There are a lot of wonderful blogs out there to help us live our Catholic Faith and live the Liturgical Year at home with our families.
Catholic Icing,
Catholic All Year, and
Catholic Cuisine are a few just to start with. I use these sites to help us live our Faith in our home, but I also just make stuff up as we go along.
Every family is different and sometimes I get overwhelmed by so many other people's ideas. I like simple, beautiful, meaningful. Sometimes we go more "all out," but ideally I like to create traditions that are easy to replicate each year, and that bring joy and peace. As a "do it all" type of personality, I have learned through many years of trying to do too much, that if it overwhelms me I am not kind and loving... which in the end, negates everything I am trying to teach through these activities and traditions.
So....here is our family's simple way of living the feasts of All Saints and All Souls:
First, we go pick our pumpkins and choose our designs for our "saint-o-lanterns." This is an easy way to incorporate our Faith into this cultural practice. Instead of jack-o-lanterns or creepy things, we choose an image that represents a holy man or woman of God, or some Christian symbol. We scoop out all the gunk inside the pumpkin (representative of our sin and the way God helps to wipe our souls clean through Baptism and Confession). Then we carve our image on the pumpkin and put in the candle and let the light of Christ shine through. That is what the Saints did throughout their lives, and since we are all called to become saints, we too, should be constantly doing all we can to allow the love and light of Christ to shine through us out into the world. This is a quiet, educational and fun way to celebrate this holiday. We don't have to say anything or be "preachy." And we also don't have to remove ourselves from all the festivities going on around us that are far from the Catholic roots of the holiday (for more on that, read this:
catholic true meaning of halloween). Simple, beautiful, meaningful.
Here is this year's line up of saint-o-lanterns in pictures:
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This is the book we use to help us find our symbols.
It is an old book from a church that was cleaning out it's library.
But I'm sure there are current books out there, you just have to search for them.
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All lined up and ready to be put outside.
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Looking pretty lining the walk.
Just waiting for dark so we can light them up! |
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Shining the light of Christ to the world!
Top left: a heart (little one's request) and the Sacred Heart of Jesus (free hand by #2)
Top Middle: Iona Cross (#3's handiwork)
Top Right: St. Joseph symbol (carpenter's square and lily) done by the hubs
Bottom Left: Crown with a cross through it (the 4 yr. old made this up himself and #1 helped execute it)
Bottom Middle: St. Mary the Virgin (sword passing though the heart of Our Lady and wings) by #1
Bottom Right: Alpha and Omega with Crown (done by yours truly) |
Then we get all dressed up and go trick or treating which originated from the practice of the Middle Ages in England. On the Eve of All Saints (Hallowmas) peasants would go about town singing and praying for the souls of the deceased. They would stop at homes and beg for a "soul cake" (which were a traditional treat for All Souls Day feasts) and offer prayers for the deceased family members in return. So there is your history for the day. We don't go around asking for soul cakes or singing the traditional song the peasants sang, but since trick-or-treating began with our Faith, we certainly aren't going to abandon the practice.
This is our costume line-up for 2015:
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Lego brick, Cowgirl, Harry Potter, Iron Man, Batman and Robin
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All Hallow's Eve (or Hallowmas) leads into the Feast of All Saints (Nov. 1) where the Church honors all the deceased members of the Church who we have been assured have entered into eternal salvation and are enjoying the joy of Heaven. We look to these men and women to help teach us how to love and serve Christ in our lives. Through their lives and struggles and then their triumph, we are reminded to remain forever hopeful in our own life as we journey our own path to sanctity.
Our parish throws an All Saints party every year where the kids are encouraged to choose a saint and dress up as that person. They then tell a few facts about the chosen saint and the audience tries to guess who they are. It is a lot of fun for the kids and parents alike.
Here are my little saints:
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St. Jerome and his lion (there is a story that St. Jerome removed a thorn from a lion's paw and the lion remained with him ever after that), St. JPII (he was an avid skier, so we used what we had to put this costume together), and St. Elizabeth of Hungary (putting my authentic Austrian dirndl from my semester abroad to good use)!
*We ended up making a last minute change, and #2 was St. Jerome with the lion, and #3 went in his Lego brick as St. Vincent Ferrer who is the patron of builders (very clever and no one could guess who he was)!
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Now onto the feast of All Souls...
The past 2 days we celebrated the assured victory of those who have gone before us (through being officially canonized as saints in the Church. For more on that, click here:
How does one become a saint?). They give us the hope for our own eternal salvation and for the eternal salvation of our loved ones. So November 2nd we focus on those who have gone before us (our beloved dead) of whom we are not assured their eternal salvation. We offer Mass and prayers and are reminded of our own mortality. The Church (and our Lord) desires nothing more than the salvation of each and every soul, and so the ENTIRE month of November is dedicated to the
Holy Souls in Purgatory. Our family has adopted the practice of going to Mass on November 2nd to pray for the dead, visiting the cemetery of my deceased grandparents and praying for them in particular, and we spend all month praying for deceased friends and family. We post a "calendar" with a name of a soul for each day of the month, then we offer a rosary each day of November for that particular soul. We also keep a vigil candle burning the entire month to visually remind us of the souls for which we continue to pray and hope to be reunited with when we too leave this earthly life and enter into eternal salvation. My mother-in-law just sent me this book (pictured below), and so on top of our daily rosary, we are also praying the meditation for that day to help us to enter more deeply into prayer and understanding of the Holy Souls in Purgatory so we can better pray for them and also better prepare ourselves for our own death.
This is our All Souls practice in pictures:
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Our vigil candle and calendar of souls.
This takes center stage on our prayer "altar" (the top of our piano) in our prayer room.
It remains there the entire month of November and we replace the candle as necessary.
These candles can easily be found at the dollar store, Walmart, or your local grocery store. |
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The book that we are using for the first time this year.
Excited for it leading us deeper in prayer and understanding this year.
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I Know focusing on death is not something our culture likes to do. But it is an inevitable part of life. And if we understand more about death, we may come to realize that it doesn't have to be something to be feared.
~God bless you and your families this November.~
May all the souls of the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God,
rest in peace.
Amen
