When deciding what stays and what goes you might want to consider the following: Prayer and reflection. Does your family have a place for quiet, spiritually nourishing reading, watching or listening, or prayer? A comfortable chair or beanbag with a nice outlook near a prayer space, family altar or in a quiet corner is ideal.
As a grandparent, or expectant one, your relationship with your grandchild comes bundled with your relationship with the parents. It can be helpful to reflect upon your own grandparent encounters in order to better understand your expectations and hopes for your grandchildren. Reflect on your grandparent memories. What is your fondest memory? Revisit your experience of
Deep within the essence of the marital relationship is a parental capacity; the potential for husband and wife to gift each other with the new identity of ‘mother’ or ‘father’. This potential rests in a profound human desire to give life; to expend and extend our own existence beyond ourselves to the next generation. This
Are you simply married or are you ‘Matrimonied’? People often point out that Catholics divorce at the same rate as the rest of the population. To the outside observer most Catholic couples look and behave the same as any other couple; by and large we live our marriages according to secular standards and goals. So
"Katrina wasn’t looking forward to the parent puberty information night hosted by the school. She had been fondled by a stranger when she was twelve and somehow that made everything to do with sex feel dirty." "Matt was only seven when the neighour’s boys showed him some centrefolds. Fortunately, his dad was able to talk
In a way, every marriage is a ‘mixed-faith’ marriage. Even within the same faith tradition, there can be different levels of commitment to the practice of the faith, different styles of prayer, even different ethnic expressions. We recall how creepy our Australian friends found the Catholic churches in Italy with the preserved bodies of holy
At the end of October begins three days of saintly celebrations. Here are some tips to make the most of them. Oct 31: Halloween – Night of Light Halloween has become increasingly popular outside its traditional American home, including here in Australia. Unfortunately, it’s largely a movement of the consumer markets to sell grotesque costumes,
Lent is a wonderful season in the Church calendar - time set aside to renew and prepare ourselves to receive the fullness of life in the resurrection. It’s a time for a bit of a spiritual ‘spring-clean’. After all, the word ‘Lent’ means ‘springtime’. Just as a ‘spring-clean’ in our homes gives us a renewed sense of order
