By Katharine Grubb

At Christmastime in years past, I’ve received the World Vision catalog in the mail. And unlike the other catalogs, like American Girl, there’s a part of me that would be moved. World Vision’s catalog is filled with gifts to give that could save lives, that could combat world hunger, that could lift a family out of poverty, like a goat. In years past, I would sigh, put the catalog in the recycling bin and pray that someday my family would be able to do something bigger for the world.  Christmas, I would reason to myself, was stressful enough. I’ll get to it one day.

Today is that one day. We just as many expectations on us as there were last year, but this year, we want to not just pick up the World Vision catalog, but do something with it. This year, my family and I want to buy goats.

This year, my family and I want to buy 100 goats.

This idea came to us in a whirlwind. We were given a little money to do good with and we thought, yes! Goats from World Vision! But that seemed too easy, and certainly it did help ease our burden for the world a little, but surely there was a way to multiply our  money, or multiply our efforts, so that it wasn’t just one goat bought. Could we get our friends to buy goats too?

So we’re launching a campaign. It’s called 100 Goats.

Our goal is to have 100 Goats bought through World Vision by December 25, 2011. A goat costs $75. As a family, we’re going to have bake sales and do yard work to raise money. But by ourselves,  the best we could hope for is two or three goats. We’d like to invite you, our readers, to consider how you could help us. We know that lots of organizations are asking for help at this time of year and we don’t want to take away from them. But we believe that there are friends of ours who will get excited about this with us. We believe that God will bless those excited people. We believe that nothing is too audacious for God.

Are you excited yet? What you can do:

3) EASY: Tell your friends about 100 Goats. Link back to this blog. Link to the facebook page. Tweet about this. You never know, weirder things than this have gone viral.

4) ALSO EASY: Allow us to guest blog on your website. I’d love to be interviewed. Or better still, interview my kids. Corbin’s making business cards to pass out at church. Miranda’s making bread to sell and raise money. Ariel’s blogging about this. I’ll put the younger two in a video. I’m not above using their cuteness to change the world.

Regardless of how you help, please pray that my kids get a heart for the world, that their compassion for others grows, that they don’t get so wrapped up in the latest video game that they forget what Christmas is really about.

And pray for me, that I don’t get stressed.

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Katharine Grubb is a successful homeschooling mother of five, bread baker, reluctant dish washer and part-time novelist. She’s also amazing and constantly making me laugh with her posts on Twitter.

By Jennifer Fitz

To prepare the way for our Lord, John the Baptist withdrew into the desert to fast and pray. We try to imitate that model of self-mortification every Advent, loading ourselves down with parties, shopping, and Holiday Preparations. Surely getting the whole family into matching Christmas sweaters is the new Hair Shirt, right?

It doesn’t have to be this way. Here are five things you can do – or rather five things you can not do – to trade in the frenzy and the agony for joy and peace. (I promise none of them involve eating locusts.)

Don’t over-decorate.

If decorating feels like work, you are doing too much. Clean out your house (that will feel like work, but it’s supposed to), and then decorate just enough. If your dining room is clean and de-cluttered, a purple table cloth or candle shouts “Advent” loud and clear. A tiny tree is just as Christmas-y as a big one. If your decorations are lost in mounds of other junk, what you need is less other junk, not more decorations.

Stay home.

There are a few mandatory holiday events: the office party, Great-Grandma’s drop-in, Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. That’s it. You don’t have to see the Little Singers, the Christmas Parade, the Nutcracker, your cousin’s annual Reindeer Roast, and certainly not anything, ever, at the mall. Unless you truly love it, skip it.

Every holiday craft, recipe, and tradition was not made for you.

Just because Mother did it, the parish is hosting it, or the craft magazine swears the kids will love it, doesn’t mean you have to do it. Think of holiday choices like the phone book: Lots of numbers, but most of them are not for you. Choose the ones that fit with the actual life God has given you. Canon lawyers agree, it is perfectly licit to serve your family store-bought cookies*.

Don’t pray so many ways.

I love Sarah’s Advent book because she tells you not to use every single idea. Your soul is not starving for lack of variety. Dig in deep with the few prayers and devotions God has chosen for you and your family. Be steadfast. Pray them well. Leave the rest for others.

Let someone else spend your money.

You want to feel like a rock star this December? Give away some cold hard cash. It’s got to be your money, so if you are in debt, pay that off first. But if you have some money of your own, that you are free to spend however you like: Give it away. Joy is knowing someone is getting a meal today who would have gone hungry if not for your five dollars.

Jesus is coming. How do we clear a path for the Lord? By emptying it of everything that’s getting in His way.

*No canon lawyers were disturbed in the writing of this post.

image credit: Shrine Chapel

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Jennifer Fitz is a homeschooling mom, catechist, accountant, and writer. She helps out at the Catholic Writers Guild blog and writes on Catholic topics at Riparians at the Gate.

By Joe Wetterling

There are wonderful spiritual benefits, for ourselves and others, when we pray the rosary. What about intellectual benefits? Can the rosary help us understand our faith better? Can it help us transform by renewing our minds, as St. Paul instructed? Yes!

Broadly, the three traditional sets of mysteries take us through the three phases of salvation history. In the passage from joyful to sorrowful to glorious mysteries, we see an echo of the creation, the fall, and the redemption of man. We were made in joyous communion with God, sorrowfully fell, and are gloriously redeemed against all hope.

These same phases are found in good stories, as well. Drama unfolds as a situation is set, then upset, then reset, often in a surprising way. We naturally tell tales of rise, fall, and redemption – and this shouldn’t surprise us one bit. God is the *author* of creation, the teller of the great story in which we’re all part. When we sub-create in making new life, we help make a child in God’s image. When we sub-create in telling a new story, we author as He authors.

To say that history is “his story” may be lousy etymology, but it’s good theology. Our good stories echo THE great story, and, so, our books tell us the same thing that our beads do.

The rosary is a crib sheet or, if you prefer (since we’d never cheat), a study outline for this most-important story. The joyful mysteries cover nearly all of the first two chapters of Luke’s Gospel. These joyful mysteries are five events from early in Jesus’ life, from the announcement of His birth to His parents’ finding Jesus in the temple. They provide the setting for the story; they are part of the initial “rise”, the situation which must be upset to produce the drama. Pope John Paul II filled in another part of this “first act” by giving us the luminous mysteries.  These five sample from all the gospels, highlighting a few significant and, in some cases, sacramental events from Christ’s public ministry.

While the joyful mysteries run straight from Luke 1:26 to the end of chapter 2, you have to go looking for the luminous mysteries, for example in Luke 3:15-22, John 2:1-12, Mark 1:15, Luke 9:28-36, and Mark 26:26-28. In the sorrowful mysteries, the story takes its downturn. It takes THE downturn, that singular lowest point in human history where Satan – and our sins – killed God for three days.

What can overcome such a horrible event? Christ is DEAD. This should be the end of the story, yet, out of seeming failure, the great story changes – literally in a heartbeat. Christ is risen! And this most miraculous event is only the beginning of the glorious mysteries. He ascends to Heaven and sends His Holy Spirit to guide the Church. Lastly, as a first example of our own great hope, a human, Mary, is assumed body and soul into Heaven to be with God forever. She is the example of all we can become and sits beside the King as our Queen Mother.

It is fitting that the rosary begins and ends with Mary. This is not just God’s story, detached from humanity. This is God’s story for us, God reaching into human history and turning it on its head.

It all begins, as it does for each of us, with a “yes” to God. It all ends, if we die in God’s friendship, with our eternal life, body and soul, in God’s presence.

(There are many good sources for scriptural references in the rosary. I recommend the scriptural rosary audio at Rosary Army.)

image credit: All for Mary

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Joe Wetterling delivers adult catechesis through his blog, Ho Kai Paulos. He also comments on sci-fi/fantasy from a Catholic perspective at The Baptized Imagnation. He is a volunteer moderator and presenter for The Catholic Writers Conference, and a volunteer proofreader for the Project Gutenberg archive.

By Jennifer Fitz

I’m an auxiliary member of the Legion of Mary, which is a serious commitment.  When you join, you promise to pray prescribed prayers every day, which include a daily rosary.  Not something to just jump into.  As I did.  Completely by accident.  At the wrong parish.

Here’s what happened:  I was praying to God for help with my prayer life.  Which stunk.  One day my mother-in-law was watching the kids for me, and I dropped in at her church to spend a few minutes before the Blessed Sacrament for this intention.  When I rose to leave, the groundskeeper stopped me in the aisle, said a few kind words, and asked, “Would you like to join the Legion of Mary?”

No.  Very sorry, but I have four young children, no time for another activity.

“Will you pray for us then?”

Sure.  Be glad too.

“Great.  I’ll go get the forms.”

Forms?

I’d never even heard of the Legion of Mary.  But this lady was fast.  She had my name on those forms in an instant. There’s the x for your signature, here’s a copy of your prayers to say every day, and don’t worry, it’s not a mortal sin if you miss a day, but do keep up with it.

“But I don’t go to this parish,” I told her.

They weren’t picky.

I signed.  And then I had to go home and explain this to my poor husband, a protestant who believed in neither the Blessed Sacrament nor prayers to Mary.  Oops.   Luckily he recognized the swift hand of God in answering my prayers for a better prayer life, and if it made no sense to him personally, who was he to argue with God?

And who am I to argue either?  Here are three things I’ve learned about myself as a result:

I need to get over my intellectual pretensions.  The rosary is for normal people.  You don’t have to be smart or trendy or oh-so-educated to pray the rosary.  Apparently God doesn’t need me to show off how sophisticated I am.

Same prayer.  Every day.  I’m all about the next new thing.  I tried the liturgy of the hours one week, the chaplet of divine mercy the next, some Jesuit meditative thing another time. What I really needed?  To be bored.  Because then my prayer life would be about me and God, not about me and my latest idea.

Just go pray.  I never would have settled into a daily rosary on my own.  I would have waffled, always trying to find the perfect prayer.  Now I can quit agonizing and start praying.

Show up.  Do the work.  It was what I needed, and what I still need.  I do experience answered prayers, moments of enlightenment, feelings of love.  But mysticism is simpler than that: Am I willing to do what God asks of me?  If yes, pick up those beads and get started.

image credit: Trendy Traditions

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Jennifer Fitz is a homeschooling mom, catechist, accountant, and writer. She helps out at the Catholic Writers Guild blog and writes on Catholic topics at Riparians at the Gate.

By Victoria Q. DeBayle

There was one rosary that forever changed the way I pray the Rosary.

At the end of my freshman year of college, our Campus Minister announced that she would be leaving her post to follow a religious vocation.  As a parting gift, a member of the Catholic Student Association suggested that we record a rosary with the Campus Minister’s five favorite mysteries.

Five of us, including my friend D., gathered one afternoon to record the rosary.  As we prayed, I noticed that D. seemed to savor every word of the prayers and give them each a special meaning, especially the Hail Mary.  He said it like this,”…and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, (pause) Jesus.”

This stayed with me.  Whenever I had prayed that part before, “womb” ended up being the most emphasized word in the sentence.  D. said “Jesus” with so much emphasis and joy, as if He were at the center of it all.  And then it occurred to me: He is. 

The Hail Marys we repeat as we pray the rosary are not about Mary.  Mary isn’t about Mary.  Mary is the ultimate example of a human being who focused her life on Christ.  Mary is about Christ, and so is her prayer.  Mary takes us to Him, to Jesus.

I may not be the best at keeping Jesus as the focus of my life at all times, but since that day, it is He who holds all my attention when I pray the rosary.  The fruit of Mary’s womb…JESUS!

image credit: On This Day Designs

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Victoria Q. DeBayle is a practicing lawyer and freelance writer for The Florida Catholic.  She is actively involved in her parish in Florida where she currently serves on the Leadership Team of the parish’s Young Adults Group. 

By Shelly Kelly

I woke up in the middle of the night convinced that Jesus must have been a preemie.

Or that Mary did not carry him for the full forty weeks we define pregnancy.

I know the Bible is big on the number forty, but it is impossible for me to imagine Mary willingly setting off on a four-day cross-country journey to Bethlehem riding on a donkey during the last two weeks of the traditional forty weeks of pregnancy.

How did she do it? Did she have any hesitation preparing for this journey when she was so swollen with child? How much did her hips and lower back ache during the ride?

How did she get any rest sleeping on the ground? What did Joseph do to make her more comfortable? Did he have to help her up from the ground every morning? How large was she? Was she irritable or calm and serene with a holiness bestowed by God for this purpose?

It occurs to me that all my ideas come from the traditionally told version of the Nativity Story, that implies she was “great with child” laboring as they entered the city, and delivering the very night of their arrival. However, we don’t actually know how pregnant Mary really was when she made the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The Gospel of Luke only says, “And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”   (NAB Luke  2:4-7)

Is it possible that Mary and Joseph traveled and arrived in Bethlehem weeks earlier, when she might have been less uncomfortable? Maybe they were in Bethlehem for the census and delayed their journey home because she was too close to delivering to travel.

My own final weeks of pregnancy are passing slowly, one day at a time, one night at a time. I realize that when I focus too much on my own discomfort and irritability, I’m disconnecting myself from God. Yet this is the time when I should be prayerfully drawing closer to Him. When I don’t, I find myself lying awake in the middle of the night with my head full of thoughts. Often, these thoughts gravitate towards Mary, wondering how she dealt her final weeks, awaiting the delivery of our savior, Jesus.

Hail Mary, full of Grace, grant me the sereneness and inner peace that carried you through your own anticipation of birth. Guide me to fully embrace these last days before bringing forth my own son. 

image credit: National Geographic

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Shelly Kelly is one of the blogging sisters at Of Sound Mind and Spirit. She’s VERY pregnant and looking forward to FINALLY meeting her little guy. (Join me in praying for her and her family as her delivery time draws close!)

Before the 16th century English Reformation, England was called Mary’s Dowry.

When Henry VIII broke away from the universal Catholic Church and the authority of the papacy, all that changed. Henry ordered Mary’s shrines destroyed – even Walsingham, where he had travelled on pilgrimage. Soon the altars on which Her Son was worshipped and adored were torn down.

The people who wanted to worship Jesus and honor Mary as they and their ancestors always had could feel very alone. The parish churches they once attended looked different, without the altar, or candles, or statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints. The Sacrifice of the Mass and the Eucharist was gone, too.

They would rather pay a fine every month than attend the new services in those churches. They might have to wait months before the young Jesuit or Franciscan priest, wearing a disguise because he was considered a traitor to the state, came back to the local Catholic noble’s house to offer the Sacraments.

What could they do? They could pray the Rosary. They didn’t have to use beads; they could use their fingers.

Praying the Rosary they meditated on the Catholic Church’s teachings on the Incarnation, the Paschal Mystery, the Sacraments, Mary’s special role, and the Communion of Saints. If they were thrown into prison for not paying their fines, they could recall Christ’s Passion and offer their own discomforts, cold and hunger. As they witnessed the dreadful execution of a Catholic priest, they would pray for him as he suffered.

Nathan D. Mitchell describes the significance of the Rosary for English Catholics in this era in the fifth chapter of his book The Mystery of the Rosary. Like oppressed Catholics throughout the world today, they prayed the Rosary for strength and consolation.

Decades passed and finally Parliament in England allowed Catholics to worship freely, build churches, follow their vocations, vote, and hold public office.

The Catholic Church welcomed many converts, including John Henry Newman from Oxford, who joined the Catholic Church in 1845. He developed a great devotion to Mary and to the Rosary.

Years after his conversion Newman spoke to some young boys and reminded them to pray the Rosary:

Now the great power of the Rosary lies in this, that it makes the Creed into a prayer; of course, the Creed is in some sense a prayer and a great act of homage to God; but the Rosary gives us the great truths of His life and death to meditate upon, and brings them nearer to our hearts. And so we contemplate all the great mysteries of His life and His birth in the manger; and so too the mysteries of His suffering and His glorified life. But even Christians, with all their knowledge of God, have usually more awe than love of Him, and the special virtue of the Rosary lies in the special way in which it looks at these mysteries; for with all our thoughts of Him are mingled thoughts of His Mother, and in the relations between Mother and Son we have set before us the Holy Family, the home in which God lived. [source]

Newman lived to be a very old man; once his sight had failed, he prayed the Rosary instead of reading the Breviary. Pope Benedict XVI beatified John Henry Newman last year in England and proclaimed his feast day as October 9.

On September 24 this year both Catholics and Anglicans celebrated the 950th anniversary of the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, and Catholics are welcoming groups of former Anglicans into the Catholic Church in the first Ordinariate as announced by Pope Benedict. The name of the Ordinariate is Our Lady of Walsingham and it is under the patronage of Blessed John Henry Newman.

England just might be Mary’s Dowry again.

image credit: Wikipedia

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Stephanie A. Mann is author of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation (Scepter Publishers). She is a member of the Catholic Writers Guild and blogs at www.supremacyandsurvival.blogspot.com.

I’m pulling together guest posts for October for here on my blog, and if you’re interested, take a look at my guidelines, and send me an email.

Looking forward to hearing from you and reading what you have to say!

By Julie Filby

Picture this: a little boy picks a bright pink fuchsia and holds the blooms up to his mother’s ears. He giggles and says, “Look Mommy, earrings!” The mother smiles lovingly at her son, who is so pleased with the gift he’s given her.

Now, imagine that child is Jesus and the mother is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This is just one of the hundreds of legends associated with flowers and the life, virtues and mysteries of Our Blessed Mother. And just like I appreciate every flower, leaf, stick and weed presented to me by my children, I’m sure Our Blessed Mother did as well.

One can honor Mary and enjoy the beauty of nature by spending time in a Mary garden. A Mary garden is an area, any size, filled with flowers, plants or herbs either named after the Blessed Mother, or that carry a legend related to her. It also contains her representation, such as a statue, plaque, icon, holy card or other image.

A Mary garden can range from a single pot indoors to a large plot outdoors (or anything in between). They can be planted at homes, churches, schools, shrines, convents and other institutions.

Recently I had the opportunity to have a small part in a Mary garden established at Denver’s Gabriel House, a pregnancy center that provides spiritual, emotional and material support to women and families. I’m the first to admit I don’t have a green thumb (a friend of mine was the mastermind behind it), but I was grateful to be involved by digging holes, moving rocks and pulling weeds to help provide a holy place for Gabriel House mothers, families and volunteers to reflect on and pray for Mary’s intercession.

The garden was blessed last Saturday, Sept. 3, just days before Our Blessed Mother’s Sept. 8 birthday, a date traditionally set for blessing such gardens. Though summer is winding down and spring planting seems far off, fall could be a good time to plant bulbs, consider a plot for a Mary garden next spring, or start a small potted garden indoors.

Such a tribute to Our Mother can provide a place for reflection, inspiration and meditating on Mary’s joys and struggles—while experiencing the joys and struggles of motherhood ourselves. Below are just a few examples of Marian flowers and their legends. For more [click here] and [here], and for one of the best books on the subject [click here].

Madonna Lily: The angel Gabriel is said to have been holding a lily, a symbol of purity, when he appeared to Mary to announce she would bear a child.

Columbine: Known as “Our Lady’s Shoes” because they were said to have sprung up wherever Mary’s feet touched the ground on her journey to visit Elizabeth.

Oxeye Daisy: Legend tells of the Magi being led to Jesus’ manger by stars that turned into these “Star of Bethlehem” flowers.

Rose: A privileged symbol for Mary, queen of heaven and earth. When St. Dominic instituted the devotion of the rosary, he described each separate prayer as a tiny rose.

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About Julie Filby: I’m a wife, mother of two (8 and 4), and reporter for the Denver Catholic Register newspaper. In addition to covering the news of the Denver Archdiocese, I enjoy blogging about motherhood and the unmistakable presence of Christ in my family and work life at www.juliefilby.wordpress.com and on Facebook.

The nice folks at CatholicMom.com and Catholic News Agency’s Catholic Womanhood also give me the opportunity to share my musings each month.

Take a look at some of the other guest posts I’ve had here over the years. Usually, when I ask for guest posts (often through Twitter or Facebook), I’ll toss out a topic or suggest them to anyone who asks. I like reflections on life, especially through the lens of faith. I’m open to humor.

Keep it short and sweet. Yeah, I know there’s a place for long blog posts. It just isn’t here in my space.

If you want to guest post, read my blog. Find out what works here, what I do, who I am. Maybe I’m preaching to the choir, but now I’ve said it out loud, online, and I can refer back to it.

Editing comes with the territory. The less I have to do, the better. But…I will make sure things are a certain way for my space.

If you have something to share that you think will work in my space, I’m all ears! My contact information is in the sidebar and I look forward to the possibility of working together.