O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti, et ei in sina legem dedisti: veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento. (O Adonai and Leader of the house of Israel, who appearedst in the Bush of Moses in a flame of fire, and gavest him the law in Sinai: Come and deliver us with an outstretched arm.)

O Antiphons – December 17 – 24
December 17 marks the beginning of the “O” Antiphons, the seven jewels of our liturgy, dating back to the fourth century, one for each day until Christmas Eve. These antiphons address Christ with seven magnificent Messianic titles, based on the Old Testament prophecies and types of Christ. The Church recalls the variety of the ills of man before the coming of the Redeemer.

The antiphons beg God with mounting impatience to come and save His people. The order of the antiphons climb climatically through our history of Redemption.

DECEMBER 17

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviter disponensque omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

(O Wisdom, which camest out of the mouth of the most High, and reachest from one end to another, mightily and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.)

Has anyone else heard of this?

A friend sent around an email warning about “New Age Rosaries.” The content was as follows:

> This is a warning to our Catholic friends about New Age Rosary. They SHOULD NOT keep them. I know the following is true because my sisters were in Medjugorje (pilgrimage) and they were given this New Age Rosary for free. There are people giving these away for free on the streets. A priest who is an exorcist at Medjugorje told my sisters to throw it out right away.
>
> Here’s the excerpt of an email I received recently: One of the things I must mention is that there are now going around in the world, plastic new age rosaries in white, blue and pink. I had no idea about them until this was mentioned on the trip. Upon arriving home I went through my own ollection of plastic rosaries and found 2 that had a snake wrapped above Jesus’ head with the mouth just besides his face. Also, no INRI sign and I think it is pentagons that surround each point. On the back, are also puncture marks of some kind on the cross? Please remind everyone to look carefully for these. Maybe you are already aware but it would be a good idea to tell Catholics what is now happening. One priest said it would be OK once it’s blessed but another priest, whom I trust explicitly and who is a Marian priest said even though it may be blessed, it has not been exorcised and evil may still persist……..
> NEW AGE ROSARY WARNING
> These rosaries have appeared on sale at pilgrimage centers across Europe and are in most cases are given away for FREE. They are made from cheap plastic and come in white, blue or pink, stamped as having been made in Italy , yet no one knows who has produced them.
> Since they are available at places of pilgrimage this makes people automatically think they are fine to use. Information regarding the danger of these rosaries was given at the Marian Cenacle in Limoges , France on 14th March 2005. Why are they considered New Age?
> They are considered New Age due to their symbolism which is not too easy to see except by close inspection of the crucifix, which shows a very sinister story. Behind the figure of Christ there can be seen a caduceus, which is an upright pole, representing mediation between Heaven and earth. It is an ancient herald’s wand which was carried by messenger gods like Hermes or Mercury. The rod is also a divining rod to measure the earth and it’s energies of power. The serpent Satan is shown behind the figure of Christ and is depicted by a coiled serpent which means latent power, concealed but not yet fully manifest, a dormant power. It may also represent to Satanists that the devil is co messianic, co redeemer and co Christ etc. The circles on the crucifix are from Egyptian Graeco-Roman, Phoencian, Baal symbols called the Pentagram, which is a major occult sign. The circles or pentagrams have five points, which represent, spirit, fire, earth, water and air. The pentagram at the bottom is upside down represents the devils goat. The four circles with dots in the centre signifies gold or the sun in alchemy. In general the meaning is “The resolution of all possibilities.” Christ does not share any platform with any other god, philosophy or belief system or minor deity least of all Satan. The depiction of Christ on the cross is the most prominent place of worship, adoration, veneration, glorification, for Catholics and many other Christians and now Satanists or ‘new agers,’ have placed Satan alongside Christ. Some have even said that if these rosaries are blessed, they loose any negative power, however this cannot be assured, for it cannot be known what curse, spell or hex has been placed on these rosaries, and what do you think? There is some debate going on about this at the moment.
> Anyway Does anyone really want to pray on a rosary that depicts Satan? What we need to be asking ourselves who has made these rosaries with these symbols that should not be there.!!
> What do I do if I am given one of these rosaries?
> If you are offered or given one of these rosaries break it and throw it away that way it will loose its power when incomplete. There are a small minority of UK suppliers who have bought some of these rosaries and are trying to push people to buy them, I assume they do not completely understand the seriousness of this symbolism. Also tell your friends about these rosaries so they are aware of its dangers.
> Why has this happened?
> Over the years especially through the last century Our Lady has been firm and very explicit regarding the power of the Holy Rosary being the weapon against Satan, therefore would it not be fair to say that the New Age rosary, is a sign that dark powers are trying to undermine her crusade!

Is there such a thing or is it a hoax? Snopes has nothing on the subject. I cannot find anything on the internet beyond what is printed above. I asked a friend of mine who is a good Catholic bishop. He had never heard of such a thing.

But! A couple of years ago I had bought a few cheap plastic pink rosaries for the girls. I had figured, the girls could learn on them and if they broke them, well, who cares, they are not blessed and are cheap plastic. So, out of curiosity, I went to check them. ALL FOUR were as described in the “warning.” I was stunned. Regardless of whether it is true or not, I thought it best to be on the safe side and have cut them up and thrown them out. Why wouldn’t I, and thus my children, pray on a rosary that has the “INRI” and no pole or strange circles, etc. The only real difference is that mine said they were made in Ecuador. I emailed pictures of the “crucifix” to my friend and, just from looking at the pictures, he said, “They look a little strange to me.”

Here are a few of the pictures:

If you have any further information on the subject, I’d be interested to hear it. My husband teaches theology and he had never heard of anything of the sort either. And, if you have any plastic rosaries, might want to check them, just in case.

Seasons are funny things. They come and they go and yet we are always in them, and not just one at a time either. In a week, my favorite season of the year, Autumn, will be over and my second favorite of Winter will officially begin but their beginnings and endings are hardly so well defined outside of a calendar.

I’m in another season as well. I’m in that joyful season of wiping chins, reinforcing rules, reading picture books, giving piggy-back rides, and teaching all sorts of things from how to count to how to brush teeth. Of course, I have my own projects as well. My quilt project has stalled a bit but I did finish my Liturgical Yearbook for our family. I began it in February/March of 2007. It is 276 pages and I am looking forward to printing it up and making use of it next year.

And, within my current season of life, each of my children are growing through seasons of their own.

Cecilia surprised me this morning when she counted from 1 to 29 perfectly. She then tried to count twenty-thirty, but she did really well. She has also taken a real likening to showers. She prefers to shower rather than take a bath. She will be turning 4 next month and is getting a bit big for me to carry for very long. She has a wonderful imagination and finds ways to recycle things I never could have come up with. For example, she takes the pine needles that fall off the Christmas tree and uses them as “grass” for her play farm animals. I am planning on beginning some schooling with her in February – we will see how it goes, but she seems excited for it.

Felicity is learning more and more words and learning them pretty quickly. She greets me every morning with a hug and a “Morning!” She insists on helping escort Cecilia whenever Cecilia needs to use the potty and then she says “too!” and wants to try sitting on it as well. She wants to be big like her big sister using the potty, using adult forks at the table, going wherever Cecilia goes and never being left out of anything. We try our best to accommodate her, but, so far, she has not been as fond of showers as her sister. She also tries to rebel against her daily nap. Some days she succeeds and some days she succumbs.

Elizabeth had some banana mush this morning. She still spits more out than seems to get in, but she is working on it. She is also very close to crawling. She can get up on all fours and move one arm she just keeps moving it back instead of forward. She also is not fond of falling face forward. She is getting so big though and loves being played with by just about anyone but especially her sisters. She has got a killer grip and grabs at anything and everything – we have to be especially careful when anyone’s hair is within reach.

I hope you are enjoying this wonderful season we are sharing as well as the season of your life.

This morning, we took the girls to see Disney’s The Princess and the Frog.

First, let me say that, while it is rated G, small children might find a couple of scenes with the villain frightening. While I knew there would be a villain, I didn’t realize a couple of the scenes with him would be as frightening as they were. Cecilia insists she was not scared, but she did say she got upset when the frogs were in danger a few times. She also applauded whenever good won out over evil.

But, back to the film. Wow. It really is a very good film.

It begins with Tiana as a child listening to her mother tell her and her friend Charlotte the story of the Frog Prince while she sews a “princess” dress for Charlotte, the daughter of a wealthy client. Tiana grows up poor but surrounded by love and works exceptionally hard to continue her father’s dream of one day opening a restaurant. Charlotte grows up sweet but spoiled and aspires to marry a visiting prince named Naveen. Naveen is a lazy, self-indulgent ladies man who is attracted to a local fortune teller named Dr. Facilier until Facilier (aka “Shadowman”) turns him into a frog in a plot to secure personal riches. At a Masquerade Ball, Charlotte lends Tiana a beautiful dress and tiara and Naveen mistakes her for a princess.

You should see the film to know the rest, but there were some wonderful themes worth noting. “Shadowman” definitely comes across as an evil man with connections to the demonic – he has “friends on the other side,” providing a wonderful teaching point for older children about the Church’s teachings concerning tarot readings, palm readings, psychics, etc. and their connection to the demonic.

Madame Odie, another character with magic all her own, emphasizes that sometimes what we want is NOT what we need and we need to consider serious self-examination about what we truly need. She also provides the talking point that magic does not solve problems but the solutions to our problems need to come from within ourselves.

Tiana reminds us that we cannot simply sit and wish for things to happen but rather, God helps those who help themselves and if we want to achieve our dreams, we need to work for them. Naveen reminds us that all of live is not work and we were created to enjoy this wonderful world God created for us.

There were some complaints from the Cajun community about Ray, a cajun lightning bug, but they should be proud of their character. Ray is an endearing character who proves often to have more warmth and heart than most animated characters I’ve ever seen.

As we stood in the theater’s hallway after the film and the adults took turns using the restroom, our girls were enjoying looking at the 8 foot cardboard display for The Princess and the Frog. While we were there, several little African American girls had their picture taken before the display. One I particularly noticed. She was wearing a dress, faux fur coat, tights, and black patent leather shoes and carrying a pink purse. She was absolutely adorable. Now, maybe she had some other event today that required her dressy attire, but considering she was getting her picture taken before the display, I had to wonder if she got all dressed up just to see this film. While I very much doubt it was intentional, Disney has taken far too long to do a story about a princess of African descent. While my girls no more distinguish Tiana from Cinderella in terms of their skin color, I could completely understand this little girl’s desire to see a character, to dress as a princess, to see everyone celebrate a big-screen animated heroine who was like her in a unique way that the other Disney princesses have not been. Seeing the look in her eyes as she smiled at the larger-than-life picture of Princess Tiana, I almost began crying. (With 3 little ones, crying takes too much time.)

The music is fun, the colors brilliant, the story wonderful, the morals worth teaching and the animation stunning. Disney’s The Princess and the Frog is definitely a film worth seeing and, with Christmas approaching all too rapidly, it is a wonderful film for the whole family to enjoy.

After years of such disappointing films as Home on the Range and Chicken Little, I left the theater thrilled to be feeling that the magic of Disney traditional hand drawn animation is back!

PS – the Church at the end of the film is St. Louis Catholic Church in New Orleans – so it would furthermore appear that our heroine is Roman Catholic.

I know some of our neighbors in the Midwest decided to jump the gun and begin winter in October, but this past weekend, we got our first snow of the season. All day Saturday Cecilia excitedly watched the snow fall and by Sunday was asking to go out and play at 7:30 in the morning. As it was only 27 degrees at the time, I made her wait until after Church. But once the girls got out there, they had a blast.

In true Christmas Story fashion, each girl was completely bundled to the point of limiting movement but it made for a warmer, and hence longer, play time.

Grandpa joined them and helped give them snowballs. Cecilia enjoyed throwing them at Papa, me, and the wall.

Felicity preferred throwing them off the deck.

Although most of the snow had been crunched beneath their feet, they did try to make snow angels:

Of course, with snow, you have eat at least a little … or a lot.

We eventually moved on to kicking the snowball sending snow everywhere. This led to wanting snow on our heads. I sprinkled a bit on the girls heads before dusting it off and putting back on their hoods, but Cecilia preferred the snowtop look.

Which led to throwing snowballs up in the air and trying to have them land one her head.

She got quite a kick out of hitting herself with a snowball.

Both girls had so much fun in the snow, they are sad to see it melting, but I’m sure there will be more snow before the season is over. Here is one last shot of Felicity I got while she was enjoying simply laying in the snow.

Well, the weekend after Thanksgiving began Advent, so I pulled out the Advent Wreath, Advent Calendar and purple chains.

However, due to unusual circumstances, I also had to begin putting up Christmas decorations earlier than I otherwise would. So we also have all our stockings up:

We got out our nativity and, after some interesting negotiations with toddlers and small children over lights and ornaments, we also got up our Christmas tree.

But the fact we have our Christmas decorations has not negated the fact it isn’t here yet.

Since I’ve had small children, I’ve become quite attached to two particular saints, one of whom is St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children. So there was no way we were not going to celebrate his feast day. I don’t think the girls minded.

I insisted the girls wait until the afternoon to indulge in the onslaught of sugar, but they relished it once they did.Each girl got a chocolate St. Nicholas, a candy cane, and chocolate coins.

Felicity proved again to be my silent creative one when she bit off St. Nick’s head and used his body as a bank for all her chocolate coins.

Maybe next year they can find some real coins in their shoes to put in their piggy banks, but right now Felicity too easily puts all sorts of things in her mouth.

The result?

They didn’t finish all of it on Sunday (thank goodness) so each has a bowl of their own remnants which will be eaten soon enough I’m sure.

Blessed Advent!

We’ve had a few food firsts around here lately.

For Thanksgiving, I made my first Apple Pie, completely from scratch.

It turned out really well, especially for a first try. I may have to make another one soon.

Elizabeth also began her first “solid” food. She was a little unsure about this new experience, but, I have to admit, I wouldn’t be overexcited to eat watery mush either.

She eventually warmed to the experience and has been practicing swallowing mush for a week now. Maybe by next week I can add a little flavor.

I’ve been using my Netflix to explore some older films. I’ve picked films with Cary Grant, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, Doris Day, Jimmy Stewart, etc. A few have been really disappointing, most have been okay but not outstanding, and a few have been wonderful finds. The Philadelphia Story was a great find as well as It Happened to Jane, which I hope to get on DVD for Christmas.

But I just saw one I had to talk about. Doris Day and James Garner star in The Thrill of It All! Doris Day is a happily married housewife to James Garner, a successful OB/GYN. They have two children (the little girl you may recognize as Gretl in The Sound of Music) and a nice home in the suburbs. But everything changes when Day is asked to be a TV pitchwoman for a bar of soap, the president of the company loves her, and signs her for a one year contract. What begins as one taping a week becomes photo shoots and formal dinners and business most of the week. While Gardner runs to and from the hospital, the film does a great job examining the problems of having two parents working: schedule conflicts, not spending enough time together, time with the children, miscommunication, suspicion and a whole lot of confusion. But the film tries to take a balance of the subject. Aside from the two children, Days hobbies include all of the PTA and bottling her own ketchup. On the one hand, Day had been very happy at home prior to her career. On the other hand, few of us would be satisfied with only the PTA and bottling ketchup for personal enjoyment.

The overall message of the film seems to be that while it is understandable for moms to want an activity for personal enjoyment, self-expression and self-satisfaction, something as consuming and involving as a career takes too much of mom’s time and energy away from the children, her husband, and the household in general. Yes, they got a pool and she enjoyed her career. But some days the children only saw their mother when they stayed up late to watch her on TV and Day and Garner had great difficulty finding time just to be together. The happiness of the entire family struggled.

I just thought it was, to some degree, a refreshing film that took a fairly realistic look at the reality of when both parents work, especially when one doesn’t need to.

Before I get any women’s lib comments, I do want to point out that this is about a married woman with two children, aged something like 5 and 8, and, no, in the film, they do not need the $80,000 she is promised for her contract.

Not too long ago, a friend was amusing themselves at Felicity’s expense. As her mom, I was, understandably (internally) not happy, especially since, if you know Felicity, she is very shy and sensitive about such things and if she gets embarrassed, which she can do easily, she will quickly stop everything and hide. Fortunately, at the time, she was eating and didn’t give this person a second thought as food came first. If she had understood, I know my Felicity, she would have stopped eating and either cried for me to hold her or tried to hide. Then I would have been vocally upset.

In speaking to someone about the incident, I was reminded that the friend is not used to being around small children and, while such a thing might very well have been met with a less than happy response by an adult, the possibility that a child might be more sensitive may not have occurred to this person. The potential ignorance certainly could make a difference but I wondered about the possibility that this person might never have said anything if Felicity had been an adult. Could it be that this friend felt such a thing could be said simply because she was a child, and a small one at that? Do people treat children in a condescending manner simply because they are children?

There is a children’s show on Disney Channel called The Imagination Movers. It is about 4 men musicians who use their imaginations to come up with creative solutions to problems. The general concept is a fun and good one. My great dislike of the show are the actors/musicians who, in my opinion, overact to the camera. They ham it up simply because their audience is children. Children aren’t that dense. They pick up pretty quickly on things. Personally, I find it insulting the way they seem to think they need to treat children just to make themselves understood. But, it raised the question for me, does society regard children in a condescending manner?

Personally, I’ve found that, no matter how small, you don’t need to be condescending to children, it can be harmful to be condescending if they understand you are doing so, and your ends may even be met easier and better if you do not condescend. For example, I know sometimes, if I bark an order at Cecilia, I can get immediate resistance. But if I explain to her why I want her to do something, she is generally more compliant. Her comprehension of my thinking gives me credibility to her agreement of the request and she is more amenable if I treat her like a person of equal thinking and understanding.

It is true that sometimes children require some extra consideration. When my dad strained a muscle in his knee, telling Cecilia that Grandpa strained something wouldn’t mean anything to her. But telling her that Grandpa has a boo-boo she understands. However, putting things in terms children can understand is not the same as talking down to them. Speaking to them in a way they can understand is a charity that lifts them up to your understanding. Treating them in a condescending manner is unloving, emphasizing the gap between their understanding and yours.

Obviously, in the case of the unborn, society doesn’t even regard children as necessarily worthy of life. Is it logical, then, that society would regard children as lesser beings than adults? While children have always been taught to respect their elders, children have not always been treated as expendable or as an accessory as society today seems to regard them with on-demand abortion and tailor-made children implanted from petri dishes and planned around financial statements the way people might plan buying a car.

Children may not understand everything the way an adult does and they may be smaller; they may not understand some things at all or they may be completely helpless, but the Golden Rule applies no less to them than it does to any adult. They bear the exact same human dignity and divine seal of the Image of God that every adult does and are just as worthy of the same considerations for their dignity and self-respect that adults demand for themselves.