Exhaling at Home (Opus Gloriae)

Quick update; more soon, God willing

As one dear priest said, "Lent is sometimes filled with these kinds of sufferings." Yes. Amen.

But I have to confess that, although we are grieving, the Lord has kept our hearts peaceful. There is no gut-wrenching regret or difficulty. On the contrary, we have been given the grace of peacefully accepting His will, constantly acknowledging that His Way is perfect and referring every question to His Mercy, entrusting Papa to His love; as sorrowful as we are, we are deeply grateful for this grace.

There is no doubt that we have been lifted up and sustained by the prayers of so many of you, and so I thank you all again. Grazie mille di cuore.

God is good, all the time.

So, let's continue to pray for one another, as we find our bearings and resume our rhythm. I know Papa is right now praying for our family and for all of you who prayed for him, even as we are continuing to pray for him. Such is the beauty of the Communion of Saints.

Can a mother observe Lent?

Here's my recent post from These Forty Days (where some other moms have some very good things to share):

In some moments, I think moms have the most difficulty observing Lent; at other times, I think they have the least difficulty of anyone.

My ideal Lent is 40 days of fasting and prayer, actually reading the books I'd like to read to prepare for the celebration of the Paschal Mystery, and a great deal of silent solitude.

But I'm a mom with 7 children. Small people need a lot of fuel and won't eat small and simple meals; they also need snacks. My time is not my own, so I cannot devote the hours I'd like to quiet recollection. There is no silence here except between the hours of 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. and I'm usually sleeping through it, gratefully. In this way, it seems I have some difficulty observing Lent in the way I'd like, but that's just the point. My ideal Lent is not ideal, because it is not God's Plan for me. "My ideal Lent" is just that: MINE. It would be for me, not Him.

His Plan includes 7 children (2 teenagers), a husband who works from home, a barking dog, deadlines and unfinished business. His Plan is perfect. It doesn't look like my Plan, and that is just what I need to work on this Lent: changing my own mind and will to match HIS. I need to give up my own ideas and try to see what His are.

So even though I cannot reduce much of the noise around here, I can learn to enter into that inner silence where He dwells. Even though I cannot live on lentils and rice for 40 days, I can learn to be more grateful for the food He allows me to put on the table; grateful for all the dirty dishes, as they are signs that I have a full and healthy household to eat what He gives us; and I can mortify my own appetite in little and hidden ways. Even though I cannot carve out more time to pray, I can remember that everything I do, I do before His Face. His wounded, suffering Face. I can be more conscious that everything I do, I do for love of Him who died for love of me.

I can be more attentive to each little need before me. So often, the exigencies of the day come at me at such speed, and I am so busy multi-tasking, that I can only be reactive; at least I can try during Lent to respond to each person fully. Let each person who interrupts what I think is important be like Christ asking for my attention, then it will be easier to respond properly.

I can also focus on ways the entire family can move closer to the wounded Heart of Christ during this season of preparation. We pause at 3 pm to thank Jesus for dying on the cross for us, or to sing Adoramus Te. We are making a greater effort to pray the Rosary together in the evening. On Fridays, we all attend the children's Way of the Cross at our parish; then we spend some time in church while we wait for the evening Fish Fry - Mom tries to pray. We have limited media (or "screen time") and shut down the music. We are discussing the Gospel readings and how they lead us to Holy Week.

As a homeschooling mother, I am in a perfect position to find ways to let Lent permeate our days and weeks in little ways that have a cumulative impact, and that help children feel that we have entered into something special; this is not Ordinary Time. We are preparing for Something.

All of this takes mental and physical effort on my part, and that is part of my Lenten offering as well. I would prefer to find some silence somewhere and look on Christ there; God's will for me is to remain where I am and find Christ here in these circumstances, and serve Him in these people. No pious escape.

Can a mother observe Lent? With all her heart.

God is not elsewhere

I learned from Meister Eckhart that God is not elsewhere.

God is here. Now.

In all this chaos. Amidst all the unfinished business. Somewhere in the crumbs and crayons and cacophony of each day, I try to see Him. In the rowdy noise of all the life in this house, in the many needs to which I must respond, in the frantic search for this one’s missing this and that one’s missing that, His silence sings, just one wavelength beyond the capacity of my ear.

He calls me to rest in His silence, to know His love, to open myself to His peace.

I am immersed in His eternal will.

Is this not enough for me to remember these 40 days?

No ashes on Ash Wednesday

Well, a snowstorm prevented us from getting to Ash Wednesday Mass, which was a bit of a disappointment; but a good opportunity to remind ourselves that we have to rejoice in God's will, even when it seems to go against our own ideas.

But it WAS a little difficult to feel like we were entering Lent without ashes.

We read prayers from the Liturgy of the Hours, and I printed out Pope Benedict's Wednesday audience to read, but we never got that far. I hope to read it yet today.

We wrote out our individual Lenten resolutions (with a few suggestions from one another about what each person might want to consider working on!) and again went over the many ways we can focus on praying, fasting, and giving. The topic that stirred up the most discussion/negotiation was limiting MEDIA. My kids seem to think media is already too restricted in this house, so the thought of further cutbacks on "screen time" met with some resistance. Which proves my point, I reminded them. Dad was here to lay down the law, so the law is firm.

Mothers, rejoice with me over this moment: the 8yo asked in the middle of the day, "Hey, aren't we going to sing Adoramus Te?!" Ahhh... something stuck. One of the Mulderink Family tricks is that we can sing Adoramus Te in two-part chant; this makes other mothers think I am a musical genius, especially if they hear us intoning said chant within the enhancing acoustics of an empty church. I am not a musical genius, I only know one trick, but it's a beautiful one for Lent. We sing this every day at 3:00, the Hour of Mercy. On the Wednesdays of Lent, we will also say or sing the Divine Mercy Chaplet.

We are working hard at working hard, respecting one another, working quietly, pausing to think about Jesus. We are reading  The Life of Our Lord for Children and My Path to Heaven. We are listening to calming Lent-appropriate chant and leaving a lot of silence.

More soon. My media time is up ;)

Thinking about Lent

This Wednesday (2/6) is Ash Wednesday, the opening day of the Lenten season.

I am so grateful that the Church gives us these 40 days each year to focus on the Paschal Mystery, plus 50 days to celebrate it - that's 90 days of each year during which our attention is drawn to this deep mystery of faith! The ritual and readings and art and music and symbolism are all so rich, we must absorb them in layers. Maybe my love for this season is evident in the fact that 3 of the 5 books I've written have been different meditations on the Way of the Cross, and a fourth one uses Christ's Seven Last Words as its structure.

This is the opportunity we are given each year to re-focus, pare down to the essentials, re-evaluate what is necessary in our lives and what is distraction. Elizabeth summed it up well, and shares a prayer that can keep these ideas before us. There is so much distraction on this planet! It takes constant effort to keep our focus.

As a family, we keep the season-long focus very simple: praying, fasting, giving. I hope to share more about this throughout Lent, but the quick overview looks like this:

Every day we pray - talk to God and His saints. It is during Lent that we really focus on the traditional dedications for each day of the week, and add a little invocation or prayer to the end of each prayer time to keep this before our minds. There are also the solemnities and memorials that fall within Lent, such as Our Lady of Lourdes, St. Valentine, St. Bernadette and St. Joseph.

Every day we fast - deny ourselves something to show our love. Sometimes this is a secret, something we do only for God; like not taking the piece or portion that we want, or holding our tongue when someone annoys us. Other times, it is something we deny ourselves for someone else, like letting someone else go first, or letting them choose the game we play. Only twice a week the older kids and Mom and Dad fast from eating between meals; on those days, we all refrain from dessert (which is an immovable institution in this house!).

Every day we give - we give of our time, talent, or treasure to others. We get a little creative here, as kids don't have money to toss into a collection basket to check this one off their Lenten list! So, we make cards and write letters to people, clean out our rooms and toyboxes to donate to charity, take some time to teach someone something we know, etc.

It all begins with Mass on Ash Wednesday. After the comparisons and discussions of who received the messiest ash cross and who felt ashes rolling down their noses and who feels itchy because of the ashes (kids are funny that way), we are reminded all day as we look at each other that we are embarking on something different, something new. This mark on our foreheads marks the start of something - it is no longer Ordinary Time; something extraordinary is here. We are also reminded of that by the growling of our stomachs, the simpler meatless fare, the new centerpiece on the table. We are geared up; we are prepared to prepare.

Of course, before the fasting there is a feast. We are gearing up for our own Mulderink Mardi Gras.