Lent ~ March 13

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Fast

Don't forget that the only pedestal you need ever stand on is the one your husband and children build for  you.

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Pray

Persevere. "He who does not give up prayer cannot possibly continue to offend God habitually. Either he will give up prayer, or he will give up sinner" (St. Alphonsus Liguori).

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Give

Focus on your home today. The world can find another volunteer, but your husband and children have only you.

Lent ~ March 12

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Fast

Today, remember that you are expecting someone very important for tonight's dinner. with your children, plan you husband's homecoming as if you were welcoming a king back to his castle.

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Pray

"Love consumes us only in the measure of our self-surrender" (St. Therese of Lisieux).

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Give

"You can do nothing with children unless you win their confidence and love...by breaking through al the hindrances that keep them at a distance. We must accomadate ourselves to their tastes ..." (St. John Bosco). Do something your children want you to do with them today.

Lent~Sunday~March 11

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Think

Macarius the Great speaks of the transfiguring and liberating beauty of the Risen Lord in these terms: "The soul which has been fully illumined by the unspeakable beauty of the glory shining on the countenance of Christ overflows with the Holy Spirit ... it is all eye, all light, all countenance."

Every genuine art form in its own way is a path to the inmost reality of man and of the world. It is therefore a wholly valid approach to the realm of faith, which gives human experience its ultimate meaning. That is why the Gospel fullness of truth was bound from the beginning to stir the interest of artists, who by their very nature are alert to every "epiphany" of the inner beauty of things. (John Paul II, Letter to Artists)

 

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Pray

Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savor life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine  could express in incomparable terms: "Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!."

Artists of the world, may your many different paths all lead to that infinite Ocean of beauty where wonder becomes awe, exhilaration, unspeakable joy.

May you be guided and inspired by the mystery of the Risen Christ, whom the Church in these days contemplates with joy.

May the Blessed Virgin Mary be with you always: she is the "tota pulchra" portrayed by countless artists, whom Dante contemplates among the splendours of Paradise as "beauty that was joy in the eyes of all the other saints."

"From chaos there rises the world of the spirit". These words of Adam Mickiewicz, written at a time of great hardship for his Polish homeland, prompt my hope for you: may your art help to affirm that true beauty which, as a glimmer of the Spirit of God, will transfigure matter, opening the human soul to the sense of the eternal. (John Paul II Easter Sunday 1999)

 

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Give

You are created in the image of the Creator--be an artist! Make a special meal; sew something for your home; plan your garden; fingerpaint with your three-year-old; dance in the living room; sing in the shower. See His creative fingerprints on your soul and be everything He intended you to be.