Category: saints

‘Twas the Night Before Advent…

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And I was counting down the minutes until I could begin to put up Christmas decorations and start listening to Hallow’s Advent Praylist! The first Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of the Church’s liturgical year, which means tonight is our New Year’s Eve!

It is now well past midnight, which came and went a few minutes after I started writing, but I thought I would take a few moments, just to drop some ideas to help you to develop spiritually in the coming year!

Last January, at the beginning of the new year, I chose a saint of the year, and a word of the year! Sadly, with mom brain in full force, I can’t remember whose wonderful idea this was… if I ever do, I will definitely update (if mom brain permits!). Anyway, I was thinking since it’s the new liturgical year, why not move that tradition to the first Sunday of Advent instead of the first day of January?

Here is a Saint Name Generator. It says 2025 but probably is still mostly current, save for our newly canonised saints this year (St Carlo Acutis, St Pier Giorgio Frassati, St. Ignatios Shukrallah Maloyan, St. Petro ToRot, St. Vincenza Maria Poloni, St. María Carmen Rendiles Martínez, St. Maria Troncatti, St. José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, and St. Bartolo Longo, pray for us!). Of course if you don’t like the randomly generated saint, you could pick your own (and it could be one of the newer saints!). Use this saint as inspiration to grow in holiness, as an extra friend to pray for you, or any other way that might help you get closer to God!

Here’s a Random Word Generator. You can choose to generate just one or a short list to choose from! Use this word to inspire spiritual growth this liturgical year.

Until next time, let’s pray for each other. And remember, we can do Mom things through Christ who strengthens us!

I thought I’d also add a Bible Verse of the Year Generator. I’m not gonna try to tell you how to apply God speaking to you through scripture. Just keep the verse handy, know He is, and apply it as you feel led

You could do all or none of these, or some number between those! I would love to hear your favourite way to celebrate Advent in the comments. And! Please share your randomly generated things, if you do them! I would love to know!

Saint of the Month: St Monica

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St Monica
Feast day: Aug 27
Patron saint of mothers and wives

Mothers, who among you does not hope for your children to know, love, and serve Jesus? Yet this is not a choice we can make for them. Yes, we can teach them about our faith, and tell them all the great things God has done for us, but when it comes down to it, they are the ones who need to decide whether or not they will follow Christ. That can be scary, I get it – when it’s about their soul and eternity, it’s crazy important, but faith is always a personal choice.

Say it with me, ladies: conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit. We can only lead our proverbial horses to water. It’s the Holy Spirit that shows them how to drink.

St Monica knew this. So while her son rebelled and fell into a life of sin for 17 years, she grieved, yes, weeping for him, but she also prayed. She prayed for his conversion daily. And the Holy Spirit worked so hard in that young man that he became a Doctor of the Church – one of the greats! If you didn’t know or haven’t guessed who her son was, it’s none other than St Augustine of Hippo.

Mothers of children who have fallen away, who are falling away, or who may be tempted to fall away from the faith (ok, so basically any mother with any child), take St Monica as your example, pray for your children daily, hope that they heed God’s voice,  and leave them in His hands. In the words of St Padre Pio, “pray, hope, and don’t worry”. Remember, your children are even more precious to God than they are to you.

St Monica, pray for us!

Until next time, let’s pray for each other. And remember, we can do Mom things through Christ who strengthens us!

Saint of the Month: St Ignatius of Loyola

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St Ignatius of Loyola
Feast day: July 31
Patron of Dioceses of San Sebastian and Bilbao, Biscay & Gipuzkoa, Basque Country, Military Ordinariate of the Philippines, Society of Jesus, Soldiers, Educators and Education.

This month, we celebrate St Ignatius of Loyola. The founder of the Jesuit order, which was important in the wake of the Reformation, he is patron of a number of communities and educational institutions throughout Spain and the Philippines, and well-known Loyola University in Baltimore MD, educators/education in general, soldiers and spiritual retreats, as well as the order he founded (SJ).

I chose to look at St Ignatius of Loyola this month because I think his Imaginative Prayer, or Ignatian Contemplation, is something we can introduce to our little ones to get them praying about the Gospels. This form of prayer lends itself so well to young minds!

I would introduce it by saying something like, “today we’re going to be in a Bible story! We’ll read it together first, and then pretend we are part of it to imagine what it might have been like for us personally”

Below is a description of how to engage in imaginative prayer.

  1. Choose a bible story – one that really has a story feel. Probably not from anything like Leviticus, Psalms, Proverbs, or the Epistles. Children’s Bibles are a great resource for this, as they tend to be much more story-oriented. There are also a few audio and a video contemplations on this website (you’ll have to scroll down a little to get to the good stuff).
  2. Ask for the guidance of the Holy Spirit as you join in the story
  3. One person reads through the story aloud in prayer
  4. Act out the story using prompts, or for older children (or yourself!), you can simply have some silent prayer thinking about the story (in traditional Ignatian contemplation, you might choose a character or an object in the story and think about experiencing the story from their point of view) and then discuss it. It is important to consider what message God is sending them through this exercise.
  5. Read the story aloud again, but this time, ask your children to bear in mind (or act out) the new details they were able to see from the imaginative time.

Try it out and let me know how it goes!

St Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us!

Until next time, let’s pray for each other. And remember, we can do Mom things through Christ who strengthens us!

Saint of the Month: John the Baptist

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This month’s saint at Mom Things Through Christ is St John the Baptist. This month, we remember and celebrate his birthday. Did you know there are only three people who the Catholic Church honours on their birthday? They are Jesus, Mary, and John the Baptist. While all these people had miraculous conceptions, they were not the only ones who did. The reason we celebrate their birthday is because these three people were the only ones to be born without sin in all of history.

How do we know John the Baptist was born without sin? The Gospel of Luke tells of how the Angel Gabriel came to his father, Zechariah, with a message from God, saying “even from his mother’s womb he will be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:15). And if you are filled with the Holy Spirit, there can be no room for sin, since sin separates us from God and the Holy Spirit is God.

But this isn’t something that happened to John the Baptist because he was a special person. He was filled with God’s Spirit because God had important work to do through him, and that was to declare the coming of Jesus and call people to repentance.

How can we fill ourselves and encourage our children to be filled with the Holy Spirit in order to do God’s work? If we want to be filled with His Spirit and do His work, we must stay close to God. We can do this by accessing the sacraments: go to reconciliation and receive Jesus in the Eucharist often. We can also read the word of God and meditate on the lives of saints. We should also keep praying, especially inviting the Holy Spirit into our lives. Most importantly, I think we should be sharing these spiritual activities with our children, or at least not hiding it from them.

In this way, we will be models of people working to empty ourselves of selfishness, of impatience, of fear, of all the things that take up the room we could be giving to God. It is a long and ongoing process, but if we keep at it, one day, we will also be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Talking points

  • When did you last feel like God’s Spirit was with you? What was it like?
  • What are some things taking up space in your heart that you could give to God?
  • When was the last time you asked the Holy Spirit to come into your life? Let’s take a minute now to pray together for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Until next time, let’s pray for each other. And remember, we can do Mom things through Christ who strengthens us!

Saint of the Month: St Rose Venerini

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St Rose Venerini
Feast day: May 7

St Rose Venerini came from a rich family. She thought she was called to the religious life, but through her circumstances, God showed her she was meant for the single life. God doesn’t just call people to the single life without a purpose. She used her time and effort, as well as her privileged position in life, to teach people about the faith, especially women and girls who were not being taught by anyone at that time. She knew that if fear, ignorance, and sin were clouding our hearts, we would not be able to see God’s plan and answer His call for us to love.

She is not associated with any patronages, but as a teacher of the young, I think St Rose Venerini is a good saint to go to for help, if you’re a mother trying to pass on the faith and help enlighten the hearts of your children.

I think she can also show us and our children something about following God’s will over our own thoughts and plans. She herself understood that while she aspired to join holy orders, she was not meant for that, and was able to humbly accept the path God had chosen for her – and look at all the blessings she was able to win for so many by doing so! If we listen to God’s voice and follow His plans for us, it can change the world!

St Rose Venerini, pray for us!

Until next time, let’s pray for each other. And remember, we can do Mom things through Christ who strengthens us!

Monthly Devotion: May

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May is the month of Mary!

I find it so intriguing that so few words of Mary’s were recorded in the Bible. In fact, the Bible only contains four passages where we can read what she said. These words must have been mightily importantfor them to be recorded, so we must pay attention to what they tell us about God. Today, I want to take a closer look at the words she spoke at the wedding at Cana.

There they are, at a celebration. It’s a wedding! Everyone is having a great time! That’s what happens at weddings. But then Mary learns they have run out of wine -didn’t I say they were having a great time? Well, in truth, weddings back then were less of an RVSP situation, and more of a “hey, so-and-so is getting married, come celebrate!” So numbers could easily get out of hand. Anyway, upon receiving this information, she relays the message to Jesus.

I think it’s interesting that she just lets Him know there’s a problem. She doesn’t tell Him what to do, or what they need, just what is happening: that these people have run into some trouble. She knows that He knows the best way to resolve the issue; it is not her role to tell Him, as many mothers might (yes, even to their adult children), and she acts accordingly.

We, too, should be unafraid to bring Jesus our problems, in a spirit of humility, like Mary.

Jesus responds by calling her “woman”. A lot of bible scholars agree that this is more like the way we might use “ma’am” today. It is full of respect. He asks her how it concerns them. But then… He performs the miracle anyway. Jesus did this to honour his mother, all the while maintaining respect for her.

This tells us that Mary’s intercession is powerful! If you ask her to pray for you, Jesus will listen.

As well as this, with Jesus as our brother, we too must honour our spiritual mother, Mary, and heed her instructions to us. What are her instructions to us? We’ll come to that shortly.

The second phrase she says is directed at the servants (I don’t think there is any irony in that). She says, “do whatever He tells you.”

This is so telling of Mary’s nature. She is always pointing us to Jesus, and encouraging us to follow Him. When we think of Mary, she leads us to think of Jesus. Even the rosary, a gift from the Blessed Mother herself, littered with mentions of her as we ask her to pray for us, is something that makes us meditate on the life of Jesus, for 15-30 minutes, if we pray a full set of mysteries. As the Church says, ad jesum per mariam – to Jesus through Mary.

These words, then, are her instructions to us, the servants of God: “do whatever He tells you.”

As mothers, let us use this month to meditate on Mary, and learn to better imitate her. Let us humbly bring our cares and concerns to Jesus, and encourage others to do whatever He tells them.

Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God,
That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ!

Until next time, let’s pray for each other. And remember, we can do Mom things through Christ who strengthens us!

Saint of the Month: St George

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St George – martyr
Feast day: April 23
Patronage: knights, soldiers, scouts, fencers, archers

Many a fairy tale tells of dragons and princesses, most likely based on the legend of St George.

The real story goes like this:

Long, long, ago, in Selem, Libya, a frightening dragon lived in a lake. To keep this dragon at bay, the townsfolk would sacrifice their sheep to it, but later, they began to select children at random to sacrifice. One day, the king’s daughter was chosen, but while she was being led to the lake, St George killed the dragon, saving the princess, and freeing the city from the tyranny of the dragon forever!

Though our imaginings of fire-breathing dragons may not be accurate (it was probably more like a crocodile living in that lake), this tale echoes the victory of Christ over sin and death – in the battle of Good and Evil, Good always wins out in the end.

This is truly an inspiring story. But why?

Tales of courage and bravery openly appeal to our desire to help others. As Christians, we are called to be in relationship with others, and how we do that matters! It’s up to each of us to choose whether or not we want to help others reach their ultimate good: life with Jesus!

I think the story of St George can be used to teach little girls and boys of their duty to protect those who are weaker and more vulnerable than themselves and their capacity to play a role in bringing about the triumph of Good over Evil.

Until next time, let’s pray for each other. And remember, we can do Mom things through Christ who strengthens us!