4 Pretty, Holy, Catholic Pinterest Boards

It's hardly a secret that I love Pinterest. There are so many beautiful ideas, fun crafts, delicious recipes, and inspirational images.

When I scan the feed, though, I always pause an extra-long time over the religious images. They always catch me off guard because there are so few holy pins, but it's like seeing portraits of old friends and it never fails to make me smile.

And, not gonna lie, if I'm starting to slip into covetousness of beautiful houses or dream gardens, the images of the Blessed Mother gently call me back! It's a wonderful little pictorial evangelization.

If you need some Catholic boards to follow, I'm rather fond of:

Betty Coe's "Catholic" Board

Sherry Gardiner's "Catholic" Board

Kathleen Doherty's "Catholic" Board

Amy Caroline's "Believe It" Board

and I suppose I could do a little shameless self-promotion and direct you to my own

City Wife, Country Life's "Sanctus" Board

Please please please let me know which Catholic boards you follow so I can have some more sanctified Pinterest viewing!

Year of Faith Resources

I am so excited for the Year of Faith!! It starts today and goes until November 24th, 2013, Feast of Christ the King.

October 11th is the 50th Anniversary of the opening of the 2nd Vatican Council, and is also the 20th Anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Pope Benedict has asked Catholics, this year, to read, meditate upon, and prayerfully study the documents of the Council and the CCC. He's made tons of plenary indulgences available for the whole year. This is going to be such a year of grace!

If you want to participate fully, there are several great resources available:

Free: 

1) FlockNote will e-mail or text you a little section of the CCC each morning throughout the Year of Faith to help you read the whole document in one year.

2) Coming Home Network has a breakdown of both the Bible and the CCC so you can read both in one year. This would be especially wonderful if you could gather a small group of friends to meet once a week to discuss the Scriptures and articles of the Catechism you've read -- for accountability, to strengthen your faith, and build community.

3) The Vatican Website has all of the documents of Vatican 2 available online for free.

4) The USCCB has the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church online for free.

5) CatholicWeb has another breakdown of the CCC to complete it in one year, but this one divides it so that you read a little bit from each section of the Catechism each week. That way, you're not reading solely from Part I for months on end.

Not Free:

1) Fr. Mitch Pacwa has written an excellent book just for the occasion: The Year of Faith: A Bible Study Guide for Catholics. If you don't want to "go it alone" when reading the Scripture, this is a wonderful guide tailored specifically for this year, drawing from the Pope's Motu Proprio, Porta Fidei, the Apostolic Letter which called for this Year of Faith. It doesn't go through the entire Bible, but it's a wonderful start. $9.95

2)  The Magnificat has a little Companion book of daily meditations, prayers, essays, and devotionals for the Year of Faith. $6.95

So I hope you will delve deeply into the richness of the Faith this year. Do you have any plans for this year, or additional resources?

Seriously Easy Scapular Fix

On this week's Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, I went through my house collecting all of our broken scapulars. I have enough to make a habit! Never learning my lesson, I put them on right after I get out of the shower when I have a towel turban on my head. *Snap* Another one bites the dust.

What do you do with broken scapulars? Since they're sacramentals, you can't throw them away. You're supposed to fix, burn, or bury them, but around here they usually they just get shoved to the back of a drawer (the drawer with tacky holy cards, broken rosaries, headless statues and rusted medals). "I'll whip out my sewing machine later and fix them."

But that requires a seam ripper, carefully lining up the cords and trying to get my sewing needle through two thick layers of fabric... not impossible but certainly not easy. Therefore, it usually places slightly higher than "dust behind the storage boxes in the garage" on my to-do list.

It never ceases to amaze me that I can burn through a scapular a month while my husband has had his forever. "How do you do it? What's your secret??"

"Oh, when they break, I just tie them back together."

*blink blink*

I married a genius.

A Visit

Happy Feast of the Visitation!

This is my favorite image of the Visitation, painted by Carl Bloch. St. Elizabeth is so joyful and welcoming I just want to hug her myself! And the Blessed Mother's veil is so transparent and light-filled... just like her soul which magnifies the Lord.

Today would be a great day to visit a friend, don't you think?

Blessed Easter Art

 

O wonder of your humble care for us!
O love, O charity beyond all telling,
to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!
O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!

-From the Exsultet at the Easter Vigil

My Favorite Lenten Reading

We're squarely in the middle of Lent now. Three and 1/2 weeks in, three weeks and three days until Easter.

I encourage you to keep on keepin' on!

While meditating on the Stations of the Cross (especially St. Peter Julian Eymard's Eucharistic Stations) is a favorite, as is this meditation on the Passion of Christ by St. Thomas More, I'm really really soaking up the goodness of In Conversation with God. There are three little meditations each day, which are great for morning, noon and evening prayers, and they are so fruitful.

Which are your favorite readings and meditations during Lent?
 

Good Christian Ladies

Reading the news, with its anti-Catholic anti-Christian anti-God bilge, sometimes it's so easy for me to lose hope and abandon the culture to the secular humanists. Not the least in a literally ad nauseum list of recent offenses are: the HHS mandate railroading our consciences, the legalization of same-sex so-called "marriage," the protection of hate speech against the Church as a 1st Amendment right but the pastoral letter of a bishop preaching the truth is censored by our government, and the debut of yet another God-mocking TV show, "GCB". 

And yet, when I get together with like-minded people I am so encouraged. There is so much good in our midst!

I think it's really vitally important, especially in this time of persecution of true Christians, to foster deep friendships and encourage one another in our faith. There was a great article in the National Catholic Register lately about church friends being super-friends.

A sad fact is, in most parishes, just going to Mass on Sunday is unlikely to score many friends. The stampede to the parking lot after Mass possesses the frenzy and urgency of front row tickets to a Justin Bieber concert in an all-girls middle school. It's intense, I tell you, intense. So unless you join some committees, groups, or societies, it's very easy to feel horribly alone in church full of people.

But you know what? Joining committees, groups and societies isn't so hard. I've joined a parish Bible study, the religious education program, the Catholic Daughters of the Americas, the funeral bakers committee, and am an aspirant to the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites. I've got so many Good Christian Ladies (and gentlemen) around me that it's hard to be discouraged!

Ultimately, of course, our hope is in Christ our Lord. He has already won the victory over sin and death, amen?? "Therefore, encourage one another and build up one another, as indeed you do." 1 Thessalonians 5:11

Do you belong to any church clubs, groups or societies? How do you make godly like-minded friends? How do you keep your eyes fixed on Christ and retain hope in this culture?

Lenten Penances: Self-Denial or Dieting?

Happy Shrove Tuesday!

One of the most common conversation starters for Catholics around this time of year is, "what are you giving up for Lent?" or more commonly, since "doing something extra" for Lent is trendy these days, "what are you doing for Lent?"

I'm in the annoying camp who loves to ask this question but dances, dodges and darts around the answer myself. It's a matter of humility, actually... and not the false kind.

"What are you doing for Lent, Jane?"

"Oh, I'm praying all 20 decades each day, donating my life savings to charity, going on a mission trip to Africa, and fasting on egg-free, gluten-free, dairy-free rice cakes until Easter. What are you doing?"

"Uum... I'm gonna 'try to lay off the sweets.'"

My Lenten regime of the past few years looks more like a diet than an observance of voluntary self-denial for the penitential season of Quadragesima. "No sweets, no white sugar, no white flour" suspiciously resembles my doctor's recommendation for weight loss.

There are many good reasons for fasting and abstinence. Among many others, 1) It's a form of loving solidarity with those who really have nothing to eat. 2) It's an act of sacrificial love for God, united with Christ's suffering on the cross for the salvation of sinners, including ourselves. 3) It's a training and strengthening of the will against sin by denying ourselves licit pleasures so we will be better able to reject illicit ones. 4) It's a purging of selfishness and an awakening to the needs of others. 5) It's an expression of trust in the providence of God, from whom all good things come. 6) Voluntarily being hungry for earthly bread makes us hunger for Christ in the Eucharist.

But... er... lose 10-15 pounds to look smashing in that new Easter dress doesn't actually fit on that list, come to think of it.

So this Lent, with the grace of God, I'm going to break with my traditional Lenten diet penance, hit myself where it hurts, and actually strive to fast and do penances for the right reasons. I have a hunch that slashing internet time, excess sleep, and meat, and filling the void with Adoration, almsgiving, and fasting might be better for my soul than the Atkins diet.

What are you giving up (doing?) for Lent?

Happy Solemnity!

Is Happy Solemnity an oxymoron? Just wondering.

From the Ghent Altarpiece. Image credit.

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

Potential Personal Penitential Practices

I've really been floundering this year about what to do for Lent. Of course the not-to-be-devalued traditional penances of additional prayer, fasting and almsgiving are in the bag. But I really wanted to have a more pointedly personal season of conversion this year.

Last night, when I was really beginning to despair of finding a suitable tailor-made penance for Lent, a painful wave of self-revealing inspiration came.

I haven't decided on any particular one, but a partial list of possibilities includes forty days without:

1. Bossing my husband around. Just because I know he'll do almost anything I ask doesn't mean I should ask. Especially if I'm just asking because I'm too lazy to do it myself.

2. Micromanaging. Contrary to every instinct in my being, there is more than one way to do any given task, and it doesn't always have to be done my way.

3. Critiquing food. "This could be better if it had..." "You know what would make this really good?" "If this were just a little riper..." "If this were a little thicker..." "If it had been cooked just a few minutes less..." "I bet a little .... would really help this." Under the guise of being a culinary genius, the quest for foodie perfection is an ugly habit that betrays a hedonistic sensuality and revolting lack of gratitude.

4. Griping rather than serving. "You left the cabinet doors open." "You left the shower door open." "You left the light on." How much effort does it really take for me to close a cabinet door?

5. "I'll do it later." There are no safer words to assure that it will never be done. If the task takes less than 5 or 10 minutes, there's no good reason not to do it now.

6. Sulking. My passive-aggressive self absolutely loves a good sulk. For instant gratification, it's so much more satisfying to wallow in being offended than to articulate the grievance and seek resolution. More than half the time, once I've wasted a gorgeous day cold-shouldering and sulking, I find out that the offense was actually a complete misunderstanding with no real wrong committed... which leads to further sulking.

7. Gossipy prayer intentions. For the sake of getting to talk about other people's problems, I've been known to couch any juicy gossip in a prayer intention. "Yeah, we really need to pray for Betty Lynn. Her marriage is not doing so well." "Georgeanne nearly had a nervous breakdown. We really need to add her to the prayer list."

And at least for these... I don't intend to break on Sundays.