Sunday, August 16, 2009 ~ Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Note: These Sunday & Holy Day Gospel Reflections are written so that mothers may prepare for Holy Mass in advance either as a small group or individually (especially since we are so often necessarily distracted during Mass itself).


John 6:51-58

Jesus said to the crowds:
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world.”

The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Jesus said to them,
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For my flesh is true food,
and my blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me
will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever.”


Reflection

I am a cradle Catholic. All of my life I have believed in the Eucharist. I have always known it is the center of our faith and the most essential thing to our spiritual lives. That has always made sense. Of course, the degree to which I understood this reality grows as I mature and endure spiritual growth (yes, endure, but that's a discussion for another post).

This Gospel is the hardest teaching Jesus ever gave. Loving your enemies, leaving your father and mother, and giving away your worldly wealth are nothing compared to "Eat My Flesh." Even today, it is the primary division between the Catholic faith and all other Christian churches (although there are many others, of course). Those who do research on the early Church and her belief in the Eucharist are often led to the full understanding of this passage.

Jesus is ALIVE in the Eucharist. He is there. He longs for me to go to Him, to be united to Him so intimately that I consume His Body and Blood. Transubstantiation is a miracle. Every Mass is a call to each of us to draw near to Our Lord, witness the miracle, and receive Him. How do I respond to that call?

Do I work to ensure that our Sunday Mass experience (before, during, and after) is blessed and holy? We discovered that playing chant while we are getting ready Sunday mornings helps put us in the right mood for Mass - joyful, reverent, content.

At Mass, do I model for my children awe at the beauty before me? I find my children behave best when I focus on the Mass, especially during the Consecration, using only my touch to redirect them (not even taking my eyes from the altar to look at them).

Do I find the time to attend daily Mass even once a week? This is my new goal for the school year. In a new city, it has been hard for me to find a way we can do this. The only mid-day Masses, which I am used to attending with children, are quite a drive. I think it is time to wake the children up early once a week and go to the 8AM Mass.

Am I making a weekly Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament in Adoration? Over the summer, I fell out of this habit and need to get back to it. There is nothing more refreshing than an early-morning hour of peace and quiet before the Lord to soothe my soul.

Lord, help me to properly worship you in the Eucharist. Give me the grace I need to overcome myself and focus entirely on You. "Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly and I offer You the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences whereby He is offended. And through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of You the conversion of poor sinners."

Homeschool Moms Bible Study Online Update!

If you have not already heard about our upcoming Bible Study for moms online, go check it out on my previous post or on the Homeschool Connections website! We are VERY excited about this opportunity for mothers to enjoy fellowship and study in a super-convenient format over the Internet!

The update is that my dear co-leader, Emily, had a baby on Wednesday (hooray! praise God! Mom and baby are doing great!), so we have postponed our Meet & Greet webinar scheduled for last night (since she was a bit busy) to next Thursday, August 20. So, there is still time to sign up to join us and learn more about the study and ask any questions you might have!

The basic plan is to meet every other Thursday evening from September 3 through November 12. The cost is a $10 donation, and you have to buy your own copy of the book, Chosen and Cherished: Biblical Wisdom for Your Marriage by Kimberly Han.

Go here to sign up for the Meet & Greet webinar if you haven't already! We already have some women signed up for the actual study, too, so you can head right on over there if you know you don't want to miss this opportunity!

Prayerfully Planning Day 3 ~ Schedule Writes Itself!

I know, this sounds surreal, but it is true. I had run out of time yesterday to get my daily school schedule drafted and spent this morning working on our home business and some Little Flowers things. I sat down this afternoon to draft the schedule, and it just happened!


Once again, I have been inspired by a fellow blogger. Jennifer writes about her day being broken into blocks of time. When I revised that old mother's rule, the first part of our day looked like this, with our learning blocks already divided:

7:30 ~ Breakfast
8:00 ~ Chores/Hygiene
8:30 ~ Exercise and/or Nature Exploration
9:00 ~ Morning Basket
10:00 ~ Learning Block 1
10:30 ~ Morning Recess
11:00 ~ Learning Block 2
11:30 ~ Circle Time
12:00 ~ Learning Block 3
12:30 ~ Lunch
1:00 ~ Read Aloud


Just to explain, Circle Time includes the subjects both of my children will do together. It just seemed like a nice way to break up the morning. They will work mostly separately during the Learning Blocks either with my assistance or independently, depending on the task.


So, all I had to do just now was to fill in what subject areas I wanted covered during those learning blocks. Here is what I decided...

Morning Basket = Prayers/Saints/Seasons x5, Bible Stories x2, Art Appreciation x2, Music Appreciation x2, Poetry x3, Singing x2, Nature Reading x2, Virtue Study x2
Learning Block 1 = Math x5
Learning Block 2 = Reading/Literature: Five in a Row x5, Narration x2, Shared Reading
x3, etc...
Circle Time = History x3, Geography x2, Science x3
Learning Block 3 = Writing & Religion: Handwriting x2, Composition x2, Catechism x4


I left a message for the gymnastics coach and decided to pretend the classes are on Tuesdays, which I was told is one option. That made Tuesdays and Fridays (due to Little Flowers and catch-up time) our light days, so I filled in the blocks for the days of the week with the above subject areas and...


Sweet! I'm done with the schedule and the morning basket decisions! Time to move to number five and finish number six...


5. Get my liturgical and catechetical plans in order. This includes planning my daughter's First Communion notebook contents and creating my monthly folders (not weekly like Dawn's, although inspired by her - I might work up to that) to hold all the relevant ideas. I also need to figure out my plans to use Who Am I? with my son.

6. Plan what will be a part of my Morning Basket, inspired by Jennifer's. Once I finalize what we will do during that time, I need to plan for the time. My thoughts are revolving around liturgical year, prayers, songs, hymns, art and music appreciation, poetry, and nature...maybe. I want to focus on BEAUTY here.

Prayerfully Planning Day 2 ~ Binders!

I chose this image to put on the front of my planbook. It is a painting by Rebecca Pearl of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton titled "All of This and Heaven Too!" St. Elizabeth is attributed to making this quote shortly after her conversion, acknowledging the true generosity of God. Since I have always referred to our homeschool informally as St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School, I thought this was appropriate, especially since this beautiful painting depicts the gentle art of learning, as is my educational philosophy.

The toughest part of assembling my planbook was pulling together all of the parts. I did not want the binder to only include our lesson plans, but I wanted it to have a few booklists and articles to which I often refer. Organizing paper is not easy for me, so I am sure I will continue to find things to add as I plan and go through the year.

So, this involved creating a planbook and re-examining my personal binder. I also used to have a Control Journal, which I named a Surrender Journal to remind me to give back my daily work to God, that was based on FlyLady's material, so I updated that and am still debating if I really need three binders to run my life. :)

While organizing paper, I had to create my monthly liturgical file folders to file away a few coloring pages and such. For now, I just have one folder for each month of the year, because I discovered that my Surrender Journal has a page for each month, which lists all important family celebrations. I am not yet sure where I will put secular holiday material.

Fortunately, my planner arrived today from Family-Centered Press! I finally ordered one last week after putting it off for too long. Now, I have another tool to help me get (and stay) organized and remind me every day why I do what I do!

That's the notebook project - mostly done! Next is to draft my lesson schedule, but I think that might have to wait until tomorrow. Organizing this mess of paper took longer than I expected!

Calling all DFW readers (on behalf of Waltzing Matilda)

Since I'm from DFW (mostly), I had to post this from Charlotte at Waltzing Matilda. Click over to her blog to contact her if you can help...

We know of a family in need. Their tiny baby was born a few weeks ago, has already undergone surgery and is needing to stay in the hospital for a longer than expected time. If you can offer any kind of assistance, please send me an email for more details. Anyone who lives outside of the DFW area who would like to contribute in a monetary way, please email me as well.Your prayers are most important for baby Cecilia! Thank you!