The Closet Madonna

We have an abundance of Mary statues around here....an outdoor one who looks after our garden, a beautiful pearlescent one on our home altar, one in the dining room opposite a St. Joseph statue, two kitchen Madonnas in - appropriately enough - the kitchen, and a scattering of smaller ones in bedrooms.

Then there's the poor neglected  Lady of Sorrows statue that's been sitting in my closet for ages.  We used to have her out in out living room until Advent started one year.  A sorrowful Mary just didn't fit with the season of Advent.  Besides, I was going through the house trying to reduce excess where I could, and that statue had never been my favorite anyways.  So I put her in my closet to keep her safe from little hands....and I guess I kind of forgot about her.  Or perhaps I just haven't taken the time to figure out what to do with her.

I have a strict "no kids in my closet" rule, but ever since the kids discovered the statue in there a few months ago, I've allowed one exception - they are allowed to go in each morning while I have it open and give her a kiss.  Stella often talks to me about why Mary is so sad.

Acting upon another sweet and holy inspiration, the kids have been occasionally picking flowers from the yard, and bring them in to give to the yellow Kitchen Madonna near the sink.  I keep some mini vases next to her just for this purpose.  Truth be told, it's a benefit to myself as well, since I enjoy having pretty fresh flowers to look at while I'm washing the endless dishes.

A couple weeks ago, Stella brought in a big orange day-lily.  It was one of the first of the season, and I was looking forward to displaying it on my kitchen shelf.  I started filling one of the little vases, but Stella stopped me.  "No, I want to give it to another Mary."  I tried to convince her to give her flower to Mary in the dining room or Mary in the backyard.....somewhere public where we could all enjoy the beautiful flower.  But Stella was insistent - she wanted to give the flower to the Mary in my closet.  I told her the flower wouldn't do well just shut up in the dark, that no one would be able to see it in there, that I didn't want a vase of water spilling all over the carpet, and that we should really find a better place.  "No," Stella answered, "I want to give it to Mary in your closet.  To make her not sad anymore."

Of course, my heart just melted under the impact of such a pure and loving intention.

It's now become somewhat regular for Stella to bring a flower to "Mary in my closet" - gifts given completely unselfishly, entirely for the joy and honor of the recipient.

A Simple Celebration for the Assumption

I'm re-posting this from last year, in case anyone is looking for some simple ideas for celebrating the upcoming Feast of the Assumption.  So far, this is really the one feast day (aside from Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter) that I've really managed to turn into an ongoing family tradition.  Everyone who gives advice about celebrating Catholic feast days in your family (Maria von Trapp, Mary Reed Newland, Auntie Leila, Kendra, Haley, etc.) suggests just starting with a few, and building as you go.  So that's about where I am!

****
From 2013

The Feast of the Assumption celebrates the day Mary was taken into Heaven, body and soul.  It's a Holy Day of obligation for Catholics, and one of the most (the most?) important Marian feasts in the calendar.  It also happens to be my birthday, which means it's a day especially close to my heart.*

I decided to host an Assumption party/playdate for some of the moms from the Catholic moms group I'm in.  Here's a peek at how we celebrated:

I noticed after cleaning everything up and uploading photos that one of my children placed a lovely fingerprint right on the lens.  Excuse all these blurry photos.

According to several of my books, the Assumption has been traditionally a harvest festival, when people would bring fresh fruits, herbs and flowers to the church to be blessed.  This is also connected with a sweet old legend which Maria Von Trapp writes about in her book:

When Mary the Mother of Jesus felt that her end was drawing near, she sent her guardian angel to summon the Apostles, who had gone out into the world to preach the Gospel of her Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ.  When they received the summons, they came in a great hurry and were just in time to witness the happy death of their dear Mother.  Everyone had come except Thomas.  He was three days late.  When he heard that the Blessed Mother had been resting in the tomb for days, he cried bitterly and pled with the Apostles to open the tomb once more and let him glance at the beloved features.  The other Apostles yielded to his plea, but as they opened the tomb, they found it filled with flowers, which gave out a heavenly scent.  On the place where they had laid the body there was only the shroud left – the body had been bourne up to heaven by the angels, where it was joined by the holy soul of the Mother of God.  According to the legend, all the flowers and herbs on earth had lost their scent after Adam and Eve committed the first sin in the Garden of Eden.  On the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Mother, however, the flowers were given back their scent and the herbs their power to heal.

 
Food
Lavender-lemon cookies, cut into tulip shape (to work in the herbs and flowers theme)
"Heavenly punch" (cheesy, I know)
Cookie dough pretzel bites (just because I saw them on Pinterest and they looked amazing)
Fresh fruit salad (nectarines, strawberries, red grapes, blueberries)

Just a simple shortbread recipe with (blessed) lavender and lemon zest mixed in

It looked more appetizing before the ice cream "clouds" melted all over the place

very yummy!

Decorations
Dark pink roses (no significance to the color - I just thought they were pretty)
A statue of Mary surrounded by cotton batting "clouds"

cheeeeeesy

Activities for the kids [forgot to get pics]
Assumption coloring page
This cute craft from Catholicmom.com

Favors [forgot to get pics]
I sent the moms home with a few sprigs of blessed lavender tied with a white ribbon

***

Anyways, if anyone else is celebrating the Assumption today, I'd love to hear what you did!  (and link me up, if you write about it on your blog).  Happy Assumption Day!


*It wasn't always.  When I was a kid, I got SO MAD every year that I was forced  to go to church on my birthday, of all days!

On Being a Co-Mother

Some friends called to ask if we would be the godparents for their soon-to-be-born baby.  Tom and I have been on such a joyous high ever since.  I can't describe what an honor it is to have been asked.  I figured we'd probably be asked to be someone's godparents eventually, but I thought we were far down "the list" for a lot of our friends (who have siblings or closer friends who would probably be asked before us).  I'm really excited to have that special relationship with their little child.  These friends are already Stella's godparents, so now the godparent relationship will extend both ways.  It's wonderful to have this keeping our families bonded, even though we live across the country from each other.

I have a wonderful little booklet about Our Lady of Fatima (The True Story of Fatima by John de Marchi).  The young visionaries who saw the Blessed Mother were cousins, and their parents were godparents several times over for each other's children.  Throughout the account in this book, the children's mothers refer to one another as "comadre", and their fathers as "compadre".  The book explains that in Portuguese, these terms mean - as they sound - "co-mother" and "co-father".  They are titles that describe the very special relationship between the person who is the child's natural parent, and the one who is their godparent.

I think that's just a beautiful understanding of what it means when you ask someone to be a godparent to your child - you are asking them to love that child and pray for them as if they were their own.

Feast of the Assumption Party/Playdate

The Feast of the Assumption celebrates the day Mary was taken into Heaven, body and soul.  It's a Holy Day of obligation for Catholics, and one of the most (the most?) important Marian feasts in the calendar.  It also happens to be my birthday, which means it's a day especially close to my heart.*

I decided to host an Assumption party/playdate for some of the moms from the Catholic moms group I'm in.  Here's a peek at how we celebrated:

I noticed after cleaning everything up and uploading photos that one of my children placed a lovely fingerprint right on the lens.  Excuse all these blurry photos.

According to several of my books, the Assumption has been traditionally a harvest festival, when people would bring fresh fruits, herbs and flowers to the church to be blessed.  This is also connected with a sweet old legend which Maria Von Trapp writes about in her book:

When Mary the Mother of Jesus felt that her end was drawing near, she sent her guardian angel to summon the Apostles, who had gone out into the world to preach the Gospel of her Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ.  When they received the summons, they came in a great hurry and were just in time to witness the happy death of their dear Mother.  Everyone had come except Thomas.  He was three days late.  When he heard that the Blessed Mother had been resting in the tomb for days, he cried bitterly and pled with the Apostles to open the tomb once more and let him glance at the beloved features.  The other Apostles yielded to his plea, but as they opened the tomb, they found it filled with flowers, which gave out a heavenly scent.  On the place where they had laid the body there was only the shroud left – the body had been bourne up to heaven by the angels, where it was joined by the holy soul of the Mother of God.  According to the legend, all the flowers and herbs on earth had lost their scent after Adam and Eve committed the first sin in the Garden of Eden.  On the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Mother, however, the flowers were given back their scent and the herbs their power to heal.

 
Food
Lavender-lemon cookies, cut into tulip shape (to work in the herbs and flowers theme)
"Heavenly punch" (cheesy, I know)
Cookie dough pretzel bites (just because I saw them on Pinterest and they looked amazing)
Fresh fruit salad (nectarines, strawberries, red grapes, blueberries)

Just a simple shortbread recipe with (blessed) lavender and lemon zest mixed in

It looked more appetizing before the ice cream "clouds" melted all over the place

very yummy!

Decorations
Dark pink roses (no significance to the color - I just thought they were pretty)
A statue of Mary surrounded by cotton batting "clouds"

cheeeeeesy

Activities for the kids [forgot to get pics]
Assumption coloring page
This cute craft from Catholicmom.com

Favors [forgot to get pics]
I sent the moms home with a few sprigs of blessed lavender tied with a white ribbon

***

And for dinner tonight, I'm making myself my favorite food ever, "my mom's" chicken pot pie which happens to be loaded with herbs, so it works for the feast day celebrations!  But really, I decided to cook myself my favorite food because it's my birthday.  Is that lame?  That I'm cooking my own birthday dinner? Should I feel bad about this?  (That's the same question I asked myself when had to drive myself - all alone, no one else in the car - to the church on the morning of my wedding, with my hair done and my veil already pinned in.....I got some strange looks from other drivers).

Anyways, if anyone else is celebrating the Assumption today, I'd love to hear what you did!  (and link me up, if you write about it on your blog).  Happy Assumption Day!


*It wasn't always.  When I was a kid, I got SO MAD every year that I was forced  to go to church on my birthday, of all days!

Some Recent Second-Hand Treasures

In the past month, we've picked up many little useful items at thrift stores, yard sales, and...people's trash (a second toddler bed, which might come in handy when baby #3 comes along).  Here are a few of the things I grabbed pictures of:

1. A bunch of vintage Christmas ornaments for TEN CENTS EACH (!!).  Tom doesn't know about these yet, because I went on a rare thrift-store trip without him, and stashed them with the Christmas stuff as soon as I got home.  He already thinks we have waaaaay too many ornaments.

2. An old-fashioned wicker carpet-beater ($2).  I got this solely for the quaintness of it, and it's hanging on the wall now.  I'm on the lookout for other old-fashioned household items to join it one day, such as a washboard.

3. This statue of Our Lady of Sorrows from a yard sale (talked down to $25).  It replaced a less-nice Our Lady of Grace statue on a little shelf in the living room.

 

4. And when the woman at the yardsale saw that I was interested in religious art, she mentioned a larger statue she had in her garage, and was willing to sell me.  I talked her down as much as possible, but I'm not going to tell how much I paid for it, because I'm still feeling a bit of sticker shock over it.  But it's a beautiful statue, and I'm trying not to regret the purchase.  Here's Tom standing next to her, for size comparison.

 

The main issue is that the statue is made of plaster, and thus very fragile.  Not something that can be left in the open around little kids.  In a future home, we might keep it up on a pedestal of sorts, or maybe behind closet doors (to be opened for family prayer time)....for now, though, she's standing down in the basement next to the washer and dryer.  This will sound completely ridiculous, but when I go down there to do laundry, there's often this tiny fear in the back of my mind that I will encounter some scary person down there who has broken into our house and is about to kill us all.  Since Mary has been down there to greet me, it's made me feel much safer.

5. We picked up this charming solid wood cabinet for $20 at Goodwill.  We both liked the look of it, but weren't sure what the heck we would use it for.  Until Tom carried it into the house, and fortuitously set it down in the kitchen - taking a break from lifting it before bringing it down to the big mess of random stored crap that is our basement.

cabinet before: green

It was standing right next to our cheap and ugly microwave cart that I've had since I moved into my first-ever apartment.  Hmm...perhaps we could switch it out for something nicer, I thought.

old crappy microwave cart

 The coffeemaker and the toaster would need a new home, though.  Tom suggested putting them on the other kitchen cart thing which was storing my cookbooks.

old cookbook storage

We sanded the new cabinet down and painted it aqua to match my kitchen colors.  Then we moved the cookbooks inside of it, as well as some of the random stuff from the old microwave cart.

cabinet after: aqua!  So much better than the previous one from Wal-Mart.

 And now that other cart in the corner has transformed into my little coffee and tea station! (plus the toaster, which I have no better place for). 

I'm liking it!

Our Lady of Fatima and the Communion of Saints

 

Some recent musings...

I recently picked up a small book about Our Lady of Fatima.  It's a pretty basic overview of the story of Fatima (when Mary appeared a number of times to three Portuguese children in 1917, giving them important messages for the world), but still the most in-depth account of the apparitions I've personally read.  

 

As I've been reading, I've been surprised by how many times the children were reminded of the great need to make sacrifices for sinners: "In all that you can, offer God a sacrifice in reparation for the sins with which He is offended and in supplication for the conversion of sinners."

They took this message very seriously, and for the rest of their lives (very short ones, in the case of Jacinta and Francisco), found many ways to offer sufferings for this purpose.  The book shares a few examples of some of the simple ways they found to do this: giving their lunch to poor children (and thus being hungry themselves for most of the day), not taking a drink of water even when they were very thirsty, and wearing a length of rope tied around their waists (under the clothes, almost like a hair shirt).

One line in the book mentioned that the children "acquired a very lively understanding of the admirable dogma of the Communion of the Saints."  This refers to the teaching that the Catholic Church is made up of three parts: those souls who are in heaven (the "Church Triumphant"), those in Purgatory who are being purified for Heaven ("The Church Suffering") and those faithful on Earth ("The Church Militant").  I began reflecting on this, particularly on the duties of us members of the Church Militant.  

 

Of recent years, I've come to see the purpose of life here on earth as basically a battle (hence the term "militant") to save one's own soul and - depending on his Vocation - the souls entrusted to him.  So in my case, I have the duty to help my husband and children get to Heaven as well.  

 

But thinking of it now in the context of Our Lady's teachings at Fatima, I think I'm understanding for the first time that I also have a real responsibility to all those other souls on earth who are in danger of rejecting God and going to Hell.  

 

It's so easy to forget about this.  I had come to imagine that the only way I could have a positive impact on other's souls was by being a good apologist for the Church - being able to convince people through logic of the truths of the Faith.  Deciding that wasn't a skill I possessed, I had thought this removed my obligations to all those other sinners on Earth (of which, of course, I am certainly one).  "As long as I'm striving to live a holy life, and teach my children to love God," I thought, "I'm doing what I'm supposed to.  I don't have the time to volunteer for this or that charitable organization...I don't have much money to donate to the missionaries I might like to", etc. etc.  All this time, I wasn't remembering Our Lady's message to us.  I spend so much time lamenting the distressing state of the world and the pervasiveness of sin and corruption as if it's everyone else's fault.  But what have I been doing to offer reparation for these sins?  What graces have I been trying to win for those souls at risk?

 

Even if I never left my house for the rest of my life, and never spoke to anyone in the world besides my own husband and children, I could still be helping sinners.  It only takes my prayers and sacrifices, offered for their sake. 

...And I should think that if someone was humbly and generously making little sacrifices throughout his life for the sake of God and for other people....he would have a good chance of "getting himself to heaven" in the process.

 

Although I've been praying it for years, Ihad also forgotten the origin of the prayer [called, appropriately, "The Fatima Prayer"] Mary asked us to include after each decade of the Rosary:

"O my Jesus, forgive us our sins.  Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy"

The BVM

I feel like I need to just preface this with a "sorry if I offend anyone" comment.  What I'm about to say is mostly addressed to women, and I know well how personally woman take things.  But here's something that's been on my mind of late.

I've noticed a new habit among young Catholics, particularly women, of referring to Our Lady as "Mama Mary."  Something about this just bothers me.  First off, I just think it sounds so informal.  So familiar.  Certainly, if we have the relationship with the Blessed Mother that we should have, we will be familiar with her.  But there's still a huge amount of reverence and respect owed to her.  She has a thousand and one other titles - scripture-based, revelation-based, character-based - which are beautiful and fitting.  Other titles which convey her Motherhood.  "Mama" seems...juvenile.

Something about that word just seems forced and unnatural.  I mean, what adult woman honestly refers to her mother as "mama"?  Pretty much no one, unless they are intentionally trying to be cutesy.

During personal conversation with Mary, it would be completely appropriate to address her as "Mother".  But I suppose that if for certain people, actually calling her "Mama" during prayer is natural and unaffected, then I don't have a problem with it.  But only when used as a personal address.  Not as a title she is referenced by in conversation.

But referring to her in such as informal and un-reverent (I won't use the stronger term "irreverent") way publicly seems like a disservice somehow.  That said, referring to Our Mother simply as "Mary" IS appropriate, and has been lauded by various saints (St. Alphonsus Liguori in particular).  And that, too, seems somewhat "informal" - so maybe that's not the main problem I have with it.

Words means things.  Calling someone by different names can express a different sense of their person.  I think when people call her Mama Mary, they are trying to emphasize something.  The child-like reliance they have on her?  The familial closeness we should feel towards her?  Those are good sentiments to remind oneself of.  It still bothers me, though!

Does anyone have any insight into why this might bother me?  Any arguments to make as to why it shouldn't bother me?  I'd love to hear your thoughts :-)