This Sunday is the start of Advent!  During this time of year, we often think of the arrival of Jesus at His birth.  But this week's readings remind us that we are still waiting for Jesus' arrival.

"Watch, therefore; you do not know when the lord of the house is coming...may he not come suddenly and find you sleeping." (Mark 13:35-36)

This week's family meeting focuses on preparing our hearts and homes for Jesus' arrival at His second coming, including all the fun preparations we love during Advent: the Advent wreath, Christmas decorating, music, etc.  

I've linked it in the family meeting slideshow below, but I'll link it here too.  This post from last week has a lot of the basic information and traditions of Advent.  Let's do our best to not be found sleeping this Advent.

Catholic Family Meeting {Prep for Sunday, November 16}

"His master said to him, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant.  

Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities.  

Come, share your master's joy.'"

Matthew 25:21

This Sunday's gospel reading (Matthew 25:14-30) is the parable of the talents.  A master leaves for a long journey, leaving talents (money) to his three servants.  Two of his servants go off and use the money he's given them to earn more.  The third servant buries his talent in the ground.  Upon his return, the master celebrates with his two servants, saying (above), "Well done, my good and faithful servant."  The third servant, who buried his talent, is reprimanded and thrown out.

God has given us talents, gifts, and abilities, and He has given them to us for a reason.  He wants us to use them to serve Him and others.  

What good are our talents if we bury them in the sand?  

We must each discern what talents God has given us and how He wants us to use them to further His kingdom.  

This is the focus of this week's family meeting:

Catholic Family Meeting {Prep for Sunday, October 19}

Hello and welcome!  

This week's gospel reading has a couple different focuses, with Jesus' response to the pharisees on whether or not they should pay taxes.  Rather than let himself be tricked, Jesus states, "repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."  There is a need to pay taxes and live in earthly, human ways, as we are humans of the earth.  However, everything belongs to God, and it's important not to lose sight that He should be the center of our lives.

Life often seems too busy; full of things that are vying for my time.  So many commitments and responsibilities, and sometimes it feels like I'm on a hamster wheel and can't get off.  

In my bible study, I was reminded of this quote by Rick Warren from his book, The Purpose Driven Life:

"If it impossible to do everything people want you to do.  You have just enough time to do God's will.  If you can't get it all done, it means you're trying to do more than God intended for you to do (or, possibly, that you're watching too much TV."  

This week's gospel is an important reminder to put God where he belongs: first and foremost in our lives.  When I do that, everything else falls into place.  

For our family meeting this week, we are focusing on putting God first in the way we spend our time, how we treat others, and how we use our resources.   

So here is this week's slideshow...

Catholic Family Meeting {September 28 Sunday Gospel}

A few weeks ago my hubby, Matt, and I started weekly family meetings to prepare our family for Sunday mass.  I posted all about how I started it here.  It has been such a blessing!  We are far better prepared for mass each week, and Grace (5) gets so excited to "meet".  I'm also really impressed with how well she has been memorizing the scripture verse of the week.

I am still figuring out the best way to plan and deliver this family meeting, as I want it to be relatively easy to plan but fruitful, especially for the kids.  I have been using the slideshows that I shared as an outline to make sure we include all the important elements, like prayers, readings, activities, etc., and I have done some tweaking.

Since I am doing all this already, I figured I would just share these weekly Catholic Family Meeting slideshows with all of you.  

All you have to do is open them and go through it with your family.  You will probably want to preview them in advance to be sure you are familiar with the focus of the weekly readings.

So here is the first official Our Catholic Family Meeting slideshow for the meeting leading up to this Sunday, September 28. 

In the future I will try to get the slideshows posted a little earlier in the week, so you can have your meeting on whatever day works best for your family.

I hope you have a blessed family meeting!

-Jessica

Building our domestic church and starting weekly family meetings

"The family is, so to speak, the domestic church.  In it parents should, by their word and example, be the first preachers of the faith to their children..." - Dogmatic Constitution of the Church

I want our home to truly be a "domestic church".  Over the last few years, we've incorporated the ideas listed by the USCCB here for making our home and family a domestic church, and they have made a big difference with both us as parents and with the children.  In fact, just having crucifixes on the walls has led the kids to constantly find crosses and mention Jesus when we are out and about.  Although these ideas have worked well, we have been meaning to do a better job of preparing the kids for mass by discussing the readings in advance.

I'd heard a couple years ago about how the LDS (Mormon) Church has something called Family Home Evening, which is a special family night once a week that includes prayer, scripture, and family bonding time.  This is such an awesome idea, and I want to start something like it (a Catholic version) with my own family.

The Catholic Church doesn't have its own structured program, but after searching, I did find this Family Catechesis program from The Apostolate for Family Consecration.  There are some great materials here (especially the discussion guides that you can access by clicking English Set A, B, or C), but I think this program may be a little much for our family of young children (5 and 2 years old).  

So I decided to take some of the basic ideas found in the program and tweak it to create a simpler format for our family that hopefully won't take too much time or effort to prepare for each week. 

For easy reuse and to limit paper, I created a simple slideshow that includes pages for each main part of the weekly family meeting or "domestic church".  I plan on keeping one as a template and typing into it each week.  

This is what I'm going to use this week for our first meeting:

Here are some basics on how we will use it, some of which come from the Family Catechesis program described above:

• Opening Prayer 
• Start with spontaneous prayer asking for the Holy Spirit's guidance
• End with the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be

• Liturgical Calendar
• State whether it is Ordinary Time, Advent, Christmas, Lent, etc.
• Tell about any feastdays in the upcoming week.
• Read the readings for the week, which can be found here.
• When preparing you may also want to watch the video reflection for the Sunday's readings, which can be found in the left sidebar.

• Family Activity
• This can be anything that relates to the scripture readings, like videos, children's books, crafts, coloring pages, a family outing, planning a service project, baking, etc.
• I am making sure whatever we choose to do is not simply fluff, like coloring a sheep because it was in the story.  I really want to teach the meat of the story, and this can be done in lots of fun ways.
• Some ideas can be found at Catholicmom.com

• Scripture Verse of the Week
• Choose a part of one of the readings or a related bible quote to focus on for the week, and maybe even memorize.
• We will be displaying it on a Weekly Verse chalkboard frame that I'm in the process of making.

• Closing Prayer
• Start with a spontaneous prayer related to the week's focus.
• Every member of the family can add petitions, which can be added to a family prayer board
• Could include common prayers (Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be) or a special prayer from a saint.

If you're interested in having your own family meetings, feel free to use the template below.  I believe you can edit it by clicking the settings gear and then download as PPTX.  

I'm sure I will be improving this as we go along, but I'd also love to hear any suggestions or how your family does family meetings.

Fall Fun for Families Throughout October

As  you may already know, I love fall!  As soon as the first day of autumn comes, I feel like I can hear the clock ticking down the days until it's winter.  I always feel like there is so little time to do all the fun things I want.  

I found a great website that lists the pumpkin picking and fall farm locations throughout Maryland that are open throughout the fall.  It's called Pumpkin Patches and More, and this is the Maryland page.  It includes all of my favorites: Sharp's Farm, Papa John's, Gaver Farm, and Baugher's Orchard.  I'm excited to check out a few new places this month!

from Pumpkin Patches and More

Hope you have fun this October!  Thanks for visiting :).

- Jessica