Novena: prayer card for you

As I mentioned last night, we are doing a very special novena for a very special friend.  If you'd like to print
a copy of the novena, just right click the image above and save to your computer or print directly.  This is a beautiful prayer to a beautiful saint for a beautiful woman trying to fulfill God's call. 

Please join us in prayer.

Novena: please pray this lovely prayer with us ...

... for a dear friend, Karen Mahowald, who is discerning a vocation to the Dominican Sisters of Nashville.  Karen is trying to enter this August, but needs to clear her student-loan debt before being accepted.  She has asked for our prayers to help her in this endeavor.

Here is the novena to St. Angela Merici, which we will start on Tuesday, Jan 19th and finish on Wednesday, Jan 27th (St. Angela's feast day):

Novena to Saint Angela Merici

January 19th to January 27th (Ending on St. Angela's Feast Day)

Saint Angela, you chose Karen as she prepared for her Confirmation, please watch over her now as she prepares to enter religious life. You instructed the young women of your time to live and grow in charity. Pray that Karen will receive a grant from Mater Ecclesiae. Please intercede not only for Karen's material needs but also her spiritual ones. Pray that Karen will be impelled always by charity and zeal for souls.


Lord, may Saint Angela commend us to Your mercy; may her charity and wisdom help us to be faithful to Your teaching and to follow it in our lives. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen

Pray one Our Father, One Hail Mary and One Glory Be in honor of Saint Angela; end the novena prayer with St. Angela, Pray for us.

Review: The Gospel Truth: A Lectionary-Based Catechism for Adults

I'm always trying to find ways to help the kids (and me too, for that matter) understand the gospels.  We've got the Navarre commentaries, read the Magnificat and try to really listen to our parish priests ... but I'm still in search of something that I can use to really help me (and them) "GET IT"!

When The Catholic Company had The Gospel Truth: A Lectionary-Based Catechism for Adults as one of their review choices ... I snapped it up.  What could be better than a book that covers ALL the Sunday Gospels during the three-year cycle?  For each Sunday's gospel, Kenneth Ogorek includes:

• the text of the gospel (using the RSV translation),
• links to the Catechism and Church documents to further understand the gospel,
• a thought-provoking question for me as well as a question for my children,
• an implied suggestion for "taking it into the community" by way of a thought-provoking question,
• other scripture readings (Old Testament prophecies, Psalms and Letters) that will help elucidate the gospel further 
• a notation of where to gather more information from the Catechism for Adults
• a "one-liner" from the gospel that I can reflect on for the week. 

I like the idea of this book.  I like the texts laid out in one place, the links to Church documents (particularly the specific Catechism paragraphs) and I like the thought-provoking questions.  I plan to use this each week with my kids ... reading them the Sunday gospel on Friday (so before they hear it at Mass) and then again on Monday (after they've heard Father's "take" on it) and seeing what kind of discussions and actions these generate.  I will use the "one-liner" as copy- and memory-work so they begin to "own" the scriptures.

I do have a quibble:  the author mentions that he tried to keep it simple and straightforward.  Well and good but then why didn't he give a chart for the three-year gospel cycle?  We are currently in Year C ... why didn't he put a chart that shows that Advent2009-November 2010, we are in Year C, Advent 2010-November 2011, we'll be in Year A, etc?  Instead the author suggests looking at the missalette or checking the bulletin -- this is a very clumsy way of knowing what year we're in when it would have been so easy to have included a chart.  As I said, just a small quibble!

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This review was written as part of the Catholic book Reviewer program from The Catholic Company (where I received a free copy of The Gospel Truth with the promise to write a truthful review). Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on The Gospel Truth- A Lectionary-Based Catechism for Adults and to purchase the resources mentioned in this review. 

Ogorek, Kenneth (forword by Archbishop Donald Wuerl)-- The Gospel Truth: A Lectionary-Based Catechism for Adults.  2008.  E. T. Nedder Publishing (Tucson, AZ).  ISBN: 978-1-893757-53-0.  paperback 415 pages.

Feast Day: St. Marguerite Bourgeoys

St. Marguerite Bourgeoys is one of those lesser known saints but amazing nonetheless.  Born in France in 1620, Marguerite spent the first 33 years of her life taking care of her family (after her parents died).  In 1653, she traveled to Canada to start a congregation of sisters who would educate the French colonists as well as the Native Canadians.  In 1698, just two years before her death (at 80), St. Marguerite's order, the Congregation of Notre Dame, was granted Vatican approval.

JPthe Great canonized this Canadian saint in 1982.

St. Marguerite, pray for us!

Review: Rediscovering God in America

Since we moved back to Virginia last year, I've been interested in reading anything I can about the founding fathers, especially books about their faith and how that faith translated into the government we have now. 

Where did we go wrong?

The founding fathers wanted separation of Church and State NOT to get rid of religion but to protect each individual's WAY of practicing their religion.  So Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Deists could co-exist.  The fact is that our country was founded by men with a Judeo-Christian perspective.

Newt Gingrich clearly proves this point in his Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation's History and Future.  [Note: The copy I reviewed is a reprint by Thomas Nelson Books with photographs by Callista Gingrich.]   This book is a walking tour of our Nation's Capitol ... stopping periodically to describe a monument and the man (or men and women) behind that monument ... their faith, philosophy and how these relate to the United States right now and in the future.

Sites that are described include the National Archives (housing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), the Washington Monuent, the Jefferson Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, FDR Memorial, the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court (site of some pretty radical misunderstandings about what the Constitution tells us), the Library of Congress, the Ronald Reagan Building, the White House, the WW2 Memorial and Arlington Cemetery.

This book is much more than a travelogue of must-sees in the Nation's capitol.  This book clearly and completely decimates the argument that freedom of religion means freedom FROM religion.  As Gingrich clearly argues in this book, the founding fathers and our nation were based on a Judeo-Christian perspective that cannot and should not be ignored or replaced.  Gingrich, in his meandering walk around Washington, chips away at the anti-religion edifice prevalent in American culture.  By the end of this short book -- only 118 pages -- the reader is left with the conviction that we must not ignore God in our quest to keep America and her people strong and safe.

I highly recommend this book for any American citizen (particularly policy makers) who need to remember how this country's beginnings created a government that has withstood the test of time!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Nature Study for the Neophyte

Neophyte ... [nee-uh-fahyt]–noun 1. a beginner or novice: He's a neophyte at chess.

Yep, that's the right term for me and nature study ... I'm definitely a beginner, novice, schlep who doesn't know diddly about nature but is trying so hard.  Nature and science in general usually falls to my poor dh who has a PhD in biological sciences.  My degrees are more arts than science for the very good reason that what I was taught when I was younger was so boring, I don't remember any of it.  I am trying to avoid this with my own kiddoes.

So, back to the point of this post ... nature study and how it can be done by even this science-flunky: living books.  Yep, that's the way to START learning about nature.  At some point you actually have to go OUTSIDE and DO, but on a cold winter day, books really help.

Here are some of the best we've found:


These four books by Maryjo Koch are a treasure trove of nature study info ... from great sketches (the kind I'd love to draw in my own nature journal) to interesting facts, these books beautifully translate nature to the page.  HT: Mary M for recommending them a few years back ... we are using these all the time!


Thornton Burgess is a master story-teller for nature books!  His characters and descriptions are simple enough for the kindergartener but interesting enough to pique the older student's interst.  Today, we started reading The Burgess Flower Book to kick-off a study of plants and flowers ... did you know the first harbinger of spring in swampy areas is the Skunk Cabbage?  My kids do now!

We also love the Clara Dillingham Pierson "among the ..." books.  We spent the fall and winter reading about the meadow people, the forest people, the farmyard people and the night people.  Quite fun and interesting.  We kept a scrapbook of all the animals we discovered and interesting facts about them.

All three kids enjoyed the stories and have "favorites" now and argue about who has the better "people"!

Finally, one of our favorite resources for nature information is just about any book from the pen of Jim Arnosky (sometimes with the narrator-character of "Crinkleroot") ... these books are fun to read and the illustrations are easy to understand and copy into private nature journals.  He's got a whole slew of species-specific picture books (raccoons, wild ponies, etc) but we particularly like his more journal-like books.  Sadly, most of these are OOP, but you can find them at library booksales and used bookstores -- definitely worth the hunt! 
Some of our favorites include:













Well that should give you an idea of how this neophyte naturalist does things ... I'll post more as we head into spring, a great time to go DO after all our indoor studying.

St. Therese says it all ...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my personal motto for the year is a quote from St. Therese.  Known as the Little Flower, St. Therese is inspiring in her simplicity and love of Jesus.  Here is a link to a beautiful post by a good friend who, God willing, in 2010 will enter the Dominican Congregation of St. Cecilia (aka, Nashville Dominicans).  Karen did what I do all the time .. took a simple thought and made it into a bigger, more stressful post than it needed to be.  This link is the result of her self-awareness....

St. Therese tells us quite simply:

Our Lord needs from us neither great deeds nor profound thoughts. Neither intelligence nor talents. He cherishes simplicity.

I need to remember this in all things ... particularly in pushing my kids to excel or in stressing myself out over the unimportant minutiae of the day.  I really need to memorize her Story of a Soul!

St. Therese, please pray for us all ... that we remember to stress the right things and not stress over the wrong things!