are some suggestions for a more meaningful Holy Week (please note that some of the ideas here were inspired by Kiendra Tierney’s blog Catholic All Year):

Palm Sunday

– Wear red to Mass, and explain to your kids that red reminds us of Jesus’ suffering. Point out to them that the priest at Mass is also wearing red.

– Join in the palm-waving at Mass. Once it’s done, take the palms home and display them on your family altar.

– Read Matthew 21:1-11 together as a family.

– You can also make it more fun for your kids (especially the younger ones) by having family members act out the abovementioned Bible reading: One person can be Jesus, another the donkey, then the other people will be waving palms. (To this day, my kids still remember us doing this one Palm Sunday years ago!)

{Click here to read my whole post on Philstar.com. {If it doesn’t work for you the first time, please do try again later on. Thanks for reading, and may you have a truly holy Holy Week and a blessed Easter!}

Saint Joseph, Pray for Us!

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saint joseph feast day

From the Collect for today’s Mass:

“Grant, we pray, almighty God, that by Saint Joseph’s intercession your Church may constantly watch over the unfolding of the mysteries of human salvation, whose beginnings you entrusted to his faithful care. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.”

Source: CatholicCulture.org

For ideas for celebrating the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, please refer to my latest article on CatholicMom.com.

Oh, and if you’re looking for wonderful music to listen to on this special feast day, here’s a great playlist I found on YouTube:

Saint Joseph, pray for us! 🙂

Image credits: Photo of Sleeping Saint Joseph was taken from the . Used with permission.

 

Live Lent in Love {A List of Lenten Resources for Families}

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Lent has officially begun for Christians everywhere, and what better way to focus on the Reason for the season than to live it in love.

lent

Source.

So I thought I’d try to round up some Lenten resources for you, similar to what fellow Catholic mom, blogger and CatholicConference4Moms presenter Leila has done (you should totally read her post, by the way!). Some of these links go to articles/posts that I’ve written in recent years, others go to my “go-to” sites for anything and everything Catholic:

On Catholic Culture:

Learn all about Lent and everything related to it via Catholic Culture’s Lenten Workshop.

On Catholic Icing:

Lacy Rabideau of CatholicIcing.com has TONS of — start with for a list of 40 simple no-fuss traditions.

On CatholicMom.com:

You’re probably familiar with decorating for occasions like Christmas and Easter but have you ever tried decorating for Lent? Try it — read this for a few ideas. You can also check out this extensive list of Lenten activities for children for ideas that you can incorporate into your family routines this Lent. Or read everything Lent-related on the site, if you have the time. 😉

On philstar.com:

How you and your family can have a joyful, meaningful Lent

On family traditions this Lent

On Lent and Life

On Smart Parenting: 

9 Ways to Prepare Your Family for Lent (they’ve edited it though)

Be a Better You This Lent: 5 Things You Can Do (I don’t know why my byline isn’t there, but I definitely wrote this!)

Ways to Teach Your Kids About Holy Week

Lenten Activities for Preschoolers

On The Learning Basket:

Here is a great list of Lenten books for preschoolers — I wish we had these easily available locally!

Lenten resources for families with teens:

Ideas from LifeTeen.com

Lenten resources for teens from the Diocese of Little Rock

Celebrate your crosses — An Ash Wednesday reflection on YouthPinoy.com

2015 Lenten Calendars:

From Loyola Press: Good for parents and older kids

From CalendaronPics: Great for families to reflect on the deeper meaning of Lent

From Morning Star Family Holy Hour: I personally love this one! (Check it out below.)

lent

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Of course, we can’t go through this season without remembering to keep love in Lent, so I also invite you to check out past posts about how a bunch of us bloggers do this here and here.

Here’s to a meaningful and blessed Lent for us all!

5 “Christianized” Chinese New Year Activities for Kids

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Our family is not Chinese and we don’t celebrate Chinese New Year in a grand way. However, since we do try to make our homeschooling lessons relevant and “connected” somehow to current events, we sometimes include festivals and occasions like Chinese New Year in our “studies.” I’ve started trying to “christianize” such lessons though, so that they’re still somehow connected to our rich faith.

This year, the first day of the Chinese New Year falls on February 19, the day after Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of the Lenten season. We hope to continue our Lenten traditions (like the the ones I mentioned here), and will also do the following “Christianized” activities to connect Chinese New Year to our Lenten observance (please feel free to choose any of them and customize them according to your own family’s needs and preferences):

1. Read books about Mary.

While researching for our mini unit study on China (in relation to Chinese New Year), I discovered that the patron saint of China is Mama Mary, where she is known as Our Lady of Sheshan or Mary, Queen of China. It’s a great blessing then that we have a few children’s books about Our Blessed Mother — instant religion and social studies (geography, history) “lessons” for us!

Chinese New Year

The image of Our Lady of Sheshan — isn’t it beautiful?! Source.

2. Learn about saints “connected” to China.

We were blessed to receive a pre-loved copy of Seton’s Great Saints in World History from a fellow homeschooling mom two years ago, and we occasionally use it for our social studies lessons.

One of the saints featured in the book is Saint Francis Xavier, who is known as the “Apostle to the Far East” and the patron saint of the Orient, missionaries, navigators and sailors. We’ve studied a bit about him before and plan to review his life and works again.

 from CCC of America is fun to watch, too — we got our copy from St. Paul’s. (you can watch the trailer ).

Aside from Saint Francis Xavier, we will also read a bit about the martyr saints of China, and talk about how .

3. “Explore” China in the comfort of our own home.

A family field trip to China is one of the items on our list of life dreams but since we don’t have the funds for it yet, we’ll make the most of technology and take a virtual tour of famous places in China for the meantime.

Our first stop — the Great Wall of China, of course!

By God’s grace, I was able to score  at a National Bookstore sale a few years ago, and we’ll also use this cool website to go on a virtual tour of the wall, plus this site for fun and interesting facts about China. And this one, too, for geography!

Source.

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How is exploring China related to our faith? you may ask. Well, being a missionary means being willing to explore new places and learn about new cultures, right? 😉 I believe all of us Catholics are called to be missionaries, no matter what our backgrounds or occupations are.

We’ll also take this opportunity to go down memory lane and show the kids pictures of our family in our former “home” as missionaries, i.e. Timor Leste. I think it’s important for Tim and Rysse to know why we chose to birth them in Timor.

4. Learn faith-themed words in Chinese.

We tried using this Chinese online dictionary a while back, and the kids had lots of fun! This time, we’ll use it to learn how to say words like “God,” “love,” “Jesus,” and so on in Chinese. 😉

5. Listen to Christian songs in Chinese.

Since the kids love music, we’ll try to listen to Chinese versions of Christian songs that they are already familiar with, like the one below:

Of course, if you just want to celebrate Chinese New Year in fun and non-faith-themed ways, there are lots of ways to do so — go here and here for some ideas!

If you really think about it, any festival or occasion can become a faith-enriching activity for our families. The key is to look at it from different angles, and to try to view everything in a deeper way. God bless us all as we explore the riches of our faith together!

Can you think of other “Christianized” ways to celebrate Chinese New Year? Do share them in the comments!

Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Pray for Us, Especially Those in the Path of Typhoon Ruby!

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typhoon ruby

Source: Wikipedia

Today, December 8, is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What does “immaculate conception” actually mean? Here is a quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as seen on CatholicCulture.org:

Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Blessed Pope Pius IX proclaimed on December 8, 1854: “The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church

Basically, it just means that Mama Mary was conceived in the womb of Saint Anne without original sin. She was sinless from the very beginning of her life! Below is a beautiful picture of Saint Anne conceiving the Virgin Mary, by Jean Bellegambe:

typhoon ruby

Source: wf-f.org

We Filipinos need Mama Mary’s intercession in a special way today. As I write this, our country is being battered yet again by another typhoon. As of today, Typhoon Ruby (international name Hagupit) has wreaked havoc in many parts of central Philippines and threatens to do the same in the north too, including Metro Manila.

I’ve been wanting to update the blog with posts of different topics (including introductions to my most recent posts on philstar.com), and had committed to doing so starting this week… but in light of recent events, I’ve decided to postpone doing so for now.

Instead, I just want to invite you all to pray with me, and to reach out in love to those who have been or are still being affected by the typhoon. We’ve done it before, and let’s do so again now.

If you’re going to Mass today (and you really should do your best to do so, since ), please do include our countrymen in your intentions! Kindly do the same, too, if you plan to celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception in your own way at home.

Let’s continue to update ourselves, too, on how we can help our affected brothers and sisters, and also prepare ourselves and our loved ones, especially if we are in the path of the typhoon.

Let’s also keep praying for our Lord to deliver us and our country from disasters and calamities:

typhoon ruby

Source:

Mama Mary, pray for us!

 

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