Feast of Corpus Christi

Anima Christi

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

Body of Christ, save me.

Blood of Christ, inebriate me.

Water from the side of Christ, wash me.

Passion of Christ, strengthen me.

O good Jesus, hear me.

Within Thy wounds, hide me.

Separated from Thee let me never be.

From the malignant enemy, defend me.

At the hour of death, call me.

To come to Thee, bid me,

That with thy saints I may praise Thee

For all eternity

 Amen.

Information and history of the feast day here.
Ideas for celebrating the feast here.

* Prayer Warriors' Heads Up!

The novena to the Sacred Heart begins today on the feast of Corpus Christi to end on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, July 1st....

Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
O most holy Heart of Jesus, fountain of every blessing, I adore Thee, I love Thee and with a lively sorrow for my sins, I offer Thee this poor heart of mine. Make me humble, patient, pure and wholly obedient to Thy will. Grant, good Jesus, that I may live in Thee and for Thee. Protect me in the midst of danger; comfort me in my afflictions; give me health of body, assistance in my temporal needs, Thy blessing on all that I do, and the grace of a holy death. Within Thy Heart I place my every care. In every need let me come to Thee with humble trust saying, Heart of Jesus help me.

Feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga

It is better to be the child of God than king of the whole world. -- St. Aloysius Gonzaga

Biography of St. Aloysius from the Catholic Encyclopedia here.

Wonderful explanation of St. Aloysius as a patron for today's teens here.

Click and enlarge for a coloring page!

Celebrate the feast day with Catholic Cuisine's suggestion for an Italian dinner!

 It's been a very busy time for us around here and I've had barely (bearly?) a moment to sit down at the computer to keep up with any correspondence, much less my blog here.  I'm so sorry to have been so sparse!   I think we might be on the home stretch of the summer 2011 vacation marathon, though, as we have only one more scheduled trip coming up.  We're heading out Thursday morning for a road trip with a number of our good friends and all the children except Paul who we're going to visit, and including Dominic who will be on vacation from Seminary. (Woohoo!)



 Here's where we'll be.



We're stopping first in Spokane where we're so excited to attend Final Vow and Ordination ceremonies, and we we also hope to get a visit with some of our favorite teaching Sisters who are home at the Mother House this first part of the summer.  Then we're heading for southern California where the group of us (14 altogether at last count!) will converge upon Paul, Nicole, and Gavin, as well as Dan's parents.  And we're also hoping to bump into another contingent of the children's school friends who are road tripping to California at the same time.  Count on there being beach trips, barbeques, and a Disneyland excursion, etcetera and so forth, with card games and miscellaneous silliness sprinkled throughout.  I'm bringing my new camera and a book on how to actually use it -- so be warned:  there will be a nauseating number of photos to scroll through when I get  back on here ;) which should be around the second week of July.

P.S. ~ I hope you don't mind me begging for your prayers for a safe journey for everyone!  We leave on the feast of Corpus Christi and hope to start the day with Christ in our hearts and souls, and on our minds.  I'll offer my prayers and Communion for all of you who hang in here with me and visit, though I'm so rarely "at home" these days! 

P.P.S. ~  I've posted ahead a few simple feastday rememberances, by the way, if you happen by while we're gone.  

Trinity Sunday

When I was a wee kindergartener (over forty years ago!) our family belonged to Holy Trinity parish in Norfolk, Virginia.  It was an old established parish, one of the oldest in the city.  A walk to the beach and a short drive to the Navy base where my Dad was stationed, the air smelled of the sea and flower gardens and history. Stone walls and high hedges cloistered an old convent on the block-long grounds, a magnificent magnolia tree shaded the two-story K-8 school building, and looking down on everything and everyone carved in bas relief on the church was an enormous crucified Christ.

 In my kindergartener's perspective the stone-carved crucifix was as-big-as-God-must-really-be; it hung over the main doors of the church, dominating the architecture of the entire block.  From my classroom on the first floor across the street, I had to crane my neck clear heavenward to see up into His face.  He looked down and I looked up, and, though the eyes on the crucifix were hard stone, the reality of Him somewhere-up-there was as real as the guardian angel sitting on my shoulder and the real  Face I saw was kind and gentle and soft to touch.

 Later on, when I was an eighth grader looking out the second-story windows, Christ's arms were eye-level, outstretched, and welcoming. I couldn't quite catch His eye any more because He looked downward.  But you knew He was thinking of you, even as you were just startled into remembering Him when your mind and eyes wandered out the window.   And, dang!  You'd know that you were actually supposed to be working math problems, not looking out the window -- even if it was at Him.  I could imagine in my mind's eye the twinkle in His eye as he nudged my attention back to my work with a tilt of His head. And I'd glance over at the flowers on the magnolia tree peeking into the side windows, take a draught of the heady fragrance coming in the open windows and tell Him, "Alright, alright..."  and turn back to square roots -- knowing He was still watching. 

No getting around it.  There was the Son, together with the Father, the Holy Ghost -- the Holy Trinity, the patrons of our school --  all around us like the scent of the magnolias, like the big old tree itself, planted and taking root under us and in us, shading us, looking over us like the giant crucified Christ. It didn't matter where I was, I couldn't hide from Him.   The Holy Trinity, the real Being of God, present in my little baby soul at Baptism, had taken a deep breath and filled my lungs within the walls of my kindergarten classroom at Holy Trinity school.  A half century of dear teaching Sisters fanned the very air with that breath of God, and it swirled through the hallways and out the doors to the rose gardens behind the convent walls, curling through the walls of the convent and the rectory, out even to the seesaws on the playground and back to its beginning, under the giant crucifix, through the doors of the church, and into the door of the tabernacle...

  Where I still find Him today, under the much smaller crucifix at our little parish church.  Like the magnolia, the Blessed Trinity waits there, as always, to fill the corners of my soul and my life and all I have to do is take a deep breath and fill my lungs.

OFFERING TO THE HOLY TRINITY

MOST Holy and Adorable Trinity, One God in Three Persons, I praise Thee
and give Thee thanks for all the favors Thou has bestowed upon me. Thy
goodness has preserved me until now, I offer Thee my whole being and
in particular, all my thoughts, words, and deeds, together with all the trials I may
undergo this day. Give them Thy blessing. May Thy divine Love animate them
and may they serve Thy greater glory.

I make this morning offering in union with the Divine intentions of Jesus Christ
Who offers himself daily in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and in union with
Mary, His Virgin Mother and our Mother, who was always the faithful handmaid
of the Lord.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. Amen.




A Blessed Feast of the Holy Trinity to Everyone!

Eating Like Beavers

Do you read labels?  I have for various reasons most of our married life.  During dieting phases, I have checked: calories, fat, carbohydrates, etc, for instance.  And, though it's always been a trial to my math-challenged brain, I do cost compare items...  But  most the time I haven't bothered much with what ingredients were in the foods because I was too busy trying to figure out whether it was cheaper to buy the lunch meat that was $.09 an ounce or $1.79 a pound, but also because we've always tended toward whole foods. Don't mistake me, though: I'm not a foodie and I'm not very "granola," It's just that back in the day, the simple, naturally healthful foods tended to be cheaper.  Remember that?  Remember when you could go to the farmers' market when organic produce was cheaper than store-bought?  But, I digress...

I just saw a report that a lawsuit against Taco Bell has prompted a USDA investigation of the use of cellulose in prepared foods.  You know what cellulose is?  It's wood pulp.  And it's in everything these days from particle board to sausage to milk shakes to tortillas (Go here for a list).

 The Department of Agriculture, claiming that wood pulp is safe for us to digest, allows for a content of 3.5% in individual food items.  Wood pulp. We're eating wood pulp.   I don't know about you -- but even if I believed in evolution, I don't have any idea that we came from beavers.  At least I didn't.  And I have a hard time believing that Adam and Eve sat around the Garden of Eden gnawing on trees.   In short, it just plain old goes against every instinct for me to believe God intended us to have a little wood pulp in all of our food.   It's a little scary to know that the "powers that be," however, consider it perfectly appropriate for the food industry to use wood as a food filler -- in any amount.  But it's cheap. An easily obtainable by-product, you know.   And they say it's good fiber.  Yeah, I'll say it's good fiber. 

Makes me wonder a little about the increasingly high rate of colon cancer in the world...

Seriously.  Like I don't have enough to worry about with William wanting nothing but jelly sandwiches and popcorn.  Now I have to make sure there's no wood pulp in the jelly?

Sheesh.

Houses

I love to go on rides. Picture me like a puppy with my head out the window, tongue and ears flapping in the wind, drooling at the scenery as it goes by. Though our kids generally beg out when Dan and I go on a Sunday afternoon car tour, when I was little I loved to go with my Mom and Dad on their drives. I loved to look at the trees and hills; I loved to imagine the history of the countryside going by. In Virginia and the Carolinas, it was colonial settlers I'd see riding through the trees on horseback, women in beautiful long gowns, men with muskets. After I read the Tolkien trilogy, I'd picture elves and dwarves hidden in the deep dark forests and along the many riverbanks. Or I'd look for the little red pointed hats of gnomes in the underbrush.

Now that I'm a grown-up driving around Colorado, I imagine grizzled miners on burros winding up the switchbacks, looking for gold.  Or tough pioneer women picking wild flowers in grassy meadows. 
And sometimes I remember to hunt for gnome hats in the aspen groves.  But, more often than not, when I'm not oohing and ahing over the scenery, I'm oohing and ahing over the houses.  There are some amazing places tucked in the arms of the mountains.  And I have terrible house envy sometimes. Check this one out, for instance:

(Click for the big pic!)

Ain't it a beauty?

On its own, it'd be an awesome house plunked down anywhere in the world.  But, check out the view these folks have from their back porch:

(Click for the big pic!)

This beautiful property we found while wandering  down Hidden Valley Road, near Paonia, Colorado -- in the shadow of the West Elk mountain range.   There's property for sale all through this valley, though the house pictured is not on the market...  =sigh=  If it weren't so far from church, I could so live in a place like this...

But, then...  Um... Except for the Minnesota River out the back door and the lack of neighbors and barns and outbuildings....  I guess we do live in a place kinda like this already, don't we?

Home sweet home. 

At least for now.

God is good and we are grateful for a roof over our heads at all.

Praying for the people in Arizona who have lost their homes to fire this week...  Our skies are hazy with the smoke of those forest fires and it's heartbreaking to know the sorrow and loss that dims our sunshine here.  Also remembering those who still suffer from the tragic tornados in Missouri, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Massachusettes.  None of us can never be too secure -- except to hope for our heavenly home someday.

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Things That Tickle My Funny Bone

Spotted in a parking lot somewhere in Denver



Mr. Taylor is the little boys' new hero.  The girls think that,  considering his second
 reason for good health, he probably never had a chance to try out the first reason...



 

Oh, and here, incidentally, is Charlie's water wheel, just outside Idaho Springs, Colorado



Just inside the gates at Heritage Square Amusement Park near Golden, Colorado...
If it were outside the gates, they might have fewer patrons, I'm thinking.
(But ya gotta love the sense of humor... and the cautionary hint!)

At Heritage Square -- lots of great photo ops like these:

And where all the children got to take a couple of turns on the Alpine Slide -- the first time any of them had been on the slide, or on a ski lift chair...

Here's William:

And here's the view looking back:

Were they scared? 

Are you kidding?

They didn't want the rides to end!

Above pictured are Anna and Cathy -- Cathy in a sling because she hyper-extended her elbow doing acrobatics off a swing a couple weeks ago (=sigh=) -- but that's not enough to stop our Cathy, heaven knows.
William rode down with me or Dan, and thought we went to slow.  Everyone had a wonderful time -- even Theresa, who took a spill half way down the mountain... (only a half dozen more sessions with the chiropractor to see the end of the Alpine Slide now...).  And her middle aged mother  had a blast, too, but she had not expected to be engaging in such activities that morning when she got dressed and wore a long green gypsy skirt that caught the wind and flew up over her head half way down the mountain while racing Michelle... (Now, seriously; don't even try to imagine that picture! ) No worries, though -- there was not a soul in sight as I rounded a hidden corner  -- and you can imagine I whipped that skirt back down and tucked it under me faster than a wink!  But, alas, the kafoffle caused me to lose time, and Michelle beat me down the mountain.  Drat.  There will be a rematch eventually.

Then there was Michelle's Surprise Sweet Sixteen Party.

We scheduled it almost a month ahead of her birthdate to make sure...

                ...she was clueless.

               

And she was.

But also Thrilled as only she can be... 

But Speechless??

Never!

And the following photos are just random goofiness.



William just loves  our friend, Sarah -- she's so durn cute (and he'll tell you that!), but she's also a nice sharer and a wonderful influence.  All afternoon at the volleyball park one Sunday in Denver William "shared" this little critter -- apparently called a "Twonkie" --  back and forth with Sarah, in an unprecedented-for-William attempt to outdo someone else in niceness.  They were so nice, they were almost disgusting.  It was lovely.

I have no idea where this photo came from on my camera.I'm wondering if the little ants that have been invading us through the porch door borrowed my camera early one morning and took this shot...   I think that's the corner of our back porch you see there.



Classic Silly.  What can I say?

 

And this one? A little dear caught in the headlights.