Thank you, dear Jesus,
for coming down from Heaven to save us.
Thank you for Christmas time.
Help us to get ready for your coming this year.
Amen
O God,
as light comes from this candle,
may the blessing of Jesus Christ come to us,
warming our hearts and
brightening our way.
May Christ our Savior bring life
into the darkness of this world,
and to us, as we wait for his coming.
Our Lady of the Annuciation
Our Lady of Fatima
Our Lady of Good Counsel
Our Lady Seat of Wisdom
Our Lady of Lourdes
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Mother Thrice Admirable
Our Lady of Perpetual Help
I begin to wake to the gentle whimper. She is awake and I am sure her diaper is very wet. I hope that she will go back to sleep. As she sees me get out of bed she begins to talk in happy tones and I begin to tell her it is night and she needs to go back to sleep after she has her diaper changed. She lies down quietly and I go back to bed. But not for long as she hears her Daddy getting ready for work. "Daddy go work. Daddy go work." So it is time to get up. I fix her some breakfast and she sits at her little table. She looks up at me and says, “full of grace”. I think for a second and realize that she wants to pray, to bless the food. So we make the sign of the cross and bless the food.
While she is eating I get my Liturgy of the Hours, sit on the couch, and begin to pray Morning Prayer. Very shortly here she comes into the room and I think that is the end of Morning Prayer. She walks up to where I am sitting and stares at me. I begin to read the psalms aloud and she climbs up beside me and sits motionless while I read the prayers.
We are going for a walk and she runs to the door, whining with anxiety, wanting her coat and the stroller. I dress her warmly and place her in the stroller. We start down the busy street with many cars passing. We hear a siren that is getting louder. She turns in the stroller and says, “full of grace”. We stop and say a prayer for the person in distress. We are going to the large Catholic cemetery about 10 blocks away. When we reach the cemetery I take her from the stroller so she can “run, run”. After about 30 minutes of walking in the cemetery, I hear a car approaching and yell to her that a car is approaching. She quickly moves from the street to the grass and patiently waits for the car to pass. Then I tell her the car is gone and we proceed on our walk. The car stops a short distance in front of us and a woman gets out and walks to a grave covered with a large mound of flowers. She is almost prostrate on the grave, obviously full of grief. As we approach close to that grave the little girl turns to me and says, “full of grace”. We stop and pray with the lady full of grief.
When we return to the house, I take her into her room to change her diaper. She looks at the crucifix on the wall and says, "Jesus." We go into the living room and she opens the drawer on the coffee table and takes out a number of prayer cards, and names each of them: John Paul, Mary, Jesus.
On Sunday we go to mass. On entering the church she puts her tiny hand into the holy water and with assistance makes the sign of the cross. At the elevation of the body of Christ she points and says, "Jesus Christ." As we leave the church, she points the statue and says, "Mary," after kneeling in front of the tabernacle. After we return home, I am sitting on the couch and she comes and stands in front of me. I reach down to pick her up and as I do I look into her face and see that she is full of grace, a little baptized child without sin. She is full of the Holy Spirit which she has repeatedly shown throughout each day.“Unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.”
(Picture: Hispanic Online )
(Picture: Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu) 
Picture: Our Lady of La Leche Shrine
Picture: Diocese of Menevia
Picture: The Mary Page
The idea of a Rosary Box is to fill a box with small items representing the Mysteries of the Rosary. These can then be used by small children either to follow along with older members of the family praying the Rosary, or to introduce the Mysteries at the child's own level. Even quite young toddlers enjoy these boxes, which make the Biblical events tangible for them.A commenter asked earlier what to put in a Rosary Box. You can find a list of suggested items here, along with a downloadable file for printing a set of Rosary cards.
I ordered Benjamin's Box: The Story of the Resurrection Eggs (Melody Carlson and Jack Stockman) for Easter, but Amazon UK's supply was delayed and it didn't arrive until today. My little one is still enjoying her Resurrection Box, and the book is a little old for her, so although it is still Eastertide I'm going to put it away for next year.One bright spring morning, Benjamin sat outside in the sunshine. In his hands was a wooden box.The option to buy the resurrection eggs ready made make this a very simple way of setting up a hands-on Easter story activity ... one that can be repeated year after year. It would also be quite easy to fill one's own set of eggs, or to put the items into a treasure box filled with straw (shredded yellow tissue paper would do nicely). To make your own set you would need:
"Hi Benjamin," called his friend, Eli. "What's that you've got?"
"It's my treasure box," said Benjamin. "My grandfather gave it to me before he died last year. He said it was very,very special."
Eli opened it and looked in. "There's nothing in it except for some old straw. How can this be a treasure box?"
Benjamin shrugged. "I don't have any real treasures yet. But my grandfather said this straw came from the bed of a baby who was born in a stable. My grandfather was a shepherd then, and he said the baby would grow up to be a king."
 | My daughter, Isabella, is 22 months old. In the past year she's consistently surprised me by her love for saying prayers, going to church, of statues and holy cards and crucifixes. On my blog I've been chronicling her developing prayer life. This is my most recent update; not a complete picture of everything we do but a snapshot of the most recent developments. Bella now says "Amen" at the end of prayers and regularly (though not always) folds her hands during the blessing before meals. Or at least during the first part, discipline often breaks down and she reaches for food before we get to the end of the prayer. She has started to make some attempts to make the sign of the cross on her own. She either gets the horizontal movement or she manages to touch her forehead and belly. She frequently touches her chest and says "Son" (or is it "sign"?). I see her moving her lips and listening intently during prayers. She's trying to get the words down. She refers to the Hail Mary as "Grace" and can fill in the blank when I drop a word in the first lines. If I say "Hail" she says "full of grace". I say "The Lord is" she replies "with you" and then says "Blessed". She repeats the words "fruit" and "womb" after I say them. Dom has now taken over putting Bella to bed after bedtime prayers since (post c-section) I can't yet lift her into her crib. He says that most nights she wants prayers now rather than stories. She says "grace" to request a prayer. We have a prayer book that was given to us that neither Dom nor I like much. It's a Protestant prayer book, mostly treacly poems with "Amen" thrown on at the end. But Bella loves it. So Dom started flipping the pages while reciting Catholic prayers he wants Bella to learn. He says the Hail Mary in English, French and Latin, the Magnificat, the Memorare, Hail Holy Queen, Our Father, Glory Be, etc. He later found a book about Mary  that he "reads" in the same way. It's become Bella's usual nightly request. At least for this week.That's only a temporary solution, though. What we'd really like is a nice Catholic prayer book with beautiful Catholic art. I haven't seen anything in the stores or online that's exactly what I'm looking for. However, I think we have the answer: we're going to make our own prayer book, using pictures downloaded from the web and free book editing software, Book Smart from Blurb.com. We spent Saturday afternoon putting together the prayers and trawling the net looking for good art in a usable format. I'm quite proud of the result and wish I had a way to share it. Dom has done a great job with the layout and design. it isn't cheap; but it isn't really any more than I'd be willing to spend if I found this same book in the store. And this book is titled The Bettinelli Family Prayer Book , dedicated to our children, has hand-picked content, and even includes a photo of us from our honeymoon on the copyright page. What an age we live in when you can design and print your own book from the comfort of your own living room! Prayers included: The Apostles' Creed, Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be (we did these three most common prayers in both English and Latin), Hail Holy Queen, Memorare, Act of Contrition, Anima Christi, Angelus, Magnificat, Psalm 23, St Michael Prayer, Alma Redemptoris Mater, Divine Praises, Act of Faith, Act of Hope, Act of Love. Pictures included works by Raphael, Durer, Botticelli, Dali, Rublev, Rembrandt, Fra Angelico, Millet, George de la Tour, Giotto, as well as mosaic, icons, and manuscript illuminations by unknown artists. I'll be sure to write about it's reception when we finally get it printed and start reading it with Bella. I am sure it will be a treasured family keepsake for years to come. |
Since Ash Wednesday my 21 month old Little Cherub has been having a wonderful time with liturgical year boxes. We started with a Stations of the Cross Box, and have now moved on to the Way of Light (Stations of the Resurrection) for Easter. Each box contains fourteen laminated picture cards and fourteen matching items. To give an idea of how we use the boxes, here is a description I posted on my blog ...
I mentioned at the beginning of Lent that I had put together a Stations of the Cross box for Little Cherub, using a set of laminated cards of the Stations that I made and the items listed here. It has been an enormous success. Cherub adores it! At least once or twice every day she rushes over to the drawer where the box lives pointing and repeating insistently "bo'! bo'!" Today it was three times.
We sit down with her "box", tip out the contents and set out the cards one by one, matching the items as we go.
The first station ... "look, Jesus is having his hands tied with rope. What do we need?" ... "ro'!" She finds the piece of string and puts it carefully on the picture.
The second station ... "look, Jesus had to carry a heavy cross. Can you find a cross?" ... some dithering between the small crucifix (The Twelfth Station) and the little wooden cross, then she puts the cross on the picture.
And so on. Every station now has its own point of interest to her. The fourth station ... "Ma'!" (Mary) as she points at the picture of Our Lady. The eighth ... "Baby!" ("Yes, that is the women of Jerusalem with their babies. They are sad. They are crying because Jesus is going to die"). The tenth ... tugs at her dress to show me that Jesus' clothes were taken away. The eleventh ... much demonstration with a plastic nail (useful find in a magic set belonging to her older sister!) poked at her hands and feet, my hands and feet, and any other hands and feet in the vicinity.
The pictures on their own would never have held her interest in the way these little objects do. They make the story real and tangible for her. Many thanks to Irene and her husband for sharing their idea. It has made one little girl (and her Mum) very happy.
