marriage

J1ST 098: Advent Book Study on Interior Freedom

LISTEN ON ITUNES

LISTEN ON GooglePlay

Welcome back from our Thanksgiving break and welcome into Advent! We hope you had a beautiful “Turkey Day” and that the first week of Advent has been somewhat peaceful and prayerful.

During Advent, we will be doing a three part series on the tiny but powerful book, Interior Freedom, by Fr. Jacques Philippe. If you don’t have it yet, you can grab it here and join in on the fun. For this episode, we focused on the first section (through pg 81). Even if you don’t plan on reading the book at all, this episode still has something to offer and we’d love for you to tune in.

We picked this book for Advent because this time of year is full of expectations. Expectations others have of us. Expectations we have of others. Expectations we have of ourselves. Besides all the normal busyness of life, there is all that Needs to Be Done to get ready for Christmas. All these expectations can make us feel penned in and frankly a little grumpy (especially if you are an introvert!!! All the gatherings this time of year are EXHAUSTING).

Enter Fr. Jacques little book on Interior Freedom. We have limited control to no control on what happens exteriorly, but interiorly, we can choose how we react, interpret, and respond.

To illustrate, Father tells a little story about St. Therese (one of his favorite saints who he mentions quite frequently in his writing). St. Therese was often given involved tasks to complete within her community… things that required concentration. Before beginning such a task, she would tell Jesus, “I choose to be interrupted.” In this way, she could lovingly accept interruptions from her sisters and if she was able to work for an entire focused hour or even two, she could thank God for the gift of that time.

There were a few quotes we both loved from this first section of the book:

No circumstance in the world can ever prevent us from believing in God, from placing all our trust in him, from loving home with our whole heart, or from loving our neighbor. (p24)

Our freedom always has this marvelous power to make what is taken from us- by life, events, or other people- into something offered. Externally there is no visible difference, but internally everything is transfigured. (P57)

We are not always masters of the unfolding of our lives, but we can always be masters of the meaning we give them. Our freedom can transform any event into an expression of love, abandonment, trust, hopen and offering… positive things become a reason for gratitude and joy, negative things an opportunity for abandonment, faith, and offering: everything becomes a grace. (P58)

During the season, let us turn our little annoyances, distractions, and disappointments into opportunities to accept and offer it all to the Baby Jesus.

Your sisters in the small things

Nancy and Katie

J1ST 091: The Little Flower

by Nancy Bandzuch · Leave a Comment

LISTEN ON ITUNES

LISTEN ON GooglePlay

Hi Friends!

Happy Feast Day of Fatima (if you’re checking this out Sunday evening). October 13th, 1917 is “The Day the Sun Danced.” It’s a great day to pray the rosary!

Speaking of roses…. It’s October and we’d be remiss if we didn’t share about one of our favorite saints, St. Therese of Lisieux, The Little Flower. Before St. Therese died, she declared “I will send down a shower of roses from the heavens, I will spend my heaven by doing good on earth.” Since then, many Catholics have asked St. Therese’s intercession and have received roses, both literal and figurative at times, as their answer.

St. Therese was the youngest living daughter born to St. Zelie and St. Louis in 1873. From a very young age, she knew God wanted her to be a Carmelite Nun. She faced years of waiting despite going to visit the bishop and even the pope himself to ask permission to enter the convent. Finally, at the age of 15, she was allowed to enter the cloistered community.

She lived a very quiet, somewhat uneventful life in the convent. She was sick frequently and often fell asleep during prayer. In fact, after she died, her sisters were at a loss as to what they should write in her obituary. But, if you read her autobiography, written under obedience to her superiors, you get a glimpse into the holy simplicity and smallness with which St. Therese lived her life.

Today on the podcast, we have a guest, Nancy’s sister-in-law, Bobbi Verly. Bobbi grew up with a love of St. Therese that blossomed into a deep devotion. Through her prayers, Bobbi’s vocation was revealed in jarring detail from a relatively young age. Though it took years to come to fruition, Bobbi peacefully waited to see God’s plan come to life. It’s truly an amazing story you’ll want to hear!

Nancy and Katie both have some St. Therese “Rose Stories” to share as well. It’s funny how someone so small and ‘weak’ in the eyes of the world has touched the lives of so many from Heaven. As it says in First Corinthians 1:27, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”

We hope you love our Little Flower Stories. If you have received a rose from St. Therese, please reach out here, via e-mail, or on Facebook to share your story!!

Your Sisters in the Small Things,

Nancy and Katie

Mentioned in this episode:

The Story of a Soul (St. Therese’s Autobiography)

The Way of Trust and Love by Fr. Jacques Philippe

J1ST 088: Natural Family Planning

by Nancy Bandzuch · Leave a Comment

LISTEN ON ITUNES

LISTEN ON GooglePlay

Hi Friends!

This week we’re diving into Natural Family Planning or NFP. What is NFP, you may be wondering? NFP is any method of observing your monthly fertility signs and using them to plan when to ‘renew your vows’ with your husband.

Fertility Awareness is not just for deciding when to try for a baby though. Many health issues can be traced back to cycle or hormonal abnormalities, so women of all ages and stages can benefit from becoming aware of their fertility signs.

Today we have a special guest, Katherine Young, a real life Fertility Care Practitioner This means she helps women learn how to observe and chart their fertility signs using the Creighton Method of NFP. In her own words, her goal as a practitioner is to:

“help build a culture of life through empowering women and couples to understand their fertility and respect God’s gift of sexuality and the dignity of the human person.”

Pretty awesome right?

We’ll cover why The Church teaches what She does with regards to contraception and the important differences between contraception and natural family planning. We’ll also touch on the variety of methods available to grow in knowledge of your cycle. Some methods work better for different women… or even different stages of life and it’s more than Okay to switch methods when you need to.

Finally, we’ll discuss the importance of having a teacher for whatever method you choose. There is So Much information out there on the internet (and in books) regarding fertility awareness, but a teacher can be in impartial third set of eyes on your chart and build your confidence.

We hope you enjoy today’s episode!

Your Sisters in the Small Things,

Nancy and Katie

PS Interested in learning the Creighton Method with Katherine? Her email is [email protected]

Things we mentioned in this podcast:

This John Legend song

This website has a good overview of all the available methods

Naprotechnology: using fertility signs as clues to figure out what isn’t working correctly within the woman’s body and restore health and fertility

A great lecture that goes even more in-depth on the differences between NFP and contraception

J1ST 87: The Seven Sorrows of Mary and Infertility

by Nancy Bandzuch · 1 Comment

LISTEN ON ITUNES

LISTEN ON GooglePlay

Hello Listeners!

With yesterday being the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, in today’s episode, we’re taking a closer look at the Seven Sorrows of Mary along with the concept of being open to life, even if it leaves your arms empty (or emptier than you want them to be). We’re talking specifically about infertility but as Catholic Women, practicing natural family planning can leave our families looking very different than we’ve envisioned, so everyone can get something from this episode (we hope 🙂 )

The devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows is closely connected with the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross which has been celebrated since the year 326. Many of the great saints have written on her sorrows and Mary recently encouraged this devotion in the 1980s when she made several visits to school children in Kibeho, Rwanda. There is also a religious order that originally formed around a devotion to Mary at the foot of the cross called the Servites, formed in 1239.

The Seven Sorrows are:

The prophecy of Simeon
The flight into Egypt
Loss of the Child Jesus for three days
Mary meets Jesus on his way to Calvary
Crucifixion and Death of Jesus
The body of Jesus being taken from the Cross
The burial of Jesus

There is even a special form of the rosary with seven ‘septets’ instead of five decades (maybe you have one in your house put to the side because you thought it was defective. haha).

We talk about the temptation to compare joys but also compare sorrows… She has it better than me. Or my struggle is more difficult than hers. But the fact is: there is no way to objectively rate someone else’s pain on a scale of 1 to 10. God doesn’t rate our suffering.

Katie speaks about the loneliness and ‘compassion fatigue’ (or maybe burnout?) that comes with infertility. It’s hard to be sympathetic with a friend who is ‘accidentally’ pregnant or suffering from morning sickness, but the fact is their suffering is real too. And pain is only magnified when we’re trapped in it. Our Mother can help us with our sorrows. She is with us in this pain. She knew loneliness (Exile in Egypt), anxiety (the Christ Child is lost for three days), and desolation (seeing her son crucified).

There is so much to learn and so much comfort to find meditating on our mother’s sorrows.

One More Thing: If your parish or diocese is offering some sort of a ministry for those facing infertility: Please share with us! We’d love to get more happening all across the US.

Your sisters in the small things,

Nancy and Katie

Things we mentioned in this episode:

Katie’s New Book: Waiting with Mary: A Seven Sorrows Devotional for Catholic Women facing Infertility… Available Here!

Naprotechnology: medical treatment of fertility issues that are in line with Church Teaching on Human Dignity and Sexuality

Organic Conceptions (Online emotional support program for couples dealing with delayed conception/infertility; Coupon Code for J1ST Listeners: JUSTONESMALLTHING)

This instagram post

J1ST 084: Chapel Veils

by Nancy Bandzuch · Leave a Comment

LISTEN ON ITUNES

LISTEN ON GooglePlay

Today, we’re diving into another sacramental of our Faith: the Chapel Veil. Reminder from last week:

Sacramentals do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that sacraments do, but by the Church’s prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it. (CC1670)

Wearing a veil at mass will not give you special graces the way a Sacrament does, but some women find it helps open them up to receive the graces of the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

Did you grow up in a parish where veiling was the norm? Neither of us did. In fact, Nancy remembers seeing it once as a child and thought they were Mennonites or something (kids think funny things!!!) and Katie’s first exposure to covering (see what I did there) was at Latin Mass as an adult.

Interestingly, St. Paul writes about women covering their head while in prayer in his first letter to the Corinthians(Check out Chapter 11). The tradition was carried over from the Jewish people and then picked up by various other religions after Christianity.

The tradition was actually a requirement for centuries and then due to some misinformation from the press circa Vatican II, the Catholic World was told women veiling wasn’t required anymore.

Despite it not being ‘required’ anymore, many women are choosing to pick up the tradition again.

Why Some Women Choose to Veil:

As a sign of reverence for the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist
As a way to symbolize the difference between men and women
As a sign of unity with your husband
Because, like the Eucharist, women can bare life. Life baring things are sacred.
It can act as ‘blinders’ and increase focus during mass/deepen prayer

Why Some Women Choose not to Veil:

Not aware of the tradition/that it is still “okay”
Husband is not on board (wearing something that is meant to be a visual sign of submission to your husband as to Christ that your husband Doesn’t Want You to Wear wouldn’t be a good idea)
It can be ‘attention grabbing’
It can be hard to keep your head covered while wrestling little ones during mass (making it more of a distraction than something that filters out distractions)

In this episode, we’ll tackle some of the Whys and Why Nots (and some solutions to the Why Nots).

Just to be clear: We did not record this episode with the intent to tell every woman that they need to veil, BUT: if you have wondered if you should… if you’ve felt it on your heart to consider… this episode’s aim is to educate and assist in your discernment. We hope you enjoy it!

Your sisters in the small things

Nancy and Katie