Catholic Sprouts

A Community For Catholic Families

Motherhood

J1ST 086: Creating a Catholic Home with Sterling Jaquith

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Hello!!

Sterling is back with the Just One Small Thing Podcast, joining the select few who have been guests TWICE (Sterling, your certificate is in the mail 😉 ).  You might know Sterling from her Catholic Minimalism Facebook Group or her podcast ‘Coffee and Pearls.’ Or maybe you’ve read some of her books? Today, the three of us discuss how to make a Catholic Home without breaking the bank as well as how to create an atmosphere of peace and hospitality.  

Home decorating, just like the spiritual life, this is NOT a task that can be accomplished in one afternoon, but rather a gradual progress towards the idea you have in mind.  How can you keep costs down while still making your home beautiful? All three of us have some beloved and ‘featured’ decorations in our homes that we found/rescued from second hand stores as well as prints we purchased through Etsy (or Peter’s Square) from a variety of Catholic Artists.  

In terms of ambiance, candles and music are what Sterling loves best in her home.  Books read aloud or listened to via Audible or Overdrive are part of daily life in the Jaquith household. Home should be a place where we long to be… somewhere we feel at peace and comfortable and what we listen to can be just as important as what we choose to hang on our walls.

Why make our homes Catholic?  Well, first of all, our kids are like sponges and what we choose to surround them with is what will occupy their imaginations.  Also, as someone wrote in a thread in one of Nancy’s Facebook groups, when children are presented with religious images around their home, it acts like a visual anchor and seeing them at church will feel ‘like home’ too.  Having a Catholic Home can also serve as an inspiration, reminder, and challenge for us as well. The words we choose to use, the shows we choose to watch, the music we choose to listen to.. This all affects our souls. Lastly, it’s a chance to evangelize to others.  What is on display in one’s home shows to guests what the person values.  

Finally: we also touch on Screens and their ability to pull us in and away from real life.  It’s a real addiction and Sterling has created a challenge course to help you cut back on screen time and re-claim your life (see link below)!  I think Nancy and I are both signing up.  I know I need it.

We hope you have as much fun listening as we did recording!

Your Sisters in the Small Things,

Nancy and Katie

Here are some Links from today’s episode:

 

J1ST 084: Chapel Veils

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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

 

J1ST 081: Friendship with Mary

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Hey there friends!

It’s a big day around this small corner of the internet. Today I am sharing the LAST installment of the VIRTUES OF THE ROSARY. I can hardly believe it! I started discussing these virtues last summer, and here we are finishing them up as we approach another summer.

So, today is all about the virtue attached to the final Glorious Mystery: the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth. The virtue for this mystery is FRIENDSHIP WITH MARY.

Since I feel like I have been talking about being close to Mary for this entire series, I start this episode by looking at Friendship in general. First of all, we need to remember that clearly friendship is important to God. While on Earth Jesus went out of His way to form friendships and He seems to even had had various types of friendships, and His best friend was likely St. John, the Beloved Disciple.

There are two problems with modern friendships:

  1. We often USE our friends for our own gains, and don’t really love them.
  2. We think that one friendship (or marriage) should be the only friendship that we need. And this is simply not true.

True friendships require time, vulnerability and listening. These are the building blocks for any friendship and we can apply them to our friendship with Mary as well.

We are called to spend daily time with Mary, share the secrets of our heart with her and listen to what she has to share with us. We need to listen, in particular to her message from Fatima: to Pray the Rosary and to accept suffering for the redemption of sinners.

And that is it! I certainly enjoyed recording these episodes and I pray that they have enriched your own praying of the Rosary.

Once again, if you would like to grab a copy of the Rosary Booklet where I offer reflections of each mystery of the Rosary, you can grab one right here: https://catholicsprouts.com/rosary-book

And, the Just One Small Thing Podcast will be taking a break for the months of June and July! But, I will be back with new weekly episodes in August (God willing).

Your sister in the small things,

J1ST 078: Hope

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Hey there!

Let’s continue on with our investigation of the virtues of the Rosary! Head here if you would like beautiful coloring pages with the virtues of the Rosary and right here if you would like to grab a Rosary Booklet of your very own.

Today’s podcast is all about hope, but not hope in the sense that we use the word every day. In common usage, hope is like optimism. We might say, “I hope I’m not late.” Now, it is perfectly fine to be optimistic, but optimism is not a virtue.

Hope as a virtue means places all of our trust in God. Hope is also what connects us to heaven. When we hope in Jesus Christ we acknowledge that we are not God, that or God loves us and wants what is best for us, and that this world is not our home. Our home is heaven and we should keep our eyes fixed on heaven.

Hope is attached to the second Glorious Mystery because when Jesus ascended into heaven the disciples stood looking up at heaven, with their eyes fixed on heaven. And we should do the same.

If hope is the virtue, then there are two vices that we can choose to embrace instead of hope: pride and despair. Pride believes that lie that I am everything and I have no need for God. Despair believes the equally destructive lie that I am worthless and horrible and God has no need for me.

Hope acknowledges that there is a God (and it isn’t me), I am His beloved creature and I was created to be with Him in paradice when this life is over.

In the episode I spend time reflecting on an area where I struggle to let go of pride and despair and instead fully place my hope in God: Motherhood. I feel like the older my kids get the worse this gets. Listen and let me know if you can relate.

Thanks for being here!

Your sister in the small things,

When you join the Catholic Sprouts community, you not only will be part of a thriving community of over 11,000 Catholic Parents, but you also will get instant access to the Catholic Family Digital Resource Library.  Simply head here to sign up!

https://catholicsprouts.com/catholic-family-resource-library-signup/

J1ST 076: Rise with me through Prayer

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Hey there, friends!

This week the Just One Small Thing Podcast is a challenge for you (and for me!). Since we are in the Easter season I think it is the PERFECT time to take stock of life and our faith life. Have we been moving forward? Do we actually, deeply believe the things we processed during Holy Week and on Easter Sunday? And, perhaps as important as anything, am I committed to prayer?

Because, as I have learned over the last year, it all comes down to prayer.

In the podcast I take you on a bit of a journey of thought with me (hopefully the path isn’t too twisting!). In recent months I have discovered that it ALL COMES DOWN TO PRAYER. I realized this while thinking up (nearly 200 episodes now) the Catholic Sprouts Podcast. When I challenge kids to do something at the end of each episode, it really doesn’t make sense to challenge anything but prayer. I also felt this hit home as I learned about the early Christians and that first Easter Sunday.

And, so, if you feel called to deepen your prayer life…or finally really learn how to pray, I would like to invite you consider joining the PRAYER COURSE from Catholic Sprouts.

The course is open for enrollment right now. In the course you learn Why we need to pray, How to pray, When to pray, and How to combat the struggles we all face with prayer. And not only this, but you will be part of a community of women also learning to deepen their prayer life.

But, I will only be enrolling students this week (ending April 29th, 2019). At that point I will be closing the doors and starting the course.

Think about it, pray about it, and for more details, head here: https://catholicsprouts.com/prayercourse/

When you join the Catholic Sprouts community, you not only will be part of a thriving community of over 11,000 Catholic Parents, but you also will get instant access to the Catholic Family Digital Resource Library.  Simply head here to sign up!

https://catholicsprouts.com/catholic-family-resource-library-signup/

Thanks for being here!

Your sister in the small things,