Tammy Fernando

We Are Easter People: Trust, Surrender & Faith

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 01:17:17 GMT

Who are the Easter people?

Lent is over, and Easter is here! Hurray! We can now crack the shell of our Easter eggs and eat to our heart’s delight!!

But what if there is more to Easter?

What if the best thing about Easter is that we now have access to the POWER of Jesus Christ - the literal power that brought the entire cosmos into being and continues to sustain it. Access happens when we decide to become His followers – when we become Christians!

Moreover, if you are a Catholic, you have access to the Holy Spirit’s power through the sacraments administered through our clergy, who are descended through the apostolic succession of Jesus’ established church:

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it”

Luke 16:18, The Catholic Prayer Bible

What does it mean to be an Easter People?

The tomb is empty…

Jesus Christ has miraculously risen from the dead! Through this amazing miracle, Jesus shows us that His love is greater than the hate and sin that killed Him. Death doesn’t have the final word…Jesus does! He is a new creation. And He now invites all of us to become part of His new creation: to become His Easter People!

Baptism is the rite of passage to becoming an Easter person.

This often happens when we are babies but of course adults convert too. You will hopefully have seen adults received into the Catholic church this Easter. Hurray!

But then what?

We try our best to live in the love of God. This means that we try to remain in His Will for our entire lives. Many people will assume that this only means keeping the ten commandments….but there is way more to following Jesus!

Easter People Trust in Jesus’ plans for their lives

Part of being Jesus’ Easter people is to learn to TRUST Him with all our concerns. Why? Because He so obviously loves us to infinity and back! Therefore, He can be trusted with our lives! But do we really trust Him? And what does this look like?

Our God has proven His love for us; miraculously defeated death and is literally keeping the fibre of the universe ‘ticking’. Therefore, He can be trusted with every aspect of our lives! Only He has the big picture. Only He knows what we need to experience to mould our characters so that they are fit for Heaven! Only He knows what experiences we need to go through to learn how to forgive.

Examples from my Life

I am not perfect. I often find myself needing to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation. So, this means that I have often not listened to God or lived according to His Will. However, I’d like to give you some examples from my Christian journey of times when I have listened to God’s Will for my life…..and also where He has shown me His Will without my asking!

1. At around 26 years of age, I decided to leave my job at a bank and embark on a one-year PGCE (postgraduate certificate of education course) in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. In my heart I wanted to work with children and felt that becoming a primary school teacher was the obvious career to follow. I didn’t think to ask God about this as it just wasn’t something I did back then.

However, I failed the course and came back to my parental home. I fell into a slight reactive depression as I had never failed at a major exam before. I eventually came to realise that this was God closing a door. Becoming a primary school teacher was not part of His Will for me. God had something better for me. And as you know, He ultimately drew me into becoming a children’s author some thirty years later! Thankfully the depression didn’t last long. God healed me of it during a prayer meeting that I attended three months after it had started. So happy and relieved!

2. When I was somewhere in my forties, I became attracted to a Spanish man whom I had met through a choir. No, this isn’t a photo of him! It’s a public domain image I found of a handsome Spanish man! I tried my best to be wherever he was, not just at the choir but also at his own singing gigs. I hoped that something would happen!

I took this to prayer and kept on asking the Lord if he was the one for me. I didn’t sense an answer either way. Then, quite out of the blue, something happened. While I was staying overnight at a friend’s, I slept on their sofa bed in their sitting room. When morning came, I opened the French doors to let in some fresh air. It was a Summer’s Day but a bit overcast. I started thinking about this gorgeous man. Within an hour, the skies became dark and the wind ‘whipped up’. Then out of nowhere, both doors slammed shut! I felt God was giving me a literal ‘closed door’ to my hopes that this Spanish man was ‘the one’. ‘In my spirit’ I felt God saying an absolute ‘no’. I listened. God has someone better suited for me. I came out of this disappointed, but I continue to trust in God for the fulfilment of this desire of my heart.

3. At 58 years, COVID caused me to lose my first administration job at a nursery school. I wanted to stay in a similar line of work and to get a job as a receptionist in a secondary school. It was a difficult time for anyone looking for work. When I prayed to God, a picture ‘dropped into my mind’s eye’. It was an image of a small group of schoolchildren, around 10 years old, with one sitting in a wheelchair. I remember thinking that this picture was from the Lord, though I couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was just my imagination and my desire expressing itself? I remember a friend saying to me at the time that there was no point applying to schools. It was true that lots were closed due to COVID, and kids were having lessons online. But I wanted to be a school receptionist. My friend’s negativity actually made me think, “Well I think God is asking me to do otherwise!” I applied for the school receptionist job I found advertised and got it over 100 + candidates. I am still working at this school, and one of the students uses a wheelchair! This job is a part of God’s plan for my life! Every day has its challenges, and some days have been very difficult, but I know that I am where God wants me and that He is helping me every step of the way.

Easter People Surrender their dreams to Jesus

So, how can we pass on to our children how to SURRENDER everything to God? How can we teach them how to TRUST in Him with His plans for their lives?

Puppy Prayer

What if your child asks you for a puppy and you would love for him/her to have one, but you don’t have the money? This could be a great moment to teach your child how to trust in Jesus. In prayer with your child, you could ‘give this desire for a puppy’ to the Lord and pray with your child:

“…yet, not my will but Yours be done”.

Luke 22:42 The Catholic Prayer Bible

You are showing your child that God cares about everything that your child cares about. You are showing that God and is listening to your prayers and that you expect Him to answer. The answer will, of course, be one of three possibilities:

1. Yes.

2. Wait.

3. I have something better for you.

(Please also see Praying for the Desires of Your Child’s Heart: Trusting God’s Plan )

If God reveals to you or your child that He wants your family to have this puppy, then that is great… the timing, however, is always His! Maybe God will reveal His Will to you while praying or through an unfolding of events.

Perhaps He will suddenly provide the money; perhaps someone will offer you a puppy for free? Trusting in God is part of being an Easter people. We trust in God for everything. We walk by faith and not by sight.

God might also say, ‘no’…because He has something better for your child. This will be hard, but over time we may discover the reason for this. Of course, we may never know the reasons for everything in this life…and that’s where TRUSTING in God comes in. We continue to trust because we believe that He is a GOOD GOD.

Easter People Surrender their fears to Jesus

This works in a similar way to surrendering our desires to the Lord. For example, your child’s class are going to do some indoor ‘rock climbing’ but he/she has a fear of heights. Pray together with your child every day:

“Lord, we give this fear of heights to You. Please heal (name) of this fear in your perfect timing… but not my will but Yours be done”.

If the fear is still there, one week before the outing, then obviously speak with the teacher. See if there is some way that (name) can be closely harnessed to an adult and give it a go. Let the Lord surprise you!

Throughout my life, I had been in awe of the process of giving birth, but the one thing that was holding me back from applying for a midwifery course was my own fear of the pain of labour. You see, I had had severe period pains in my teen years and beyond, and I think that this was the root cause of my fear. I knew that I couldn’t support a labouring woman unless this fear was somehow resolved. Having tried for the third time to pluck up the courage just to ask for the midwifery course application form and ‘bottling out’ – I completely gave up on the notion.

Then God did something outstanding. Two months after ‘giving up’ I woke up one February morning to find that 95% of my fear had just disappeared…evaporated! I couldn’t quite believe it! A few months later, the fear hadn’t come back, and I felt that it had gone for good - so I finally applied for the midwifery course! Now, had I given the Lord my fear earlier, maybe He would have healed me earlier – I will never know! But what I am saying is that the God of the universe is bigger than all our problems put together. If He heals you directly that is wonderful (ie through a miracle). If God wants to heal you indirectly through counselling, that is also wonderful. But being crippled by fear is not how God wants us to live. Only TRUST in GOD drives out all fear.

Have a listen to this short video by Matthew Kelly about fear & trust:

Fr Mike Scmitdz also has some really good points about surrender & trust:

Helping your child learn to trust God

During your evening prayer time this month, give thanks to God for experiences in your day. Encourage your child to do the same. This will help everyone remember that God only gives us good gifts.
Show your child the video below. It explores the word TRUST. Tell them you are going to watch a short video together that explains what TRUSTING in God looks like:

3. Then please give your child an example of how you gave God a particular desire or fear (SURRENDER) and how you TRUSTED in Him for the answer. Give an example of something you asked God for and then received, for example your job/car/spouse. Also give an example of a time when God said, “I have something better for you”. You could also mention the scripture:

“The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him”

Lamentations 3:25, The Catholic Prayer Bible

4. Tell your child that tonight, as a family, you are all going to give Jesus something that you want or something that you are afraid of. That is, to SURRENDER it to Him. And then we will all trust God with the answer - whatever it is - because He knows what is best for us.

5. Then together pray to the Lord:

“Lord Jesus, I trust you with this. Give me more trust in YOU.

Show me what You want. Not my will but Your Will be done”.

6. Often it takes several times of praying this type of prayer before we can really SURRENDER and TRUST Jesus. Trusting anyone takes time.

7. Then play this video and everyone can join in! It will encourage all of you to TRUST Jesus with every detail of your lives.

The more you surrender your desires/fears to God, the more at peace you will feel. Check how everyone is feeling about their surrendered desire/fear once a week.

I hope that you and your family will find surrendering your hearts’ desires/fears and trusting Jesus for His answer to be a time of growth, perseverance and peace.

The Lord’s Peace be with you all.

Lent Activities for Kids: Journey to Easter Cross

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 05:17:58 GMT

A Child’s Journey through Lent

The best way to help a young child travel through Lent is to ask them what Easter egg they want, right? Just forget about the actual Lent disciplines because they are too young to understand them, right?

But what if there was another way for a young child to journey through Lent?

Children can ‘fast’ from small things like giving up watching a favourite TV programme and offering this up to God. Children can ‘give alms’ by giving someone with a smile or giving a helping hand in the kitchen. In today’s blog, I encourage you to support your child in a 60-second prayer every day of Lent.

What is Lent?

Explain to your child that Lent is the countdown to Easter, just like Advent is the countdown to Christmas. There are 40 days of Lent (not counting the Sundays). During Lent we try and grow closer to Jesus through prayer, fasting and giving something away to someone else . We will be focusing on prayer.

Please show this video below to your child today to help explain why we celebrate Lent in preparation for celebrating Easter.

Though Lent has already started, we can all do this activity for the remaining days of Lent. Mums and dads can join in too, as we walk along the wall! (Please see what I mean by this further down the blog!).

Outline of our Lenten Activity

We will make a cross and attach it to a window in your home with some ‘blue tac’. As your child does his/her daily Lenten duty, then they are allowed to stick one piece of coloured tissue paper inside the cross as well as make a painted footprint to go along the wall. The footprints will start far from the cross, but with each day, the footprints will get closer to the cross. Simultaneously, the cross will become more colourful as more coloured tissue paper is added to it. In this way children will connect that Lent is a journey to the cross and that this journey is fun and worthwhile.

For this activity, you will need:

A piece of black or dark sugar paper/ thin card that can be folded. This will be used for the outline of the cross as shown on the video in the section below.
One sheet of A3 laminating/ transparent paper. This will be attached directly to a window with Blu-Tac. If it is laminating paper, please make sure the ‘sticky side is facing you. The outline of the cross will be attached to this paper. Use blue tac if needed.
Some coloured tissue paper cut into roughly 1cm or 1/2 inch pieces. It might be easier to use the tissue paper from wedding confetti, as this is already cut into small pieces. You will need glue to attach the tissue paper directly onto the transparent sheet on the window and inside the outline of the cross..
One medium to large cardboard box (the tomb for Good Friday)
A much smaller flat box/ small bean bags that can be used as the slab of stone onto which you will lay Jesus’ laminated body.
Laminated images of the crucified Jesus and 2 angels. (Please use the button below to download the images .)
A bandage or 2 strips of white material. One to wrap the body and a smaller piece to wrap around the head.
A boule of bread for Good Friday. This will be the stone to put across the tomb.

Walking through Lent towards the Cross

First, make the dark outline of the cross for your window as they do in the video below. You don’t need to laminate this. Just make sure there is a sheet of transparent paper stuck directly onto your window and the dark outline of the cross on top of that.

After your child does his/her listening prayer each day, not only will they get to make a footprint for the wall, but they will also get to stick (with glue) a small piece of tissue paper inside the outline of the cross so that it will look like stained glass.

You will need at least 36 small pieces of tissue paper per child/adult. Wedding confetti might be an easier option as the pieces are already cut for you.

Walking through Lent One Footprint at a Time

Each day your child does his/her listening prayer for one minute, they get to make their own footprint with paint as below:

The lovely, cut-out footprints start their journey to the cross either by gracing your walls or going around the edge of your room on the floor. Whatever works for you. If you have pets, perhaps the wall is a better setting for the footprints. Will you be adding your footprints too, mum??…dad??

How to Teach Your Child to Listen to Jesus in Prayer – A Guide:

Do this instead of bedtime prayers. Turn off the TV and music. Set a timer for 60 seconds. Make sure the alarm is subdued by covering it with a pillow or keeping it in a box. Make an atmosphere of stillness and silence. Ask your child to kneel down (use a prayer cushion or pillow if they like) and make the sign of the cross with them.

Please set an example and listen to Jesus with them.

Ask them to close their eyes.

Then pray for them and for yourselves as parents:

“Jesus, protect us with Your Precious Blood. Speak Lord, your servants are listening”.

On the first day ask them to ask Jesus, “Jesus, do You love me?” Then ask them to stay still and see what they can hear inside the stillness of their bodies. The answer is of course ‘Yes!” After the minute ask your child what happened in the silence. If they felt they heard/ sensed a “No!” in whatever form, please tell them that wasn’t Jesus’ voice, because we know that Jesus loves us hugely.

Explain that listening to Jesus like this is a new thing and it takes practise to hear Jesus clearly. The more we listen the better we will get at it.

Say, “We can listen again tomorrow.” Ask this same question every day till everyone hears/senses a “Yes!”

Then, once this is established, leave the listening prayer open-ended. At the end of 60 seconds. Just ask your child did Jesus say anything to you in your thoughts? Did you feel anything in your heart? Did you feel anything on your skin? Feeling ‘goosebumps’ is simply a sign that the Holy Spirit wants to tell you, “I am here!” He is speaking through this! Feeling ‘goosebumps’ would also be a “Yes!” to the question, “Jesus, do you love me?”

Some days we may hear nothing at all. That is fine. We must trust that God was with us while we prayed by silently keeping us company. If any of you feel emotions like joy, happiness, peace these are gifts of the Holy Spirit and is God speaking to you, bringing you tangible gifts! How lovely!

A thought may have come to your child or to you. Was this from God or from themselves? Time will tell if this thought keeps coming up over the days ahead and if there is a new ‘peace’ that you see in you or your child.

How is it going for you in your 60 seconds listening to Jesus’ time with your eyes closed, alongside your children? Expect Him to speak to each of you. You are embarking on an exciting journey!

I remember in my early days of listening to God, I wasn’t sure if I was holy enough for God to say anything to me…..but I was wrong. God’s main way of speaking to me, back then, was through images that He gave me in my mind’s eye. In fact, this is still true today – some 38 years later!

Preparing for Good Friday

By the time Good Friday comes the stained-glass cross should be full of coloured tissue paper. There should also be several footsteps across your walls which have come to their journey’s end at the foot of the cross.

On Good Friday at 12 noon make it a ceremony to place Jesus on the cross with a bit of blue tac, while one of the parents reads the final moments from the bible as Jesus breathes His last.

“Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed His last.”

Mark 15:37 Catholic Prayer Bible

 On Good Friday at 3pm , take Jesus down from the cross ceremoniously while an adult reads from the bible:

“When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away.”

Matthew 27: 57-60 Catholic Prayer Bible

Easter Sunday

The tomb now needs to be prepared after the kids go to bed on Holy Saturday night so that they can witness the Resurrection for themselves on Sunday!

Open the tomb. Remove the laminated Jesus and fold the grave cloths and place on the slab. Place a laminated angel on the inside of both cardboard flaps with some ‘blue tac’.

When your children awaken, encourage them to go to the tomb!

You can tell them the story of the Resurrection in your own words: how the women went to the tomb at the crack of dawn to finish applying the spices to Jesus body that they had started on Friday before sunset. They saw the tombstone rolled away and two angels resting on the tombstone. Jesus’ body had gone. His grave cloths remained! He had risen from the dead and left the tomb! He showed Himself to the disciples over the next 40 days!

To understand more about death and burial customs in Jesus’ time, please see this interesting 17-minute video below:

At Easter, we celebrate the empty tomb and Jesus’ new life by giving each other something special. Know what this is? A hollow Easter egg! For Christians, the hollow Easter egg has a special meaning for us. The new life of a chick comes from an egg and the chocolate egg being hollow reminds us of the empty tomb. Jesus has bought us all a new life through His Resurrection! Enjoy!

How to Share the LOVE in your Family

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 09:38:19 GMT

Love like the Trinity—one “Thank You” at a time.

The love within a family is so important! Would you agree? Like all relationships, we need to spend time with each other.

But the best lovers aren’t those who simply spend time together in the same space…..the best lovers are those who love like the Holy Trinity!

Let me explain…

The Holy Trinity is a 3-Person Family

The Holy Trinity is a family of love. In their family, love is always moving like strong breezes between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity is our greatest example of how we should love within our families!

We, human beings, are made in the Holy Trinity’s Likeness and Image . This means we are created to love like the Trinity! Christians, who have God living inside them since baptism, are set up to be the best lovers on earth! This doesn’t happen automatically, of course, it’s a process like most things…but the grace is there…we just have to Grab the Grace! I hope that this Reflection will help you try this out and so ‘Grab the Grace’.

One Way to Share the LOVE is by Saying THANK YOU!

I thought it might be nice to say ‘thank you’ to each other during prayer time. Maybe as a parent, you might say to your child, “Thank you for your beautiful smile that always brightens my day”, or “Thank you for bringing me my slippers!” Maybe your child will say “Thank you for giving me your ice-cream!” or “Thank you for tucking me in bed!”

I also thought it would be nice to keep these ‘thank you’s’ written on heart-shaped pieces of paper so that they could be re-read and remind everyone of the love that they received. Please don’t worry about your little one not being able to write or read as yet: you will be doing the writing and reading for them…I will explain further along in the blog.

First step to saying “Thank you!”

We all know that the best way to teach your child anything is to lead by example!

Second step to saying “Thank you!”

Next, I think it would be nice to show your child these two short videos, in case they haven’t learnt when and why to say thank you.

Third step to saying “Thank you!”

Perhaps you could try this during your prayer time in the evening, before your little one goes to bed…

YOU WILL NEED:

Playing the “Thank You Game”

Each person who can write, writes down on a piece of paper one thing they want to thank each person in the game for. They fold up the paper and place it in the appropriate bowl.
If your child can’t write yet, ask them to whisper the ‘Thank You’ in your ear and you write it down for them. Then give them the paper so they can fold it and put it into the appropriate bowl.
Then, taking it in turn, each person reads out all their ‘Thank You’s’ and also has to guess who it was from! If there are 2 of you in your family eg mum and child there is obviously no guessing needed!
If your child can’t read, you will need to read it for them.

By the end of the month, you will each have at least 28 “Thank You’s” in each bowl (more if there are more than 2 of you in your family). Hearing these words spoken out loud will build your family relationships, and you will each feel more loved! Now that is a GOOD FEELING!

Loving each other more means we are becoming more Trinitarian! More like our Heavenly Father, more like Jesus and more like the Holy Spirit!

Can you see the strong breezes of love flowing through the hearts of each family member? And can you feel the love flowing within your own heart?

It’s a start to becoming more like the Holy Trinity. Enjoy sharing the LOVE!

Epiphany for Children: Why the Wise Men Worshipped Jesus

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 03:32:53 GMT

Showing Your Child How to Worship Like a King

The wisemen travelled many miles to see this most special prophesied King. They negotiated difficult terrain on the backs of uncomfortable camels. What perseverance they must have had to travel such a distance!

But this isn’t the greatest distance that they travelled to meet and adore Jesus…

The greatest distance they travelled was when they fell to their knees in adoration before their creator, the King of all!

In this reflection, I have used the words wisemen and kings interchangeably. For a more in-depth look at whether these men were wisemen or kings, please see the short video at the end. I have also discussed the kings falling to their knees and removing their crowns as two separate issues for clarity. When speaking with your kids, it’s probably best to discuss both issues together.

Perhaps you could start my suggested Adoration of the Baby Jesus on the Feast of the Epiphany, 6th January, and then carry it on throughout the month.

First, children need to know why the kings fell to their knees

The catechism says that adoration of God acknowledges Him as creator and sees us as nothing. It is certainly true that without God, we wouldn’t exist. God seems to have placed in us a sort of spiritual DNA that yearns to worship Him. In Deuteronomy 6:13, it says that “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.”

In old civilisations, people worshipped a god or a collection of gods. There seemed to be this desire to worship. In today’s society, it seems that if a person doesn’t have faith in God, they need to find something else to pour their love into. You see this in people who have made football an idol. If not football, maybe shopping, travelling or collecting antiques become idols in place of the one true God. What I am trying to get at is that there is an innate need in humans to worship! Unless we worship the one, true God, we will fall for anything!

In the bible, it describes the three kings as falling down to worship:

“The sight of the star filled them with delight, and going into the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and falling to their knees they did Him homage.”

Matthew 2:10-11

Falling to their knees they did Him homage… they didn’t gently get down on one knee and then the other... no! they fell down on both their knees . This shows us that they were overcome by the presence of baby Jesus. There was an urgency to get down on their knees in worship.

Explain to your child that God should be worshipped because He created us! When someone loves you like this, it’s only natural that you love them back. It’s similar to when a parent loves their child – the child naturally loves their parents back!

Not only did He create us, but He created a world where we could live, including our family and our friends. He loves us with an infinite love – the sort of love in which He died for us, to ensure we could enjoy joy, peace and love with Him FOREVER in Heaven!

So, perhaps you could read the bible passage above and / show the above painting and say to your child:

“When the 3 Kings saw baby Jesus in front of them, they realised that He was the creator of everything: the King of the universe! They had a strong urge to worship Him, and they fell to their knees to do this. Let’s fall on our knees just like the three kings!”

You and your child could fall on their knees onto your prayer cushions . ( How to Create a Family Prayer Altar: A Guide for Catholic Families ) If you don’t have one, you could use any type of soft cushion or even a pillow to make sure you and your children make a safe landing.

Secondly, children need to know why the 3 Kings removed their crowns to worship baby Jesus.

Please take another look at the painting above! You can see that as each king gets closer to Jesus, not only does he find himself on his knees, but he has also taken off his crown…

We see something similar in the Book of Revelation:

Perhaps you could show your child the painting with the kings earlier in the day and say something like:

“See how the wisemen worshipped baby Jesus by falling to their knees and removing their crowns. They realised that they were in the presence of a much greater King than themselves: they were in the presence of the KING of KINGS! Tonight, we are also in the presence of Jesus….so let’s do the same!”

Thirdly, make the crowns to remove during worship

Crowns are fun and easy to make with coloured paper, a pair of scissors, a felt tip pen (and some extra stick-on jewels if you so wish)! Perhaps make these in the days leading up to the Epiphany…

So, as you all approach Jesus during your prayer time, you can all fall onto your cushions and remove your crowns. Can I also suggest that you learn and sing one or more verses of the worship song below? Alternatively, you could play this YouTube song video so that all of you can sing along. I am sure your children will be making up their own actions to go with the words!

Fourthly, point out that where 2 or 3 are gathered in Jesus’ name, ‘the Holy One is here’

This means that Jesus is with you as you worship Him! Also, explain that He is sooo generous that He doesn’t just sit there on His throne smiling while we worship Him! While Jesus is in your midst, He will be giving each of you gifts. This is His nature. Perhaps it might be the gift of being able to feel or sense His presence with you, perhaps the gift of a deep joy, or the gift of His whisper in your heart, maybe the gift of physical healing for one of you or the gift to bring healing to others. Sometimes we may never know what gift Jesus is giving us during prayer. Here is where trust in the King of the Universe comes in! May Jesus surprise you all during your prayer times!

Let your kids know that Jesus is giving gifts to us every day if we but look for them (a sunny blue sky or someone being unexpectedly kind to us).

So, why is falling to our knees a greater distance than the hundreds of miles that the three kings travelled on their camels? Well, of course, in terms of measurement, it isn’t! But in terms of worship….to be able to believe that Someone is far greater than yourself and must be worshipped takes an even greater movement of the heart! Worship is a great sign of submission to a higher authority and something that we should only do when worshipping God, the Almighty!

If you would like to delve more deeply into whether these men were kings or wisemen, please check out the short video below. Enjoy your times of adoration of the Christ-child!

Writing my Third book: ‘The Road to Joseph’

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 11:30:03 GMT

Putting together the story of The Road to Joseph looked like me spinning several plates at once, and once they were all spinning together, they produced a storybook of dazzling illustrations which shimmered with Christmas colour.

And yet, all that shimmers is not gold.

Because the real gold in the making of this story is not found in the resulting shimmer. It’s found in the way that God created a sharp and beautifully ordered story out of the jumble of scenes in my mind! A story that will take your child on a roller coaster of emotions and lead him/her to a peaceful and a satisfying ending. And that my friend is God being simply stunning!

The bookends to my story

Before my story begins and after it ends, you will find the ever-silent St. Joseph protecting it, which lies between. Once I knew that this story had to be about little Chris and his desperate desire to play Joseph in his school nativity, I knew then that it had to be dedicated to Saint Joseph.

I just love how my illustrator, Kimberly Merritt, has taken a ‘snapshot’ from Jesus and Joseph’s life for the dedication picture below. A father and ‘son’ moment - heartwarming.

I wanted the other bookend to be about Joseph's prophetic dream because it nicely reflects what happens to Chris in the story: God speaking to him through a dream. Have you also noticed the lily in both images? St. Joseph’s images often have a lily somewhere within them, and they are meant to reflect his purity of heart and body. I thought it would be a nice touch to include a lily in these images, too.

The storyline

In this story, little Chris is desperate to play St. Joseph in his school nativity. But unlike in my previous storybooks, he doesn’t pray to God for help with this! But isn’t this what we all do at some point in our lives. We think we can handle a situation without God. We think we don’t need God’s help, this time, because we think we have got it all under control. And so, we don’t pray. But the fact is that we need God’s help all the time and it’s good to be mindful of this.

So, what happens in this story is that God appears to Chris in a dream and promises him the role of St. Joseph in his school nativity play. God hasn’t forgotten about Chris, even though Chris has not checked in with Him! In Chris’ dream, God asks the 6-year-old if he will believe in His prophetic words. Chris gives a very strong ‘Yes’ but with the passing of time and with several setbacks, his initial trust in God the Father’s promise wanes and almost disappears.

His best friend, Shani, is the one whom God uses to help Chris reaffirm his trust. I am sure you, like myself, have been supported by a trusted friend when you were feeling down or perhaps when your trust in God had hit rock bottom.

Then, right at the last-minute God comes through for Chris! This episode in his young lifestretches Chris’ ‘trust muscles’ like they have never been stretched before! And this turns out to be a recurring theme in our lives-doesn’t it. God is always stretching us-just that bit more-to learn how to surrender more fully to Him.

So, for children listening to ‘The Road to Joseph’ and for the adults reading it, this story begs us to trust in our God when He speaks. And even when things seem to be going in the opposite direction, we need to continue to keep trusting God right to the end. Because in the end: God’s promises always come to pass.

When my ‘Trust Muscles’ were really s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d

Recently, I had to trust God as I had never trusted Him before. I felt completely powerless as I watched one of my relatives become very unwell. As my mind was spinning with what I should do to help this situation, I felt God speak into my heart, “This is too big for you, let Me do it”. As I walked around my neighbourhood, wondering how God would help, I looked up into the sky and saw a breakthrough in the clouds. It was beautiful, and through this beauty, I felt Him say that a breakthrough was coming. I clung to God’s voice with a sort of blind faith mixed with an emotional numbness in the midst of what was an extremely difficult situation. And then, suddenly, within days, the breakthrough happened. This is the photo of that very sky, through which God spoke to me.

The Source of my Story

So, back to the story. This is how ‘The Road to Joseph’ was conceived…

When my brother, Chris, was about 12 years old, I saw him bowl in a cricket match in a play at his school. As my brother prepared to bowl the cricket ball, I noticed the look of fear in his eyes. Massive nerves just before he had to perform. I never saw this look again - but I never forgot it either. It made such an impression on me. So, with the background of a child having nerves before performing in a school play, ’The Road to Joseph’ started to take shape within my heart and in my mind.

Starting at the end

This memory finds itself woven into the very end of the story…so all I had at the beginning was an ending! But how would I then create a story where Chris ends up on the stage? I decided that nativity plays are common in British schools, and so I would use this as a vehicle. From there, I decided that Chris would need to try out for the part of Joseph, but fail… a couple of times at least. But I also needed something else to add tension to the story and tug at the audience's heartstrings…

It was then that I had the idea of Chris having an accident and needing to be on crutches for a couple of weeks! This would impact his role in the nativity and would definitely make life hard for him. In this scene, I wanted to create a mood of concern on the part of Chris’ parents as they see their son lying in a hospital bed. Thankfully, my illustrator lit up the scene and gave it some balance with this gorgeous-looking doctor with a beaming smile! By the way, he is based on one of my brother’s good friends!

So, at this point, all I had was a jumble of events out of which I still needed to craft a story!

How was God going to talk to Chris?

As I said in the ‘Bookends’ section, I wanted God to speak to Chris in a prophetic dream. And as I started to think about this, the idea came to me of the scene being in God’s throne room filled with the scent of roses: that was God speaking to me!

I had heard of the ‘odour of sanctity’ emanating from the holiest of people e.g. St. Padre Pio. This odour of sanctity has been described as smelling of roses, lilies and even frankincense. God’s throne room would definitely smell of the ‘odour of sanctity’, right? So, I asked my illustrator to fill the throne room with roses! Even the colour pink, going right up to the top of the illustration, gives a sense of the smell of roses pervading the air. I think she did a beautiful job.

Jumble of ideas

So, you can see that I had this collection of ideas to piece together somehow- and that’s when God performed His miracle of bringing order out of chaos and making something beautiful. I looked at the scenes that I had come up with and then tried to place them in an order of how things might happen to little Chris. I had a start, where Chris showed his desire to be Joseph in the nativity and then the series of mishaps which caused Chris to be demoted to a cow! In all stories, there has to be plenty of tension before the happy ending. As part of this, I worked on a scene to allow Chris to audition for a second time. But before he even gets to the audition, I get him to have a small accident so that he can't perform well at the audition and so flunks it again! Then, with even further tension, poor Chris has to watch another boy hold hands with his sweetheart during the dress rehearsal, while he looks quite silly in his cow suit! In fact, this is the scene that children seem to find funny because Chris looks so silly!

Having put together most of the dramatics of the story, I still had to work on the ending. I knew that Chris had to have stage fright, but I had no idea how to work it into the story! So, I had him say in his mind, “I can’t do this! I can’t do this!” just as he was about to walk onto the stage as Joseph. And then I had the idea of Chris remembering the words that his teacher had previously spoken in the story, which could then give him some comfort. Lastly, I also had Chris draw comfort from Shani’s deep brown eyes. And if you hadn’t realised: this is because Shani is Chris’ love interest! Yes, even at the age of 6: it happens!

Finding My Book Title

This was tricky for me. I had a few ideas for a title, but I wasn’t convinced by any of them. To try to find the right title, I thought I would take my audience's advice! It made sense to see what they would find compelling. So, I arranged two local events, each called ‘The Joseph Event’. And I invited parents with young children from two neighbouring parishes to join in the fun. At each event, I brought in a carpenter (as St. Joseph was a carpenter) to make wood curls with the children, and I invited everyone to vote for a title or suggest one. There was food, music and a great atmosphere!

Each event had ‘pots’ to vote for one of my suggested titles (as above), and I also had a Secret Suggestions box, where adults and children could post their own ideas. The first event offered me a whole range of secret suggestions, but somehow none of them really grabbed my heart. After the second event, the most-voted-for title by a big margin was ‘The Road to Joseph’. This was actually the first book title that I had thought of! So, oddly enough, though I had gone full circle, I felt that this was the title that I should use for my book!

As well as the theme of trusting in God, ‘The Road to Joseph’ also explores friendship, supporting your child’s faith, and the God of the eleventh hour! To find out more about these themes and to perhaps buy a copy, please click on the link below:

Guide to ‘The Road to Joseph’ by Tammy Fernando

Teaching Children to Pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 03:37:48 GMT

Why We T each Kids to Pray for the Holy Souls

Teaching children to pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory opens their hearts to mercy, hope, and love. In this family guide, you’ll learn how to explain the mystery of Purgatory in gentle, age-appropriate ways through saint stories, simple prayers, and meaningful November traditions. From Saint Gertrude’s powerful prayer to baking Soul Cakes together, this is a faith-filled way to help your family grow closer to the Communion of Saints—and to Jesus, who longs to welcome every soul into Heaven.

First: Understanding the suffering

Did you know that 5-year-old Saint Carlo Acutis had a vision of his grandfather in Purgatory? See the story below:

The souls in Purgatory are in agony. From what I can gather through my research, there seems to be a lot happening to them at once. While being purified for their sins committed on earth, which is, of course, agonising, they seem to also be at peace knowing that this purification is necessary. That doesn’t quite make sense to me, but then we are talking about the spiritual realm! Apparently, part of their agony is having the strongest desire to be in Jesus’ arms but still having to put up with being separated from Him! I am sure that we have all felt this longing to be with a loved one, but having to be separated from them – painful indeed! Unquenched yearning!

Flames are often used to depict the agony of these souls, either in paintings or in the mystical visions of the saints. The idea of flames pretty much terrifies me… but if there is a grace of peace at the same time…then that’s good. The good Lord and the prayers of the Holy Souls, whom we prayed for, will help us get through Purgatory. I have to remind myself that Purgatory is temporary. Heaven, on the other hand, is forever! Woo hoo! Alleluia!

Second: St. Gertrude the Great and her visions of Purgatory

In the 13 ^th century, in Helfta, Germany, a young Benedictine nun, now called St. Gertrude the Great, started having visions. I find her visions and those of other saints fascinating. And how kind that God wants to give us information about the afterlife. I am so glad that I am Catholic and have access to all these wonderful visions from God!

In one vision, St. Gertrude the Great, saw a monk on fire, and he was holding a large, heavy bundle. He told the saint that he was in Purgatory for being lazy in his monastic duties while on earth, and also for being greedy for wealth. He told her how he had been secretly collecting money and possessions and hiding these away from his monastic brothers. These were sins as they were against the vows that each monk took on entering the order.

In another vision, she saw a sister from her order in Purgatory. She was there for having some inappropriate conversations with men while on earth. Gertrude prayed for this sister. Later, in another vision, Gertrude saw this same sister being taken into Heaven by Jesus and standing by His side.

It was to St. Gertrude the Great that Jesus gave this prayer below to pray for the Holy Souls. He promised her that He would release 1000 souls from Purgatory every time she said this prayer!

“Eternal Father,
I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the masses said throughout the world today, for all the Holy Souls in purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those within my own home and within my family.
Amen.”

You can encourage your child to learn about the life of St. Gertrude the Great by watching this child-friendly, 8-minute video with them. St. Gertrude’s prayer comes right at the end. Be sure to mention that this prayer was given to her by Jesus in a vision.

For a fuller account of the life of St. Gertrude, for adults, see this 25-minute video below:

Third: Our responsibility in the communion of saints

The Holy Souls are totally reliant on us! They long to be released and to join Jesus in the peaceful joy of Heaven. This is a huge responsibility! I have only been praying for the Holy Souls in my latter years. I tend to pray for them from my heart rather than saying set prayers. But when I heard that St. Gertrude’s prayer releases 1000 Holy Souls from Purgatory, I was blown away-and I wanted to be part of the release campaign! I am trying!

Catholic church teaching has always stated that the most powerful way to help the souls in Purgatory is to have a Mass said for them. The rosary, gaining an indulgence and acts of mercy or penance are also good ways to help these souls. In fact, any prayer said with devotion will be helpful to the Holy Souls. Perhaps one of the better-known prayers for the Holy Souls in Purgatory is the one below. This is the prayer I learnt as a child. Do you know this one?

“Eternal Rest give unto them, O Lord,

And let perpetual light shine upon them,

May they rest in Peace. Amen.”

Fourth: Make Praying for the Holy Souls in November fun for kids

To make praying for the Holy Souls more appealing to children, we could use a part of the tradition that was used during Medieval times in the British Isles!

Then, it was common practice for the poor, children and adults to go ‘souling’ at ‘All Hallows’ Tide’. This encompassed All Saints' Eve on 31 ^st October, All Saints' Day on 1 ^st November and All Souls Day on 2 ^nd November. The ‘soulers’ went from house to house, knocking on the doors of the rich of the parish. They would sing songs and promise to pray for the Holy Souls of that family. In return, they were given a Soul Cake…sometimes along with a script of the specific deceased person whom they were to pray for. I am not encouraging knocking on doors, but I am encouraging the making of Soul Cakes!

I am sure that you have already worked out that these Catholic traditions formed the basis of the current non-Christian Halloween practices.

I wondered if you would like to listen to one of the ‘souling songs’ that were sung way back in those times? I am so glad that music has moved on from these Medieval Times! Buckle-up for a very different style of music!

During your evening prayer time…

Maybe light a special candle set aside just for the month of November. Perhaps have a photo of a loved one who has passed away on your prayer altar. This loved one can be enveloped in your prayers.
Remind your child/ children why you are praying for these Holy Souls.
Pray the St. Gertrude prayer together.
As a thank you for praying the St. Gertrude prayer and releasing 1000 Holy Souls, offer your child/ children a homemade soul cake with a mug of hot chocolate and marshmallows. Delicious!

Making Soul cakes

Basically, these were small cakes made of wheat or oatmeal with dried fruits, spices and even alcohol. These varied from region to region in the British Isles. For example: In Yorkshire they were square with carrots in the centre. In Lancashire and Herefordshire, they were made with oatmeal, fat, ginger and brown ale. They are a bit like spiced shortbread.

It’s important to encourage your child to help you make these.

I found the recipe below on YouTube which uses wheat, spices and it doesn’t use alcohol - so very child friendly. Of course, you can make these to your own taste. When I tried making them, I added freshly ground cardamoms and turmeric to the mixed spice. I also used honey instead of sugar and einkorn flour instead of all-purpose flour. Einkorn flour is an ancient grain. The photos below are of my homemade soul cakes!

Traditional Soul Cakes Ingredients:

For those of us who use grams rather than cups for measurement and Celsius instead of Fahrenheit– please use the following measurements instead:

Preheat oven to 350 F/ 175 Celsius.

Roll out to ½ inch/12.7mm thick!! Makes 8 cakes

Cook for 15-20 mins

170g/ ¾ cup butter

150g /3/4 cup sugar (I used 75g honey)

3 egg yolks

1 teaspoon ground mixed spice (I also added 8 freshly ground cardamoms)

Some saffron/ 3 drops yellow food colouring (I used a pinch of turmeric)

375g/3 cups all-purpose flour (I used wholegrain Einkorn flour)

½ cup/ 120g currants

Milk if needed

How my Soul Cakes turned out!

You can see that each soul cake has a cross over the top of each ‘cake’. I made these with a knife. This signifies that the souls being prayed for are holy. They belong to Jesus and are simply going through their final purification before they can be with their Lord and Saviour forever. They are part of the Communion of Saints.

The cross could also be made by pushing currants into the top of the cake to form a cross. Maybe your child has a unique way of making the cross on top of each Soul Cake?

I hope that this enriches your November prayer times and draws the whole family closer towards the Holy Souls.

How to Teach Children the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 10:59:52 GMT

Why Children Need the Stories Behind the Mysteries of the Rosary?

It’s important that children really understand the stories behind the mysteries of the rosary as stories of Joy, Sorrow, Light and Glory. They need these stories to meditate on. And they need to find these stories relatable. All this must be experienced before they try to pray a decade of the Rosary with you.

Where is the joy?

Today we are focusing on the joyful mysteries – Where is the joy?

Children need to understand where the joy is in these stories.

Try this:

Spend about 10 minutes talking to your child about one of the Joyful mysteries - making sure that you point out the joy!
Then, ask them to express this in a drawing/painting/a song/a dramatisation/a dance.
Afterwards, pray that decade of the Rosary with them in the light of all they have just experienced. Let’s look at the Annunciation as an example:

The Annunciation

The Archangel Gabriel appears to Mary and asks her if she will be the Mother of Jesus. We are hugely grateful that Mary said “Yes!” or “Fiat!” Children may understand the joy of expecting a baby from the way you express joy to your girlfriends who tell you that they are having a child! Ask your child to recall how happy they were when they heard that someone was expecting a baby. If this hasn’t happened to them, tell them how happy you were when you found out you were expecting them! Tell them your story in detail. Let them feel the joy you felt….

A Baby! What could be more joyful!

The Chat: Talking with Kids About Jesus in the Mystery of the Annunciation

Ask your child about Jesus:

”Where is Jesus in the mystery of the Annunciation?” and “How was He feeling?” and “Why was He so happy?”

What answers might you hear?

“Inside Mary’s tummy.”

“In Mary’s womb. He sneaked inside without letting anyone see Him go in.”

“He snuggled into her warm womb and stayed there, all cosy, until it was time to be born.”

“Jesus was very happy being inside Mary because she was the best mother.”

The Chat continues: Questions to Help Children Imagine Mary in the Annunciation

Ask your child about Mary:

“Where was Mary when the Archangel appeared to her?”

And “How did she feel?”

“Was she very happy?”

What answers might you hear?

“Mary was at home saying some prayers.”

“Mary was doing housework.”

“She was taking a nap, and she dreamt that someone was calling her name. Then she woke up and found that it was real.”

“First, she felt afraid but then later she was bouncing around with happiness!”

By making your child think a little more about the Annunciation, he or she is adding to the story and making it more personal to them.

The Chat continues even more: Helping Children Imagine Themselves in the Annunciation Story

Ask you child to imagine he/she was actually there:

If you could be there, who would you like to be and what would you be doing?

What answers might you hear?

“An ant standing on the angel’s shoulder-then I could see everything up close..”

“I want to be Mary and to be surprised and then really happy.”

The important thing is, of course, to accept their answers and to help them express this in artwork or song or some form of dramatization. It is also important to go at your child’s pace.

Allow your child to express ‘their take’ on the Annunciation:

a) through art (most children will have a go at this)

b) through song (perhaps your child has a musical gift?)

c) through drama (Perhaps your child likes acting?)

d)through dance (perhaps dance is their gifting?)

Then, pray the decade of the Rosary: The Annunciation

When you pray the Joyful mysteries of the Rosary later that day, as a family, ask your child to tell everyone the story of the Annunciation, in their own way, to help everyone to pray from their heart.

Invite him/her to show their artwork as they tell the story.

If they made up a song invite them to sing it.

If they like drama, invite them to show everyone how the Archangel appeared to Mary and what happened.

If they made up a dance – let them dance out the story.

If you delve into one of the joyful mysteries every day, you will have covered all five in one week. The entire four mysteries of the rosary could be covered during the month of October. On the other hand, your little person may want to delve more deeply into the Annunciation for 3 days in a row. All children learn in different ways and at different speeds. As Maria Montessori said, it’s always best to “follow the child”.

Although we have been focusing on the Annunciation here, I thought it might be nice to briefly look at another Mystery of Joy – The Nativity of Jesus!

Here is a 3-minute fun version of what some children thought about the story behind the birth of Jesus! I hope that it will inspire you and make you chuckle!

Feast of the Archangels: Prayers, Crafts & Kids’ Guide

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 03:42:23 GMT

Who are the Archangels?

Did you know that there are 7 Archangels noted in the Bible (Tobit 12:15)? But scripture has only revealed the names of three of them to us. You probably know their names already: St Michael, St. Gabriel and St. Raphael. As Archangels, they live in Heaven and are always in the presence of God. They are always listening to God and awaiting His orders. From Heaven, they are active in our lives on earth by helping us in the ways ordained by God. In fact, God has given every type of angel in Heaven a mission. So, the Archangels, Principalities and our Guardian angels, who make up the lowest triad in the hierarchy of angels, concern themselves with the welfare of every human person. If you would like to learn more about the nine choirs of angels who relentlessly obey God, check out this short reel:

Because, as humans, we are so weak, it’s probably a good idea to ask for as much Heavenly help as is available to us! After all, the battle is a spiritual one for the domination of our soul, and so it makes sense to ask for spiritual reinforcement from these angelic beings whose job is to fight for our salvation! We can, of course, pray straight to God, but He has given us the angels and saints to pray to as well…..to carry our prayers to His Heavenly throne. God has created this hierarchy, and I must admit, I feel very safe that He has taken all the trouble to create massive armies of angels as well as lots of saints to help us in our journey to Heaven, to Him. It shows a love that is boundless!

To prepare to celebrate this feast day with your kids, you could perhaps both watch the videos for each Archangel below and then start to learn the prayers to each of these angels in time for the feast day (see below). Once they have got to know this trio of Archangels, perhaps they could make models of the three Archangels (see below). Then on the feast day, perhaps they could say the prayer to St. Michael, St, Raphael and St. Gabriel before each model they have made and then enjoy some Angel Food Cake! The recipe for this is towards the end of this Reflection. It would be good if they could make it with you…as with all things, an immersive experience helps things remain in your child’s heart and mind!

Archangel Michael

St. Michael is the highest of the Archangels. His name means ‘Who is like God?’ St. Michael is the champion of all Christians and the Church, which we know from scripture and from Catholic Church Tradition. He leads the spiritual battle against the devil, which is raging on a daily basis for each of our souls.

Here is the most used prayer to St. Michael which might be appropriate for those who are 6 years and over to learn:

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defence against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

written by Pope Leo XIII

Younger children might enjoy saying this shorter version:

Michael, Michael of the Morning, fresh chord of Heaven adorning, keep me safe throughout this day and in temptation drive the devil away. Amen.

Personally, I pray to St. Michael every morning, even before I get out of bed! I pray this as a prayer of protection before I start my day. I like to know that I am covered spiritually!

Archangel Gabriel

St. Gabriel’s name means, “God is my strength.” Archangel Gabriel delivers very important messages in the Bible. He visits Zachariah in the temple and delivers a message about the forthcoming birth of a child even though his wife was in her old age. He also tells the Virgin Mary that she will also be with child by the power of the Holy Spirit. These are powerful and strong messages from God through His servant, Archangel Gabriel.

Prayer to the Archangel Gabriel for children around 6 years of age:

St. Gabriel, Holy Archangel. You are known as the bearer of God’s secrets meant especially for His chosen ones. We are God’s children constantly keeping watch on God’s message.

Through your powerful intercession, may we receive God’s words and messages so that together with Mary, our Blessed Mother, we may give glory and praise to Him. May we also radiate God’s love to others by our exemplary deeds.

O St. Gabriel obtain for us the grace and present to God the Father the following requests (mention your intentions). We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord together with the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen.

Prayer to the Archangel Gabriel for younger children:

O God, Who from among all Your angels chose the Archangel Gabriel to announce the mystery of the Incarnation.

O God, who lives and reigns forever and ever, grant that we who especially remember Archangel Gabriel on earth, may feel the benefit of his helping us from heaven, Amen.

I must admit that I have never prayed to Archangel Gabriel! But having researched into these amazing heavenly beings…I think I should start! I guess I will never see St. Raphael on earth as I don’t need the BIG messages that were delivered to The Virgin Mary and Zachariah in the Gospel of Luke!

Archangel Raphael

Raphael means “God heals”. We find him in the book of Tobit, in the Old Testament, healing Tobit of his blindness and releasing Tobit’s new daughter-in-law from a demon that so far had prevented her from getting married.

Here is a short prayer to Archangel Raphael for children. The entire prayer might be suitable for your six-year-old. If you have a younger child then perhaps just the first and the last parts will be enough?

Dear St. Raphael,
Healer of God’s grace,
I come to you in need of your loving embrace.

Guide me with your gentle light,
Bring healing to my body, mind, and spirit bright.

In times of pain, be my soothing balm,
Wrap me in your wings, bring calm.

St. Raphael, Archangel divine,
Let your healing energy in me shine.

Restore my health with your heavenly power,
In every moment, be with me hour by hour. Amen.

The Archangel Raphael is actually an angel that I have prayed to! I prayed to this angel when I was looking for a husband on a dating website which had the Archangel Raphael as their patron. I can’t remember which site this was now, but the reason that they took St. Raphael as their patron was probably because he is the ‘Patron Saint of happy meetings’. You can find how he brought together Tobias and Sarah, against multiple odds, in the Book of Tobit in the Old Testament. An interesting read.

Celebrating this Feast Day

Traditionally, this feast day was only to celebrate the Archangel Michael. During the course of time, the Catholic church changed this feast day to include Archangel Gabriel and Archangel Raphael.

The next video shows a fun way that children could use crafts to make an artistic creation of the three Archangels . The link to the templates of the Archangels doesn’t seem to work well, but I am sure that you can draw a nice angel for your child to colour in!

2. Your children could pray the prayers they have learnt in front of their Archangel models.

3. The following video shows you how to make Angel Food cake ! Personally, I think that the amount of granulated sugar could be halved and still provide structure – but that’s just me! Happy Feast Day!

If you prefer to make cupcakes, make sure to slightly overfill the cases and then flatten the mixture with a spatula while gently pushing down. Bake them in a pre-heated oven at 162 Celsius/ 325F for 25 to 30 minutes. When they come out of the oven, they should be golden brown. Then let them cool completely. Once cold, you will notice that the cupcakes have shrunken slightly from their original size. This is normal! Once cold, all you have to do is to top with whipped cream and fresh berries. Enjoy!

Helping Your Child Discover Our Lady’s Motherly Care

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 09:45:23 GMT

Jesus gives Mary to you as your mother

Mother Mary is both Queen of Heaven and Earth as well as the best spiritual mother! We all need to feel that we can run to her with our hopes, dreams and fears, just as a child should be able to run to his/her mother with the same issues. So, how can you show your child the motherliness of Our Lady?

Our Motherhood should reflect Our Lady’s motherhood

By Example

This is how your child will know what to expect from Our Lady….by your example. It’s by your own invitation to listen to your child’s hopes, dreams and fears; by your gentleness, kindness, love, patience and protection. The same goes for your child’s relationship to God the Father. Relating to God the Father will depend on their relationship with their earthly father or father figure. And how we relate to Our Lady will depend on the kind of mothering that we have each experienced.

None of us are holy at all times! So, being like Our Lady sounds like a tall order! But there is something that we can all do as we journey towards sainthood and Heaven. We can ask Jesus to keep changing us so that we become more and more like Him. And we can also ask Our Lady for the grace to become more holy!

Teach your child the Hail Mary

By Prayer and Simple Catechesis

You could say “Let’s ask Mother Mary to help us! Hail Mary, full of grace…”

Young children will accept you telling them that Mary is Jesus’ mum and that Jesus has given her to be our Mother too! You can say that we pray to her for help, just as we pray to any of the saints in Heaven. You could also say that Mary is so very close to Jesus that her prayers are very powerful. And for your child to get the idea that she is a missionary mama, you could say: “Mother Mary lives in Heaven with Jesus, but Jesus sometimes sends her on mission to countries on earth. She encourages all people to love Him and to follow Him. She is such a wonderful spiritual mother to us!”

Background for us adults . We know that as Jesus was dying on the cross that He gave us His mother to be our own spiritual mother. Almost taking His last breath, Jesus gave St. John and His Mother special instructions. But there is more to this story than I first realised – and I would like to share this with you. Both St. John, the disciple whom He loved, and His mother Mary were standing at the foot of the cross....

Seeing His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing near her, Jesus said to His mother, “Woman, this is your son”. Then to the disciple He said, “This is your mother”. And from that hour he took her into his home. John 19:26-27

In biblical times, it was a normal practice for the eldest son to take care of his mother. But now Jesus was dying…Mary’s only son. He could have passed on this responsibility to another so called ‘brother’ i.e. to another male relative from His family circle. But He chose to give it to a ‘brother in the Kingdom of God’ – to St. John. This St. John is the same John who is the author of the Gospel of John.

The Catholic church believes that as Mary was given to be the mother of St. John, a disciple in the Kingdom of God, she was also given to all disciples of Jesus – to all Christians . As Pope St. John Paul ll said: Jesus completes his sacrifice by entrusting Mary to John. By calling her ‘Woman’ Jesus is actually giving Mother Mary a new universal spiritual motherhood. A motherhood towards all Christians. ‘Woman’ is only used one other time in the Gospel of John: at the Wedding Feast of Cana (John 2:4). Then, says Pope St. John ll, by calling His mum, ‘Woman’, Jesus is recalling Eve: the mother of all the living. Mother Mary is the new Eve. So, by calling her ‘Woman’ from the cross Jesus is making her the mother of all disciples (L’Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 30 April 1997, page 11). Wow! This reflection has really opened my eyes to Our Lady’s mission on Earth!

My own journey with Our Lady has been a pretty slow one! It was only because my own mum had a devotion to her and prayed the rosary every day that I eventually started doing the same. I am not always faithful to this though…as I allow ‘life’ to get in the way.

So, now that children have got some idea that Mother Mary is a very special mother: one who can look after them at all times and places...

What is the next step? I think the ‘icing on the cake’ is to show them how Mother Mary has intervened in the lives of people in history in an unforgettable way.

Tell your child about Our Lady of Guadalupe

Using videos from YouTube

Show your child her maternal care through her visitation to Juan Diego, a poor peasant, in Guadelupe, Mexico - back in 1531.

I didn’t know till a few years ago, but did you know that Our Lady of Guadelupe is pregnant when she appeared to Juan Diego?! So, she appeared in all her motherliness, literally!

This first 4-minute video would be good for 3 to 4-year-olds. Before showing the video, you could, perhaps, say something like:

“Jesus’ mother, Mary, looked after Jesus while he was a baby and while he was your age and right up to the time when he grew up and left home. After she died and went to Heaven, God has been sending Mother Mary on missions to appear to people in lots of countries on Earth. God does this because He knows that Mother Mary can help everyone believe in Jesus, her Son. Jesus is the only way to Heaven and so it’s very important to learn to love Him, to listen and to do what He says. This is the story of when Mother Mary appeared to a poor man in a town called Guadelupe, which is in a country called Mexico. The man’s name was Juan Diego.”

 This next video is a bit longer and is more suitable for 6-year-olds . The story of Our Lady of Guadelupe is played out through the reading of a story book. This link will take you to a video preview. Please click on this and it will then allow you to see it on YouTube. At the end of the story (14:15 mins in) there is a 4-minute version of the story for adults and some information about the site of pilgrimage.

Notice what Our Lady says to Juan Diego when he doesn’t keep his promised meeting with her because he was caring for his sick uncle? She asks him not to be afraid about anything. And then she says to him:

“Am I not here, I who am your Mother?”

In other words, Our Lady of Guadalupe is saying “Come to me…you can tell me anything…just as you would tell your earthly mother. I am always here for you”.

This is how close she wants to be with each of us, including your child. Her look of love and tenderness to Juan Diego, and to all of us, comes from the Holy Trinity. The closer we get to God, the more loving and tender we will become towards our children and to all around us!

I hope this helps you show the motherliness of Our Lady to your child and to any other children whom you care for.

How to Create a Family Prayer Altar: A Guide for Catholic Families

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 19:12:47 GMT

The Need for a Family Prayer Altar

Do we need a Family Prayer Altar? Really?

The Catholic Church calls every family to be a Domestic Church (see Lumen Gentium). The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Edition) para 1666 states: ‘The Christian home is the place where children receive the first proclamation of the faith. For this reason the family home is rightly called “the domestic church”, a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and Christian charity.’

So, in my mind, this means that there needs to be a place where the family can gather, learn together about the faith and keep on growing in it! A huge part of this, for all of us, is to hear & listen to the Word of God and to be guided to live the best Catholic life possible.

So, part of the Catholic life is to pray daily. How can this be encouraged? Apart from getting down to the nitty-gritty of praying it helps to have a place where we can go to when we pray. Not somewhere tucked away….but somewhere obvious, which will be attractive and which will ‘call us’ to pray. This is the idea of the Family Prayer Altar.

What will your Family Prayer Altar look like?

Very minimalist with one crucifix or something more elaborate with a statue, a bible and a candle?

Here are some different views of what it could look like. This short video shows how to make a simple Family Altar. Please check it out here ..

To see something more elaborate look here …

Honestly, the videos are just for ideas. Use whatever suites your style: a simple IKEA small table/ shelf. Whatever style you decide on, you might like to use an altar cloth…of course you don’t have to!

Maybe you would like to help your kids follow the liturgical year? So, during Lent and Advent you could use a purple tablecloth…? And a green tablecloth during Ordinary time…?

When do you use your Family Altar?

Any time that the family feels called to pray together! The best times to pray would when it is quiet, such as early Morning Prayer or Bedtime Prayer. Every family’s routine is different and you will work out what suites your family best. I have friends with a young-teen family who start off their day with prayer at 7:30 am. At their family altar, they begin with morning prayers. These are then followed by one of the children reading the gospel of the day out loud. They then meditate on that Gospel and share what it means to them. Only those who want to will speak. Then they will be encouraged to pray aloud with mum/dad starting: this often results in intercessory prayer. During their Bedtime Prayers, the Rosary is prayed in the children’s bedroom. Some children will fall asleep while others can make it right to the end!

Whatever you decide on, intentional family prayer time at your Family Altar sends a clear message to your children. A message that you, as a parent, believes that prayer is as important as food – and that you can’t live without it. We all need God and the intercession of our brothers and sisters and angels in Heaven, right?! We are part of the communion of saints (the earthbound part) and together we are all part of Christ’s family! We make up the earthbound part of the Mystical Body of Christ!

Invite your children to bring objects to the Family Altar

This way they will feel that they are playing an important part in the spiritual life of your family. And if the Altar seems to get crowded with too many objects, then you simply have a family discussion about what is important, right now, to help the family focus in their prayer time. Some people like the cluttered effect while for others it simply takes away their peace. Your altar should promote peace for everyone!

What might they bring to the Altar?

Start the conversation and explain how objects on the altar are there to help us to lift our hearts and minds to God in prayer. What things might help us to remember that God is LOVE? That He is a God of Beauty and Order and Peace and Joy? Your words will be better than mine!

Wild flowers will make it a fittingly, beautiful place to worship our beautiful God.

Photos of a sick aunt – to remind everyone to intercede for her.

Stones might remind the kids that God created everything, the very Earth we stand on and this, of course, includes the stones. Bird feathers to thank God for His creation of the birds. You may end up with all sorts – including live snails! Enjoy!

Here is another video (12 mins) to help you in your thought processes in making your Family Altar. Enjoy!

Don’t forget the Prayer Cushions!

“Why do we need prayer cushions?!” I hear you say with astonishment!

Well, the short answer to that is “You don’t!”

But, like any space in your home, you want to create it intentionally. To encourage a child to pray, a special prayer cushion that is exclusively theirs might really help! We all need a bit of encouragement to pray.

The boy on the left child won this flat, Indian style cushion in a raffle at an event I ran. This was in July 2023, and he is still using it 2 years later! The old photo of the girl in prayer on the right shows that prayer cushions are not a new idea.

The important thing is to involve your child in selecting the cushion or maybe even in making one! As your child uses their special cushion to pray on…he or she will associate ‘praying’ with it. Perhaps you might see your child decide to pray at an unusual time and pull out their cushion just for that?!

Cushion or no cushion, seeing a child pray to God/ the saints spontaneously is heartwarming!

How to Read to Your Kids from Pregnancy to Teen Years

Thu, 15 May 2025 05:53:06 GMT

We all know that parents are a child’s primary educators, right?

You teach your kids so many things from potty training to dressing themselves…

You teach your kids how to listen and how to talk; what intimacy looks like and how to be confident so that they can ask for what they want. You provide a safe place for them to be nurtured, and you show them how to love. Everything that you have just read in this paragraph happens when you read your child a bedtime story! Reading is not just about increasing your child’s vocabulary and getting them school ready – that will happen naturally but there is so much more that is at stake here.

Relationship deepener

Bedtime reading will develop a deeper relationship with your child and vice versa. It’s a special time in the day when the sun starts to go down and our body unwinds and relaxes more. A warm bath or shower will increase this lovely feeling. It will also signal to your child that he/she is getting to have you all to themselves! And that’s what they want!

In your arms, they will feel snuggled, loved and safe…

In your arms, the bonding hormone, oxytocin, goes to work… (see my reflection on hugging for more information: How Often Should We Hug Our Kids? The Power of Hugs )

Your Reading Voice!

As you read the story, make it as exciting as you can with different voices for the different characters, as this will really engage your child and will make him/her laugh! Unless, of course, they ask you to stop. That actually happened to me as I read to my niece and nephews! Two of them didn’t like the accent I was using for one of the characters - I think it just sounded too strange to their sensitive souls. I stopped, of course, but it just goes to show how sensitive we are as human beings. As adults we need to be attentive to their mood and to how they perceive things always.

As a new parent you may never have had to read out loud to anyone before….but be brave - as it becomes easier the more you practice. Your children won’t be assessing you and marking you out of 10!

Mums and Dads both need to read…

I spoke to a friend of mine and asked her to cast her mind back to the days when her son was little. What was reading like to her child? She said she loved it and that she became completely absorbed in her son’s little world. She also said that you need to spend at least 15 minutes reading to your child once they can concentrate for that long. She also said something interesting. She said that she did most of the reading to her son. Her husband did a bit, but it was mainly my friend who took on the role of reading stories at bedtime. I, sadly, wasn’t brought up on bedtime stories and neither did my parents model reading for enjoyments sake. My mum read the odd magazine, and my dad quite often buried his head in medical journals as he was a GP. But somehow through all this God gave me a gift to tell stories and to eventually write them! Just goes to show that everything is possible with God!

It is so important that both mums and dads both take part in reading to their children. Men and women look at things differently and it’s important for children to see both points of view. A boy needs to know how females think as this will impact on his future relationships with the opposite sex. And the same goes for girls. There may not be a father or a mother figure in some families but with a bit of creativity someone can be brought in to fill that role. For example, how about having a trusted ‘mother’ or ‘father’ figure to engage with your child regularly? How about a grandparent or a God parent or simply a friend whom you trust? Even if they came to visit once every two weeks that would be amazing.

Dad’s Reading to their kids

This video talks about a website called ‘All Pro Dad’. For dad’s who would like extra support in reading and relating to their children this website could be really helpful, here is the link .

Raising Boys? How to Strengthen the Father Son Relationship | All Pro Dad

To encourage dads to read every day, dads might want to check out the 4-6 week course, ‘Fathers Reading Every Day’, which is based in London, England. Here are the contact details .

Fathers Reading Every Day - Do Something Good

I hope that other countries have something similar to offer.

Adding to the story

Always let your child choose the book they want to have read to them. When it comes to stories, whichever they ask for over and over again are the ones that they are deeply learning from. As a parent you won’t know what exactly they are learning – but this doesn’t matter. The brain is very complex, and each child will have their own curriculum which is being followed. And that is because every single human being learns in different ways and at different speeds. This is how God has ordained it. This is why the famous Italian educator, Maria Montessori, said, “Follow the child….” If we follow where they lead, they will develop according to God’s ordained design. So, when your toddler starts to try and slide your bank card in between a slit in the floorboards – they are signalling that this is what they need to learn about now! Take away your bank card and give them something like this instead:

Back to Adding to the Story

As you read to your child, you can slowly add your own thoughts here and there:

“ That must have made Shannon very uncomfortable….what do you think, darling?”

This needs to be done minimally or your child will lose the drift of the story. As time goes on your child will hopefully ask his/her questions about the story, which you need to answer on the spot. They want to know what is going on and to understand. They are not only learning about the characters in the stories, but they will be learning about life and relationships.

Children need to know that reading is fun and not about school and taking exams. They need to know that it is a skill for living life. Take a look at this short video:

Modelling Reading

Showing your child that you are enjoying reading is a great way to get him/her to love books…because children always want to do what their parents are doing!

Reading in the womb!

A baby’s hearing is developed from 16-22 weeks of life in the womb! As a midwife this is something that really penetrated my soul. They say that hearing is also the last thing to stop working as we die. I find this all so fascinating! So this means that you can tell stories to your baby in the womb…

You can simply talk to your baby and just tell them anything that is happening in your day! The funny thing that happened at the bus stop; how your nephew was speaking to your child in your tummy and that he slobbered all over you; how you and his dad met; how you and your hubby felt when you first looked at the ultrasound; how you are preparing his room….and the stories go on!

God has designed us for stories, and that’s why Jesus Christ used story all the time - because He knew it would enthral us and make us listen. We all love a story, so tell your baby in the womb what is going on in the outside world and how much you are looking forward to meeting him. You could ask him what’s happening in the womb? You could read him something from the bible? See how he responds…

Reading out loud to pre-teens

As strange and counter intuitive as this may seem, I encourage you to have a look at the next two videos which will not only explain to you the reasons to read to your pre-teen but will show you how to do it.

Listen to this teacher and the amazing things that are happening in her English classes when she reads out loud to her class of teens!

Happy Reading!

Helping Your Kids Prepare for First Confession

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 06:21:38 GMT

I didn’t know that this Sacrament is a place of Victory? Did you?

As a cradle Catholic, I have grown up believing that in confession, Jesus forgives me, He cleanses my soul from sin, and He heals me. But what I hadn’t heard is what the Sacrament of Reconciliation looks like from Jesus’ point of view! Nor had I ever really thought about what the priest might be experiencing! I found this video by Fr. Mike Schmitz which explains both these points of view and I was truly warmed to find the BEAUTIFUL LOVE extended to us from God and also from our priests. I found watching this so powerful. I think it’s a good place to start for all those given the task of explaining the Sacrament of Confession to young children. Enjoy!

For this sacrament to be VALID there must be 3 things that happen:

You must be genuinely sorry.
You need to confess your sins out loud to a priest in person.
You must perform whatever penance the priest prescribes

All this is put together nicely in this short video:

Explain that our sins hurt God, and we need to make up with Him..

You can explain that God created us to live our lives in complete harmony with Him by being good in thought, word and deed. God knows that we sometimes say, do and think in ways that aren’t loving, and this breaks our relationship with Him. These sins will keep us from going to Heaven and so God in His kindness has given us the Sacrament of Reconciliation to fix our relationship; to wash away our sins forever from our soul (Absolution) and to keep us on the path to Heaven ��.

Children also need to know the term: 'being in a State of Grace'. This means that they haven't committed any mortal sins. We all need to be in a State of Grace before we can receive Holy Communion. Of course, the purest souls, who are closest to God, would be those who are sinless...but for most of us this may be a lifetime's work! Thank God there is the Sacrament of Reconciliation!

And how do we show our love for God and remain in complete harmony with Him? By keeping the commandments that He revealed to the Israelites through Moses on Mount Sinai:

“If you love Me, you will keep my commandments”

John 14:15 The New Jerusalem Bible

So, by this stage in your child’s life, he or she will have already experienced being forgiven by mummy or daddy, who loves them. They will also have experienced saying “Sorry” (and meaning it) for hurting or upsetting you. So, for them, it will be an easy stretch to translate this to their relationship with their loving God.

It would also be good to remind them how much Jesus loves them. First, He created the entire Universe, which includes our planet Earth, so that we could enjoy being alive with our family and friends while we learn how to grow close to God. Then Jesus showed His UBER love for us by dying on the cross, so that we could all join Him one day in Heaven forever!

After the Sacrament

I don’t know about you but for a long time - years – I couldn’t understand why sometimes I felt ‘lighter internally’ with a new joy and peace after receiving the Sacrament of Confession and at other times I didn’t feel anything? Eventually, I realised that it’s like anything that we experience in the spiritual world as a human being…sometimes there are lovely feelings and sometimes…there just aren’t!

Sometimes, I didn’t feel sorry enough for my sins and other times I did…all we can do is to try our best to see the gravity of what we have done. That’s all our children can do too. I must admit that as I have gotten older, I seem to be able to see and feel the weight of what I have done…more and more.

One couple’s experience with their children

Listen to this couple’s experience of getting their children ready for this Sacrament:

This is one of the video trailer’s which shows Felicity asking questions:

Kids ask a lot of questions. Here are two common ones:

Kids questions

“Why do I have to confess my sins?”

This command to forgive sins is given by Jesus to His Apostles in John 20:21-23:

“As the Father sent Me, so am I sending you”

After saying this He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins they are forgiven; if you retain anyone’s sins; they are retained.”

The New Jerusalem Bible

“But our priest is not an Apostle, so how come he can forgive sins?”

As Jesus gave authority to the Apostles to ‘stand in’ for Him, in the same way the Apostles gave authority to the priests who came after them to do the same. They are all acting in Persona Christi….or ‘as if they were the person of Christ’. It is Christ who does the forgiving, not the priest.

These questions plus others are beautifully answered in this cartoon video for kids. I think this is a really good video to show your children as they prepare to make their First Sacrament of Reconciliation.

I hope this Reflection has been supportive to you and to your child/ little person preparing to make this victorious sacrament!

Believing the Lord’s Words : 'The Road to Joseph'

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 03:54:14 GMT

First: Hearing God’s Words to You

In my book, ‘The Road to Joseph’ Chris has a dream in which God the Father speaks to him. He tells Chris that the desire that he has to play the role of Joseph in the school nativity play will come true - despite his current situation of being on crutches and being cast as a cow!

In this story, I am normalising the fact that God speaks to us all. All we have to do is to be open to this. I don’t know where you are on your faith journey, but I hope that you know, that God loves you so much that He wants to talk with you….in fact, He is desperate to do this! Me and my faith journey? I couldn’t take on the possibility that this might be true till I was twenty-seven years old. I just wasn’t ready.

You see, no one had ever told me that God was desperate to have a relationship with me…and that’s why He died for me on the cross. A relationship means having a conversation with someone. But for me, God had been represented as cold and not deeply caring about my small life in His big universe and that all the miracles were pretty much done in the Old and New Testaments. That’s all I had to cling onto. That was it. But that’s not it!

If your heart is open - God can speak to a you or to your child today. If you are sceptical about this but would like to give it a go… I recommend that you pray to God and ask Him to show you a Catholic charismatic prayer group you can attend to learn more about this conversational relationship.

Second: Will you Believe in His Words?

So, now that Chris has heard God speak to him….he needs to believe in His Words. Simply believe! Well, that is easy for Chris on the morning after his dream while he is telling his mum and dad about this….because he is on cloud nine!

Third: Hanging in there with Trust

But as time goes on, this is when Chris’ trust in God’s Words…in God’s Promise…starts to wane. This is the story for all of us, right? When things aren’t going as we had prayed for…in fact, when they seem to be going in the opposite direction- that’s often when our trust in God wanes.

But, as I have to keep learning over and over again….God’s timing is rarely our timing. He can only grow our trust in Him if He stetches our trust muscles! In the end Chris’ dream is realised and all is well. Trusting in God’s Words - no matter what – is the biblical truth that I am hoping to instil in every child who listens to my story.

Recognising Real Friendship: 'The Road to Joseph'

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 03:54:11 GMT

Real Friendship

In my third story, ‘The Road to Joseph’ Shani is a good friend to Chris. As Chris unburdens his heart to her at school she simply listens. She gives him space. She doesn’t talk over him and start telling him about her problems. She listens to the wonderful prophetic dream that Chris has had and supports him in it. She also listens to his frustration because the prophecy hasn’t, as yet, come true. Then, she encourages Chris in his adventure with the Lord when she says, “I believe in your dream”. It is this model of true and wholesome friendship that I am hoping that children will see as something to emulate.

Here's what some children see as a good friendship- enjoy!

False Friendship

Sometimes, your child will come across children who aren’t their real friends at all but are ‘fake’ friends. These children won’t listen to your child like Shani listened to Chris. They won’t celebrate the good things that happen to them (like receiving a prophetic dream, having a birthday or winning a competition). They will leave your child feeling negative or even depressed and will constantly be asking him/ her for favours.

Sometimes, this happens because the other child is simply modelling how their own parents/ guardians behave in relationships. It’s not really their fault. But your child doesn’t need to put up with such negativity. They don’t need to have play dates with such little people. As a mum/dad you need to make sure they are mixing with real friends and also to point out to them who are the false friends: the wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Even as an adult, I found that I had made a couple of friends with people who didn't really like me. We started out as good friends, but then somewhere along the line things changed. In some cases, it took me years to realise what was happening. For example, there was one friend who barely made time to see me during her breaks from work. I knew that as a teacher she needed term time to prepare for lessons etc. so I tried not to see her during those times. But then during the holidays, I realised that if I didn't contact her to meet up she just wouldn't reach out to me. I liked her so much and I made all sorts of excuses to myself about why I had to make all the moves to meet up. But eventually it dawned on me that she actually wasn't that bothered about seeing me at all.

Then there was another friend who made excuses about seeing me too. She would text:" I'm just about to go on holiday and I'll call you when I get back". Strange thing was she would say the same thing over and over again. Eventually, the penny dropped. I think now, that we were both just growing apart and neither of us knew how to handle this. Finally, she made a date to meet up but I said 'no'. There was no point in remaining friends with someone who might see me this one time and then spend the next year telling me she is going on holiday and will contact me on her return. I wish that I had opened up about this to some of my real friends but I didn't want to come over as a 'non- grown-up'. I wanted it to seem that I had all my relationships 'together' and I knew how to navigate life.

Our children have to navigate all their interactions with other human beings on their own. But you can help protect them from false friends by monitoring their mood before and after playing with any friend. You can then show them which friends are real, and which are not. This will give them wisdom for their relationships in the future too.

Here’s some wisdom about fake friends:

How to Support Your Child's Faith: Lessons from 'The Road to Joseph'

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 03:54:08 GMT

First: We need to listen with an open heart

In ‘The Road to Joseph’ Chris has a prophetic dream and as he tells his parents about it, he is gushing with excitement! How would you react if your child told you the same? It’s quite an unusual thing for most of us to experience and though it might seem a bit ‘different’, as parents, we need to support our children and not ‘poo-poo’ it by saying something like:

“It must have been because of that huge cheese pizza that you ate last night. I knew it was a bad idea!”

We need to be open to the idea that this could indeed have come from God. A prophetic dream can happen to anyone. God does all sorts of things to get our attention and to remind us that we shouldn’t go through life ‘sleepwalking’ but should be focusing our lives on Him – to be fully awake.

Similarly, what if your child said they wanted to learn to pray a whole decade of the rosary….and you find the rosary really difficult… you can still say,

“What makes you want to do that, Nick? O I see….”

“Of course, I know…I’ll get your friend, John, and his mum to come over and we can do it together. I think they pray the rosary every night before bed….how does that sound?”

Second: Help them ‘test the spirits’ or discern

As it says in the Word of God,

“My dear friends, not every spirit is to be trusted, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” 1 John 4:1

The mark of the Holy Spirit are His fruits: love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23).

But every baptised person already has the Holy Spirit living inside them… so, I think that when we are discerning, if it is God who is speaking (rather than from our own imagination or the devil) we need to observe if there is an increase in the fruits of the Holy Spirit in your child’s life. This lovely nun puts it so well…

Third: Walk with them

So, in my story you will notice that dad asks Chris about his prophetic dream,

“Wow! How did the dream make you feel?” Dad asks.

“Like I was floating on the sea - all peaceful.”

Dad is helping Chris (and himself and his wife) to test the spirits. Chris’ answer of a definite increase in peace is a sign that this could be from the Holy Spirit. But we also have to wait and see how things develop over time. Will this peace remain in Chris’ heart? Only time will tell…and the fact that he did get to play Joseph in the nativity gives us the answer!

Walking beside your child, staying calm, and praying with your child about this are all good things to do. Perhaps God will confirm what he is saying to you while you pray…perhaps you will have a sense that it is from God - in your own heart. And if it's something that seems too big for you to handle, then simply seek the advice of your priest. All will be well…and I say this because our God is a good God and He wants us to understand what He is saying to us.

The God of the 11th Hour!: 'The Road to Joseph'

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 03:54:04 GMT

God’s Timing: Always on Time!

In my book ‘The Road to Joseph’ the answer to Chris’ desire and the realisation of the prophetic dream comes through right at the last minute!

I don’t know about you, but this seems how God works quite often! He stretches our faith and makes us learn to trust Him, just that little bit more, before He answers us.

My brush with the God of the 11 ^th Hour!

I call our God the God of the 11 ^th hour because He is often very last minute! Let me give you an example from my own life. When my father passed away in 2022, the funeral in the church had been arranged around 3 weeks after this. I wanted my dad to have a great send-off: I wanted music, an order of service, prayer cards and a full sit-down meal of Sri-Lankan food. However, within our family there was tension, and I wasn’t allowed access to my own father’s money to do this. At the time, I had no money of my own to use. I was gob-smacked, upset and started to wander if God just didn’t want dad to have all that I wanted him to have. I started wondering if this whole idea was selfish and all about me…maybe it was enough to have mass and the burial? After all, it covered all the spiritual aspects…maybe that was enough?

In Grief and with a limited Faith

I told a close friend, and she felt sure that this must be God’s Will to have a wonderful send off. She said we would have to trust God for this. Well, to be honest, I was hanging onto my friend’s faith because, being in grief, I just couldn’t think straight. A few days later, my friend called me to say that someone had pledged £100 to help me! I was gob smacked. It was very sweet of this person, who wanted to remain anonymous, but it wouldn’t pull off a Reception.

Over the next few days, there were some more pledges of money! I asked my friend if she was actually asking people for money. She said that all she was doing was asking people to pray for me, because I was in such a jam…and they were offering their money spontaneously! Then, I got another phone call from my friend, and she asked me if I was sitting down – I said I was. Someone had pledged £1K! It was a dream come true. With this I was able to afford everything I needed. I sorted out the venue and the music and made a Sri-Lankan mocktail to toast my dad, while my close friend sorted out the catering, the order of service and the memorial cards.

Was the God of the 11 ^th Hour Finished with Me?

Just when I thought it was safe to go back into the water, I was telephoned at work to say that unless a form was filled that day, there would be no burial the following day! This form had been left undone through no fault of my own, but I was left to deal with it. Thankfully, my work let me go early that day to sort this out. And a neighbour, very kindly, ferried me backwards and forwards between the solicitor and the funeral directors.

The funeral and Reception were wonderful. We had an order of service, a two-lady choir singing to a guitar, a full sit-down Sri-Lankan meal at the Reception and a playlist of 1950’s style music playing in the background. I didn’t want the day to end! I felt so loved! What graces were flowing!

Our God of the 11 ^th hour!

How to Find Our Way Back to God: "Lost Until the Light Comes"

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:28:46 GMT

How we get lost

Children can get lost from their parents simply by wandering off by getting distracted: through something that seems attractive to them at that moment. In my book, 'Lost Until the Light Comes', Chris is attracted by the squirrels. They are so cute and playful that he can’t stop looking at them and follows them. Then, of course, he finds himself lost.

The need for children to be vigilant to what their parents are saying to them about staying within eyesight etc. is crucial. This story is however more than that. It’s an allegory of everyone’s life in the spiritual realm too. Because it’s when we get distracted by things that seems attractive – even by telling a lie to get ourselves out of a tricky situation – that we stray away from our Heavenly Father and fall into sin.

How are we found?

When Chris gets lost in my story, he does his best to stay safe by climbing up a tree and into the tree hollow. It’s a place where the wolf, that is pursuing him, won’t be able to get at him. He is safe for now….but real safety and comfort comes when he calls out to God. God answers him by calling back and asking him to follow Him! He also sends him the Light of Christ to encourage him to come out of his ‘hidey hole’ and to be re-united with his beloved family once more.

It's just like this when we stray from God and commit sin, isn’t it. That’s how I feel anyway. I feel that I cannot even speak to God because of what I have done. But that, my friend, is the devil’s tactic to keep me and you from God! God, on the other hand, wants the complete opposite. He longs for us to say sorry to Him and to come and ‘make up’ with Him through the sacrament of Reconciliation/Confession.

Hiding..

I know that for many years it was my pattern to ‘hide’ from God after I had committed any sin because I was so ashamed. I just wouldn’t speak to Him. As a child it would take me days to process the whole thing before I could bring it ‘into the light’ an talk to God about it in prayer. Now, in my latter years, I have learnt that the sooner I say sorry and run to God and to the confessional, the sooner I will be re-united with Him and happy once again.

The Prodigal Son

What comes to my mind is the story of the Prodigal Son. As the bedraggled son crept his way back to his father’s house….the father who, was looking out for him, and saw him at a distance – came running to meet him. I still find this image hard to believe but this is the reality of God’s loving embrace for each of us.

Learning to Trust: ‘Lost Until the Light Comes’

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 15:28:47 GMT

Chris is Hiding from the Wolf in the Tree Hollow

In my book ‘Lost Until the Light Comes’ , 6-year-old Chris finds himself in a very dangerous situation. He is running away from the wolf. This would be a terrifying situation to be in for an adult – let alone a child! The advice that I would give any Christian child in a similar situation is to send an ‘arrow prayer’ to God. By this I mean a short, sharp prayer. In these situations, it’s all we have time for, and of course, God will hear it. He will rush in to help.

Chris probably doesn’t realise that while he is waiting in the tree hollow, out of reach of the wolf, he is trusting in God in two ways. 1. He is trusting that God is real – and worth praying to, and 2. He is trusting that the God who created him cares enough to reach down and answer him. As an aside, you can see that due to The Holy Trinity’s protective power, the wolf has become docile and is no longer thinking about eating Chris – he is, now, just watching him…

Like all of us in a similar situation, little Chris is having to use his ‘trust muscles’. As difficult as these scenes are, my hope is that children will see that God is real and always with them; that He hears every prayer and that He will respond. As we know, sometimes we wish that He would act sooner rather than later in lots of situations in our lives. I have toremember in times like this that God is a God of love and that He has His reasons for His Timing. We may only see His Reasons on the other side of the veil.. And it is in these trying times when we feel that God is working too slowly that our ‘trust muscles’ are really being worked and strengthened.

Answers to Prayer

Can I give you two personal examples of how God answered my prayers?

The first takes place while I was on holiday in beautiful Sri Lanka. I should have been relaxed and having the time of my life, right? Well, I wasn’t. I didn’t realise that I was carrying HUGE amounts of stress and unresolved tensions. Alone in my room, as I snuggled up in a chair to read, I suddenly felt my mind start to leave my body. I was ‘beside myself’. This was hugely scary. I immediately started shouting “Jesus, Jesus!” I can’t remember if I did this aloud or internally…but in less than a second, my mind came back into my head, and I was whole again and safe. I will never forget this experience. The name of ‘Jesus’ definitely saves! I can testify to this from the above example.

“For all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved”

Romans 10:13

My second example happened in Germany in 2005 when I was with a group of friends …and a few thousand other people! I was attending the World Youth Day (even though I was 44 years old at the time!) andthousands of us pilgrims were in a field in Cologne. It was the closing ceremony after the final Mass. It suddenly occurred to myself and my friends that we had to ‘hot foot’ it back to our hotel, grab our suitcases and get to the airport so that we could catch our flight back to England!

We hastily left the field and got onto the nearby road where we were expecting the coaches to collect us. We were desperate to get on the first coach that came! The men in our group decided to walk farther along the road in case any of the coaches were waiting just out of sight. And we ladies decided to stay in one spot and pray. As we prayed, more and morepilgrims were arriving along the road to catch the coaches. Now, there were so many people, and I feared we wouldn’t be the first to get on a coach. After about five minutes a coach did turn up, but much farther along the road, and our male friends hadn’t returned back from their excursion! We had to just watch as people scrambled onto the coach, leaving us behind. Then after about another 10 minutes another coach arrived and stopped right in front of us… and simultaneously, our male friends were returning from their unsuccessful walk! And ‘yes’, we caught our flight back home! I clearly remember thinking that feverish activity wasn’t what helped us – but God’s provision through trusting prayer absolutely did!

I hope that when your child listens to/ reads ‘Lost until the Light Comes’ that they will see that God is with them and that He can be trusted to bring them to safety.

How to be a Loving Family: "Lost Until the Light Comes"

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 15:28:47 GMT

How to be a loving, Catholic family

I hope that my story, ‘Lost Until the Light Comes’ gives a good example of the loving nature of a Catholic family. Although the family in my story isn’t explicitly Catholic…this is the mindset that I am working under. I am a Roman Catholic and, in my mind, so are both the families in my story. (Perhaps there will be someway that I can make this more explicit further down the line!).

My own family had its own set of problems, and we were by no means perfect…but we should all aim at being the loving families that the Lord would have us be. One thing that we did in our family was to apologise to the other person when we did something wrong and also to forgive the other person as well. None of these things are easy but they are worth learning and they make for loving relationships. Jesus asks that we are honest in our relationships and that we forgive one another. It’s only in a loving, forgiving, trusting and faith-filled family that we can be the best version of ourselves. It’s only in this type of family that each child has the best chance to flourish.

Little Chris’ Family

Any child hearing this story read to them will see several things that are normalised in this particular family.

Chris’ feelings about not going on this new trip are listened to.
Chris’ father is teaching him new things about life ie how to use a compass. He is helping him develop as a child.
The family loves doing things together.
The family never gives up looking for Chris.
Chris is forgiven for not listening and for straying from the family.
Chris’ parents prayed to God for help when Chris was lost.
Chris’ parents were so happy to see him again that they hugged him tight to express their joy.

I hope that you agree that these aspects of Chris’ family are good things that all families should emulate.

Learning to Listen: "Lost Until the Light Comes"

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 15:28:47 GMT

Start by Being Real and Honest

At the beginning of 'Lost Until the Light Comes' , Chris’ family are given an opportunity to go on a pilgrimage with their good friends and neighbours. Chris’ family have already made plans to go to Devon and when this fun and exciting opportunity with friends turns up, Chris’ parents are very interested. But Chris is not. He shows his instant dislike and feels free to do so.

Next turn to the other and listen

Then Chris’ friend who is also at the same table during this conversation speaks up. Hoping to persuade him, she shows Chris a beautiful and stunning picture of the famous Blue Mountains in Beyond-Blue-Land. Chris faces her and listens to her. He looks her in the eyes. He is humble enough to listen to this little girl who is 3 years of age, while he is at the grand age of six! Not only does he listen to her, but he is open enough to now see this adventure from a different point of view.

I hope that my story will help children understand how important it is to listen to other points of view and to be open and humble enough to admit they were wrong and that just maybe another person’s idea was better than theirs.

How to Explain the Eucharist to Children

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 10:51:38 GMT

History of the Eucharist

First, we must go back in time and take our children with us!

Because the Catholic Eucharist is the New Covenant version of the Passover feast of the Jewish people, we must make sure that our children first understand what Passover is all about. Please don’t panic! This is nothing more complicated than your child knowing the story of the Exodus. After all, Catholicism is built on Judaism as Jesus was Jewish Himself. And as Jesus said in Matthew 5:17-18

“Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete them” (The New Jerusalem Bible).

This diving into the story of the Exodus could take place over a span of time : from 5-7 years of age. There is no rush, and it will simply be a matter of watching short videos or films of the story of the Exodus. Once our children have a good grounding in what the Exodus meant and the Passover meal used to celebrate it, we can then gently lead them to the Last Supper: which was the last Passover meal that Jesus ever celebrated. All you need to do is to show them an appropriate video once or twice a year (more if they ask for it!) and then get them to notice an important feature of the video or, as they get older, ask them a question (examples are given below).

My hope is that slowly, over the years, your child will see the connection of our Catholic Eucharist with the Passover. This connection may not happen till they are ready to make their First Holy Communion, at the very earliest. It may happen years later! But you, with God, will have planted the seeds and God will make them grow in His good time. All you need to do is to scatter some questions in front of them after they see a video/ film and God will make the connections for them when they are truly ready. One day they will say to you “Dad/Mum now I get it!”

Me Making Sense of it All

I don’t know about you but growing up I didn’t have any understanding of the Exodus or the Passover meal having anything to do with the Eucharist that we received every Sunday at mass. I only realised this through reading a book called ' This is My Body' by Fr. Ian Petit - in my 30’s! It was eye opening! Suddenly everything made sense.

This is My Body

We could simply teach our children the facts of the Eucharist: it is Jesus’ body and blood, soul and divinity ie the entirety of Jesus. We could teach them that this happens through a miraculous process called Transubstantiation. But true and wonderful as these facts are….I see them suspended in air without any roots. I was happy to believe these suspended truths for years. But once I saw that it all came from the celebration of the Passover meal…which celebrated freedom from bondage in Egypt- my mind was opened, and I had an Epiphany moment! It all made more sense!

This travelling through history and time can be done in a very gentle way and, I hope, will give children an understanding of the Eucharist that will be ingrained into their souls for life. How carefully God has planned everything: gliding from Passover to Eucharist. From a hurried meal and freedom from the pains of Egypt to a relaxed Eucharistic meal in church and languishing in the freedom from our sins! We have been truly spoilt by God!

If you are happy to go with me on this journey, this is what it could look like:

Teaching the Exodus

We can start by reading the story from their children’s bible and the actual bible and showing them short/longer videos about the Exodus depending on their age. These could be watched just before the start of Lent, on the Feast of Corpus Christi and as many times as your kids ask to watch it!

For Five-year olds

These 5 min videos will give the basic story of the Exodus. You could use any videos that you like. I chose these as they allow for the short attention span of a 5-year-old and don’t include some of the misguided protestant views about the Exodus that I came across.

It would be enough to mention that God wanted to have a relationship with His people and while they were in slavery in Egypt, they couldn’t worship the Lord their God. In Egypt, only the pagan god’s were allowed to be worshipped. Somehow, they had to get free to worship and to commune with God - and God had a clever plan to free them.

You can also say that the Jewish people were freed from being slaves through the blood of a spotless male lamb. The blood of this lamb was smeared on the wooden door posts and along the wooden lintel, above the door (connection here with Jesus’ blood on the wooden cross).

For Six-year-olds

This is about 27 mins long so you may need to do this in two sittings depending on your child’s attention span. You could simply ask your child this question: How did God protect His people from the plague of the death of the eldest children in Egypt? They don’t need to give a perfect answer or any answer at all….the point here is that they are thinking about God. How wonderful is our God that He wanted to protect His children from death.

For Seven-year-olds

If you can, it would be great if you could watch The Prince of Egypt from 1988. This is a much longer animated version about the Exodus. If they aren’t able to watch this in one sitting, they could watch it in manageable bites on consecutive days. Each time you restart the film you could see what they remember about what they last watched.

The Prince of Egypt 1998. Here is a short clip from the film:

Of course, use whatever film you feel appropriate….I just like this one!

You could ask them questions such as:

How did God plan their escape from the death of the first-born children?
How did the angel of death know to Passover the homes of the Israelites?
How did they get the blood?
Do you know what it is called when the lamb was killed to protect the children of Israel from death? It begins with the letter ‘S’ (sacrificed).

Just one or two questions each time your kids watch this film is enough… you will, of course, know which questions your kids will be able to respond to.

The Last Passover Supper

From about 7 years of age, you can start to explain that after the first Passover happened, God asked the Jewish people to celebrate Passover, once a year, with the same meal that their ancestors would have eaten. In fact, they celebrate it as if they were there with their ancestors. It’s not like they are just eating this meal as if they were ‘play-acting’ a memory – they are celebrating it, with all their senses, and thus making it present today!

I find this pretty amazing!

I am sure that a 7-year-old, with their great imaginations, will be able to time-travel and see that whenever the meal of the Passover is celebrated, it makes it present to the Jewish people today . How do the Jewish people make the Exodus present at their Passover meal? They make it come alive again to all their senses.

They make it present to their hearing by listening to the story of the Exodus.
They make it present to their sight, smell and taste by seeing and eating the meal that was eaten in a hurry so many years ago (Unleavened bread, wine, roast lamb and bitter herbs)
They make it present to their touch by holding the bread and glass of wine in their hands and by dipping the bitter herbs into salt water to remind them of dipping the hyssop (a small green plant) into the blood of the lamb which was then smeared on the doorposts and the lintels of their front doors.

At around 7 years of age, you can explain that on this Passover Supper night Jesus, a Jew, added some special words that would change the Passover meal forever and make it the first Eucharistic meal ever. Jesus said that the bread WAS His body and that the wine WAS His blood!

So, as the Passover meal celebrates the freedom from slavery, in the same way, the Eucharistic meal at mass celebrates our freedom from sin forever. This, of course, took place on the cross when Jesus was brutally crucified. We, like the Jewish people at Passover, make the meal PRESENT again. Through the action of the Holy Spirit, the priest says the words that make present Jesus’ Body and Blood: “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood”.

You could also explain that the Jewish people still celebrate when the angel passed over and that this allowed them to leave Pharoah and his slavery. They crossed the Red Sea by a miracle and travelled a long distance until they could enter the Promised Land.

Now that Jesus changed the Passover Supper, we can now celebrate an even more important freedom - from the slavery to sin. We can explain that because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, where He shed His Blood on the wood of the cross – now, if we say we are truly sorry, God will pass over all our sins, and instead of going to Hell, which even one sin deserves, Jesus will give us freedom from sin and Hell and give us a safe passage to Heaven. Heaven is even more beautiful than the Promised Land on Earth. In fact, Heaven is the New Promised Land! It is our homeland.

Transubstantiation

We can also explain that when Jesus says the words “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood” that He really meant it. The bread and the wine become his body and blood in a miraculous way that remains invisible to our eyes . This is Transubstantiation . You could then perhaps show them this short video of a little boy talking about preparing to make his First Holy Communion:

If only we could see what is actually happening supernaturally in the mass….watch this and let your souls rise! If you think this will help your child, why not show it to him/her too at the right time? The Holy Spirit will show you when it is right.

I have covered a lot here and you only need to offer what you think your child is ready for. Every child is different. Keep asking God to show you which concepts of the Eucharist your child is ready for. Even if you feel that God is nudging you to mention something that you feel might be a little advanced for your child...go with it. Trust what you feel God is saying to you.

I hope that this has been of some help in raising your children Catholic.

The Real Presence

For those of us who need help in believing the real presence, God has graciously given us Eucharistic miracles to help us believe. If you need some help right now – check out this short video from ‘Pints with Aquinas’.

How to Teach your Child to Pray to His/Her Guardian Angel

Sat, 04 Jan 2025 13:58:35 GMT

Who are the Guardian Angels?

When I was a child, kneeling at my bedside with my mum, saying my bedtime prayers I would always say a prayer to my Guardian Angel with her. So, from my childhood, I knew that I had a guardian angel – and that we all had one. I have prayed this prayer, on and off, throughout my life but I would say that in the last thirty years, I have prayed this prayer every morning as I awaken:

O Angel of God, my guardian dear,

To whom God’s Love commits me here.

Ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide,

Amen.

In fact, I now add this to my prayer- “Ever this day and night be at my side”. That way, I feel that I am covered till the next morning and that I don’t need to repeat it before I go to sleep!

All angels are spirits without bodies but when God permits some people to see an angel they seem to appear with a body! God must want us to be able to accept such visitations and so makes the angels as acceptable to us as possible. I find that very sweet and loving.

We can see evidence of Guardian Angels from Jesus, Himself, in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 18:

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones for I say to you that their angels in Heaven always look upon the Face of My heavenly Father”

So, even while they are looking after us, they are somehow able to adore God the Father at the same time. They are higher beings than ourselves, and as such they can do these sorts of things! As purely spiritual beings they are not bound by space as we are with our bodies.

Their Origins

Did you know that when all the nine choirs of angels were created that they were all created at once? They were given instantaneous knowledge about who God was, who they were, what their nature was, what their assigned task was, what their relationship was to all the other angels, what would happen if they did not accept their task, what would happen if they remained faithful (they would have the beatific vision), they had infused knowledge of the Holy Trinity and knew that God would become man. St. Thomas says that when the angels saw the beauty of God’s plan they were ‘in delight’. Sadly, those angels who did not accept their assigned task from God were immediately damned to hell.

The Guardian Angels are from the lowest choir of angels and we each have one from our birth. While a baby is still in the womb, the mother’s Guardian Angel looks after them both. These beautiful angels pray for us without ceasing and they have all accepted the task to do their best to get us to Heaven!

“Ever this day be at my side, to light…”

You can explain to your child that this phrase means that we are asking the Guardian Angel to help us decide what to do in any given situation. We all have free will and can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to anything. Our Guardian Angel will always be hoping that we choose the best path. He will always be fighting the spiritual battle for his assigned soul - that’s his job. Our Guardian Angel will give us wisdom, by enlightening our minds, so that, hopefully, we will choose the right path and not commit a sin.

“Ever this day be at my side, to light and guard..”

Here, we are asking our beautiful Guardian Angel to guard us from committing a sin and from physical dangers. As our Guardian Angel has been given the task of getting us to Heaven, I wonder if this means that they stay with us even if we have to wait in Purgatory first? I like to think so.

I can remember a time when I felt I was in physical danger on a walking holiday as the shale on the hillside seemed to give way under my feet. I remember feeling scared, shouting for help, and then standing still before slowly moving again. I remember a friend on this walking holiday coming towards me to help. But somehow, I managed to get a footing on my own, and all was well. I can now, in hindsight, say that it must have been my Guardian Angel who helped me.

“Ever this day be at my side….to rule”

I guess this means that our Guardian Angel will tell us what to do. It’s similar to enlightening our minds but maybe it’s the next step from this. Perhaps it’s a more firm way of getting our attention – especially if we are not listening. Have you experienced a time when you were made aware that you were treading on dangerous ground and about to commit a sin? I know I have. Sadly, I didn’t take the prompting that came in the form of a telephone call from a relative and which should have stopped me in my tracks. Instead, when I came off the phone, I still pursued acting on a bad decision - but thank God for giving us the Sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation.

“Ever this day be at my side….to rule and guide”

We can and should ask our Guardian Angel for guidance in God’s Will for our lives. Have you ever felt this type of guidance? When I was studying for my Masters degree in Catholic Pastoral and Educational Studies, I had an idea of what to write about for my thesis – but it somehow didn’t sit right with me. I started wondering if I should write about the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. Then a magazine came through the post either on that day or the next and as I tore the covering open, I could see that the magazine cover with its illustration was all about the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd! It was a strong nudge from God through my Guardian Angel and I decided that I should pursue this!

Physically, there have been several times when I have literally been lost and then suddenly found myself in just the right spot- has this happened to you?

Can we know our Guardian Angel’s name?

Our Guardian angel is superior to us and so it is not fitting for us to find out their name or even to give them a name. We have been allowed to know the names of the Archangels through scripture but that is as far as it goes. So, it is not a good idea to ask… as we might end up inadvertently talking and listening to demons. Catholic priest, Fr. Mike Schmitz has this to say about finding out your Guardian Angel’s name:

To learn more about our Guardian Angels click here for a short video with nuggets from Fr. Daniel Reehil, a Wall Street banker who became a Catholic priest later in life.

Note:

The insights shared in this article are drawn from the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, also known as the Angelic Doctor. His pr ofound theological and philosophical works continue to inspire and guide us in understanding the truths of our faith.

Explaining the Catholic Mass to Toddlers: Engaging Children Under 7

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 15:41:37 GMT

Reviving Joy: Engaging Children in Meaningful Church Mass Experiences

My beloved parents didn’t really explain a whole lot about the mass to us, their three children. And that, my friends, is because their parents, more than likely, didn’t explain the mass to them either. Still, I knew that mass was important, and I did my best to concentrate and follow the words. When I was growing up in England in the 1960’s the culture during Catholic mass was about keeping children quiet, even removing them from the church if they became noisy. Somehow, children weren’t running around like they do today, and more parents told their kids what to do and how to behave.

Today it’s a different ball game. Through my observation and whilst supporting the Family Mass at my parish in England, I can see that the parent-child relationship has changed since I was a child. Today’s parents tend to allow their children to have full rein of the church space and will either follow them around or leave them to their own devices. Boundaries are not set, and so children are not stopped from walking onto the church altar until they are just about to heave themselves onto the first step. And yet, in this same culture there is still a huge possibility for toddlers and under 5’s to engage during mass.

Let’s look at the mass, section by section, and see where we can support our children to engage with our living God. Every child will of course respond differently, and you know what will work best with your child. These are my offerings…

The Gathering

This is where God summons us to be in His company at Mass. The congregation are assembling for what is the highlight of our spiritual life – to commune with Christ.

As you get your child dressed for mass, or in the car, or on the bus- you can say something like:

“Our friends are coming from all over town to gather in church. This is so that we can all be together and praise our God.” Make it sound inviting. The tone of our voice is so important.

“Joshua is coming on the bus with his mummy and daddy to meet us at church. We are all going to have fun with Jesus!”

Part of the gathering ritual is blessing ourselves with Holy Water and genuflecting. What wonderful opportunities to teach our children through a physical movement! Now that we are physically gathered, the next gathering is a spiritual one: we all ask for forgiveness for our sins in the Penitential Rite and then take part in full blown worship through the Gloria. Sadly, at most masses this often sounds like a monotonous dirge!

Where is the joy that God wants us to experience in worshipping Him?

If this is what you experience, it might be a good idea to speak to your parish priest about singing the Gloria in a child friendly manner.

This girl has got it! The following video went viral when it was uploaded!

Story Telling

During mass we have three readings and a Psalm. These come from the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Gospels and from the Book of Psalms. All the stories are linked together. Children love stories. If you look at the mass readings the day before mass, you can see the connections and then mention these to your child. You might say something like:

First Reading: You could say this just before the Genesis account of the creation of Adam and Eve. “This is your rib, Adam (touch his rib!) Listen for the word rib in the story”.

Second reading: You could say this just before the reading from Hebrews 2: “Adam, you know that James and Micheal are brothers in the same family: well listen for the word brothers in this story”.

Psalm 128: You could say this before the Psalm. “Adam, you know that God has given us our family? In our family, there is daddy and mummy and you. I am daddy’s wife, and you are our child. Listen for the words wife and children”.

Gospel, Mark 10: You could say something like: “We stand now because God has something very important to tell us about Jesus. Listen for the word children”

So, the connections throughout these readings are about the beauty, stability and togetherness of the family. The Gospel also talks about the importance of each of us being like a child. This validates children and it would be good to make a point about this to your child.

Children live in the present and so you need to be whispering these sweet things into your child’s ear at the time of happening, so that it will make an impact.

Here is the mass story so far and beyond!

The Homily, the Creed and the Intercessions brings us to the end of our Storytelling. Now that we have listened to God’s Word we can now move into the Liturgy of the Eucharist or The Meal Sharing.

The Meal Sharing

The Offertory: The gifts are presented and prepared.

Whisper something like:

“Look! That family are taking up the bread and the wine to the priest. He will ask God to change them into Jesus’ Body and Blood”.

“The bells are ringing to tell us that a Jesus is about to perform a miracle”

The Consecration could sound like this to your child:

“Look! Jesus’ heart is appearing in the host- but He is invisible!”

“Look! The wine has just turned into Jesus’ blood- and He is still invisible!”

The Communion Rite

The praying of the Our Father prepares us to receive ‘our daily bread’.

Receiving Jesus is the ‘bees’ knees’ of the whole mass. Your toddler might feel left out. As you hold him/her, your child can still enjoy the blessing from the priest or extra-ordinary minister. Back in your pew you can hold your toddler and let him/her see you close your eyes for a short time as you pray.

Commissioning

The priest says: “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life”.

“Now we can glorify God by telling our friends all about Jesus. Jesus wants everyone to know that He loves them all!”

Please listen to these two parents talking about bringing their children to mass and the struggles they have:

If you would like, you can buy your interactive mass book here:

A Book for the Season

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 21:17:00 GMT

Review: First Impressions

This delightful book grabbed me with its bright bazaar colours and gently rounded pots! And that was just the cover!

For children, I think the illustrations by Sr. Blandine Elisabeth will definitely draw them into the time, sight and smells of the land ‘East of Eden’. The text too, written by Madeleine Carroll, is beautiful and poetic. Children will definitely be transported to another place and time and will visit the Christ child afresh – through new eyes.

It is through the eyes of the wisemen that we hear this story. We learn of the land from which they hail. We see the work they were doing…and how God speaks to them through the fireball of a star that appears in the Heavenlies. They were ancient wisemen of their time who marvelled at the amazing and changing twinkling lights in the sky and tried to read them like a science.

So, we journey together with these three friends as they make their way, first to King Herod, and then to Jesus, the King of Kings. And after paying homage to Jesus, they returned home to tell everyone what they had experienced. They evangelised!

And just when you think you have come to the end, you turn over the page to find the scripture of the Epiphany from the Gospel of Matthew!

Really, this is the story of every man, woman and child. It’s an invitation to

listen to God; to follow His lead; to adore Him and to tell the whole world about Him!! Get your copy here!

Conversations with the author, Madeleine Carroll

As this colourful story is seen through the eyes of the wise men…do you think that children might see themselves as wise people too? Wanting to listen to God and to embark on an adventure?

Madeleine: "That’s my aim! I wanted to make this Christmas story as relatable as possible to ordinary Gentiles like us. None of us are Jews or more than likely have even been to Israel and so in lots of respects we are Gentiles – just like the wisemen were! Our children are like Gentile children searching and trying to get to know Jesus.

We are all trying to have a relationship with Him and this involves some searching; some getting in front of the baby King in prayer/adoration/worship; some listening and some responding.

The wisemen were expecting to find a seriously majestic King – the Messiah that had been foretold in their ancient writings! For a King of the Jews had been prophesied to come from the West to free them from their corrupt rulers. And yet, what were their thoughts when they meet this humble baby Jesus born into poverty, with the smelly animals?"

Madeleine wonders how children might respond when they search for Jesus and find Him in an unusual guise?

The other thing that Madeleine hopes is that children might see the significance of the three gifts that the wisemen bring to Jesus. Madeleine discusses these ideas in her ‘Note to Parents’ section.

She hopes that they will link the frank-incense used during our Sunday masses as something precious that is used for Someone who is worthy of praise. That the expensive gold will be seen as a gift fitting for a King and that the perfumed myrrh will be seen as an expensive anointing oil fit for the burial of a King.

Want to Make an Epiphany play from Madeleine’s story?

This adventure story could so easily be turned into a play! Perhaps your children would like to dress up as wise man and act out the story whilst you narrate?

Turbans

These will definitely be needed! There are two ways of doing this. Both versions are simple enough to make.

The first uses a long piece of material and some string and a crown. Like one of the wise men from the story. Please click here for instructions.
The second uses a long piece of material on its own: similar to the other 2 wise men in the story.

Please click here for instructions.

Robes

This can be made from 1 tunic and then 1 very long scarf draping over the shoulders as in the previously seen video. Just top with a crown/ another turban if you want!

Pots

Every wise man will need a pot to carry his gold, frankincense or myrrh!

You will need water soluble glue, a paintbrush, 3 balloons, some newspaper, kitchen paper and fake jewels.

Please click here for instructions.

And if you would like to listen to more about the wise men and why both Jews and Gentiles were waiting for the Messiah in the first century, then click here and listen to an 8-minute video by Dr. Pitre.

Explaining Death to Children: A Catholic Perspective on Loss and Heaven

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 18:51:47 GMT

My lovely brother Chris died

This is a photo of my darling brother Chris (RIP), pictured here with my mum. It was taken when Chris was about 17 years of age. This is the same Chris upon whom I have modelled the main character of my debut picture book. At the time of writing, October 2023, I am starting to put my second picture book together. It’s called ‘Lost Until the Light Comes’. My brother Chris’ character will also be found in it’s pages and in all the pages of the entire series that I am planning.

My brother died suddenly, fighting against an illness we didn’t know he had. He had contracted broncho-pnuemonia which resulted in sepsis (blood poisoning caused by the infection which escaped from his lungs and into the bloodstream). As his body lay in hospital in the early hours of one January morning his wife, Shani, had to deal with her own disbelief at what had just happened and her own grief. Their children were still in bed at home, being looked after by one of Shani’s sisters.

She had the unimaginable task of having to tell their three children that their father had died. Where would she find the words? How could she tell them in a way that they could understand? Here is Chris holding their first born child. He was a very hands-on dad.

What Shani said to her children.

Shani is not Christian or Catholic but what she said to her 3 children amazed me. It still amazes me: The thing that’s deep inside daddy, the thing that makes him daddy-his essence- has left his body and has gone to Heaven.

Their children were all baptised as Catholics by this point and so they had some understanding of Heaven and that it is a beautiful place to go to: A place where we are all headed. My brother was a nominal Catholic, who wanted to protect his children from the bad things of this world. To this end, he decided to send their children to Catholic schools and was happy for them to receive the sacraments.

Their 3 children, aged between 3 and 7, didn’t see their father’s body as Shani felt that it would be too painful for them. In hindsight, I also feel that this was the right decision. At the time, however, I was more of the ilk that seeing their dad’s body would give them a sense of goodbye and closure and hadn’t factored in the emotional ‘smack in the face’ that this would have had on their young hearts.

Catholic parents explaining death to their kids

As a Catholic parent, you would probably use words like ‘soul’ rather than ‘essence’ and maybe even mention that a person’s soul will be reunited to their glorified body on the last day. Would you mention ‘Purgatory’? That’s a tricky one isn’t it. We all want to say that our beloved, departed one is somewhere blissfully happy to help ease our children’s pain… but the truth is…we just don’t know. It might be truer to say that your beloved, departed soul is on their way to Heaven and that we can help them leave Purgatory and enter Heaven by praying for their soul. What do you think? Purgatory, after all is a ‘place’ where we are cleansed to a greater purity and made fit for the JOY of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Death

In my opinion, death should be a thing talked about freely, so that when the time comes to lose grandma or grandad, kids will be able to accept this as a natural part of life. You could talk about praying for your own grandma so that she can join the Heavenly party. You can show your kids pictures of when she was alive-and even in death. Kids will always ask the questions they need answering won’t they…

Books to read to kids about death

‘Waterbugs and Dragonflies’

Strangely, I got to know about this book through my mother as she lay dying in hospital. It is called ‘Waterbugs and Dragonflies: Explaining Death to Young Children’ by Christian author, Doris Stickney . This is a read-aloud picture book for 3-7 year olds

My mum had breast cancer which had spread to various parts of her body, and while she lay in hospital, we were told that she had 3 months to live. In fact, it turned out that we only had weeks. Mum was moved back to her home so she could spend her last days in her usual setting surrounded by her loving family. But it was while she was in hospital that she first saw the story of the water bugs on the hospital TV. Even though she wasn’t really aware that she was dying….she would love watching this read-aloud on the TV. She would sigh deeply with satisfaction just at the mention of it. It touched her heart to the core – and I know now that God was preparing her for her own death.

You can hear the story and see the illustrations by clicking here . To buy the version in the video you need to go to Amazon in the USA. The UK version, above, is the one I have and is much smaller plus the illustrations are not as bold and colourful- though still good.

If your child has been bereaved, then using ‘play’ to follow on from the reading of this book might be helpful. The conversations that come out of this play might help you support your child better. To see how this can be done, please click here.

You can buy this book easily through Amazon in the UK and also in the USA .

‘Joseph’s Donkey’

Another good book to read to kids aged 3-7 years old is ‘Joseph’s Donkey’ written by Catholic author Anthony DeStefano . In this read aloud picture book we get to see Joseph’s donkey’s life. We see how Joseph and his donkey had a lovely relationship and how Joseph cared for his donkey right up to the donkey’s dying day.

And if you would like to buy a copy, then click here .

Death is not an easy subject to talk about with children. To support you with some strategies when talking to children about death and eternal life I can recommend 2 articles:

1. Discussing Death with Catholic Kids by Katie Fitzgerald .

2. Catholic Activity: Teaching about Death by Mary Reed Newland .

Teaching the Rosary to Young Children: A Gentle, Faith-Filled Approach

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 20:00:08 GMT

Teaching the rosary to a child

Especially to a young child under 7 years of age, has a lot to do with timing and knowing your child. The same can be said for teaching your child anything!

Teaching is possibly the wrong word to use, because as with all things of Faith: Faith is caught and not taught . And as with all things, parents must model this first ….even if their child can’t engage in it at first and walks away! Eventually they will get there!

Our primary goal should always be to help our child fall in love with Jesus – and everything should be tailored to that. Don’t panic if they aren’t reciting the rosary by the age of 5! God knows where their little hearts are and what they can take on board. Small bites and making it as interactive as possible is, in my humble opinion, the way to go..

The rosary is a powerful spiritual weapon: any prayers left in the hands of Our Lady are the most precious gift to Jesus. Our Mother is certainly our greatest intercessor and best ally!

For very young children (3 years) prayer from the heart may work better for them until they are a little bit older. Prayer from the heart is something that we should all be doing: it is the bread and butter of any relationship. It is about sharing what is deep in our heart with our Creator. It is the language of love.

Once they understand why they are praying to God, and they know that faith is about having a relationship with Jesus, then bringing in the rosary might make better sense. Perhaps saying something like:

“Max, you know how we talk to Jesus at prayer time….well there is another way to talk to Jesus. We can talk to Jesus through His mum: Mother Mary. He especially loves to hear our prayers brought to Him through His mum. It’s just like handing on a message. Like when I give your message to dad/ mum..”

Here is a great short video from Ascension Presents with really practical ideas about praying the rosary with young children.

Pictures whilst praying the rosary..

So, for young children doing something with their hands will really help them to focus on praying.

It might be a nice idea to have pictures of each mystery of the rosary for your child/ children to hold. For example, your child who can manage to say 1 Hail Mary could hold the image of the first joyful mystery while facing the family and say:

“The Annunciation. This is when the angel of the Lord visits Mary. Suddenly a big light came into the room and Mary could see that it was a huge angel with light all around him… Haily Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you..” When the child has finished the Hail Mary, he or she can sit down while the adults/ or other children pray the next 9 Hail Mary’s.

This could then be followed by the remaining 4 Mysteries of the Rosary – should your child be up to it! Maybe one decade might be all they can manage… Like all things in life, we need to be able to walk first before we can run!

Perhaps your child could draw or paint their own pictures of the mysteries? These could then be laminated (child-proofed!) and they would then, perhaps be more invested in praying.

10 Roses make one decade…

During the recitation of one decade of the rosary, perhaps your young child could place one artificial rose on a long string of wool at the start of saying a Hail Mary..

These could then be gathered up at the end in readiness for the next decade. Or you could even use different coloured roses for each decade? Another idea would be to help your kids make the roses using paper? It’s more simple than you think! Check out this video here ..

Explaining the story of the Rosary…

Children love stories! How would it be if every Mystery became part of Jesus’ story?

The Joyful Mysteries: The story about how Jesus came to be born and his childhood.
The Sorrowful Mysteries: The story of how Jesus died.
The Glorious Mysteries: The stories of what happened after Jesus died..
The Luminous Mysteries: The stories of what Jesus did while He was on the earth.

This beautiful video shows us a great way to make each Mystery into a story. Watch this great idea in action here ..

And may God bless all your efforts as you help your child fall in love with the Lord!

Statue of Our Lady of Fatima alongside a famous photo of the 3 children of Fatima, to whom Our Lady appeared.

So fantastic that we can have this glimpse of them, back in time.. I did hear that the children are looking miserable because they were fed up of photographers taking photos of them. I would be the same!

Teaching Adoration to Children: Why Worship the Eucharist?

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 16:26:02 GMT

Why adore God in the Eucharist?

Isn’t it something from another time?

We are made to worship our God and King!

And if we don’t praise and worship God, we will end up worshipping worldly things and making THEM idols!

As the saying goes, “If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything!” How true!

The Eucharist is called the Bread of Angels by the Catholic Church because when the angles take one look at Jesus at Adoration or at mass, they swoon with love for Jesus. They are filled with ecstatic love for Jesus….spiritual eating! These aren’t my thoughts – but from a Youtube video by Fr. James Blount of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Trinity. View below, for the section I am talking about – you will find it from 15:00 – 20:00 minutes into the video. If you have hour to watch the whole video, it’s well worth it!

I had the pleasure of attending Fr. James Blount’s retreat in London, England over the weekend 9-11th June 2023. He is a dynamic priest and full of love for Jesus and Mary. I was so blessed!

What does the bible say about Adoration?

From ‘Children of Hope Adoration for Children’ website PowerPoint.

We must take our children to the Living Presence of Jesus in Adoration!

Don’t hold back!

Adoration is the same for children as it is for adults. Unless children/ adults spend

time with Jesus in this way, we will be restricted in our falling in love with Jesus and in experiencing His love for us. It’s a ‘no-brainer’ – as we say in England- we have to be with Him!

Listen to this 5-minute video about Adoration for children by Fr. Antoine Thomas!

At what age should a child start Adoration?

There is no set age! Children who are 3 years of age can only manage 3 minutes of sitting still. So only let them spend this amount of time with Jesus. As they get older, they will be able to spend longer chunks of time visiting the Lord.

taking kids to Adoration who are as young as 3 months! Remember even if they are sleeping Jesus is alive and pouring His love into their little hearts.

Walking into the chapel where Jesus is exposed: It’s like coming into His Home to have tea with Him. We greet and adore Him with a genuflection or by prostrating ourselves before Him…

When a child first starts going to Adoration (whatever their age), it is important to say: “Jesus is here in the Eucharist; He is alive; We are visiting Jesus; He wants to speak to you, to love you, to heal you and to make you happy”….or similar! When we adore Christ, we are not alone. We join in with the angels who are already adoring God continuously! There will be angels around every Eucharist.

Go once a week at least. Once they get to know Jesus here, they will understand and love the mass so much more.

What can a young child do next?

After genuflecting/prostrating themselves before God, there is no right or wrong way to continue… They can be silent or chat to God or can sing words of adoration to Jesus. A mixture might work best…

For younger children maybe it’s enough to ask them to tell Jesus that they love Him and then to listen to what Jesus says to them. Then maybe finish with a simple worship song (if there is no one else present!).

Afterwards, ask them if they could hear or feel anything from Jesus during their adoration. Maybe their skin felt tingly or they might have felt Jesus touch them – I have experienced my skin become tingly many times when I pray to/praise God. This is quite normal – though I understand it might sound odd to you if you have never experienced anything like this before. Jesus wants us to know that He is here, real and present! Our God is very real, so we should be expectant that He wants to communicate with us in some way. It was only once I attended a prayer group where people had expectant faith that I started to feel anything!

I find that the longer I stay in front of the Blessed Sacrament the more I feel His Presence. I might feel this as a deep peace or a joy. Sometimes I don’t feel much at all. It’s all a gift from God and has nothing to do with me. He knows what we all need, moment to moment.

Remember that children are often more open to God than we adults, so please don’t think they are lying if they say they heard Jesus speak inside (in their heart) or even audibly! The latter is more rare, but it does happen. It has happened to me once when I was 27 years of age and I was alone in a church. It is a tad difficult to describe this experience but I talk about it here .

What can older children do?

I think that saying a few set prayers to start off is a good idea. What do you think? I highly recommend this prayer which was given to Elizabeth Kindlemann by Jesus. She was a laywoman from Budapest in Hungary (1913-1985), and was the mother of 6 children. She was widowed at the age of 33 years and received locutions (words) from Jesus and Mary from 1961-1982 and was told by Jesus to write them down. Jesus also told her – “This prayer is an instrument to blind Satan and in so doing souls will not be influenced to sin.” Powerful stuff! This prayer has the Catholic church imprimatur and Nihil Obstat.

I just love the lines: “May our ears listen to the silence together. May our glances profoundly penetrate each other”.

After praying a set prayer/prayers, they can just chat to God from their heart. Remind them to thank Him for things; to tell Him what’s bothering them; to forgive those they need to forgive; to ask for forgiveness; to read the bible or a holy book and to simply LISTEN for the voice of God through it all.

If they are in a group being led by an adult there may be a beautiful time of singing worship songs to the Lord…and, of course, if they are with family, everyone could sing a song together. It doesn’t need to be fancy. It’s all worship!

Chatting to Jesus

When we start to get to know someone, we often talk a lot. As we get to know someone – we say less- we just want to be in their company. It’s like this being with Jesus….it’s OK to say less and just to be- gazing at one another. We become like those who we keep company with- so by keeping company with Jesus we become just like Him!

What is God doing all this time?

He is gazing at us, loving us, healing us, speaking to us and more. Being with Jesus changes us. It’s nothing we have control over. We are His creatures whom He loves and wants to communicate with. What a loving God we have! Despite our sins, He still longs to draw us into His arms and speak words of love to us!

Adoration is like sunbathing. We are SON BATHING: being healed, being loved and being spoken to.

Writing My Second Children's Book: 'Lost Until the Light Comes

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 20:22:10 GMT

Chris's New Adventure: Faith Shines in ‘Lost until the Light Comes’

As I write, I am working on my second storybook , 'Lost Until the Light Comes' . With my first book, ‘A Prayer from the Heart’ it was a story about how God fulfilled the desire of 6-year-old Chris’ heart. He found the friendship that he longed for. In this second book Chris has an adventure with his new found friends. Without giving too much away, Chris’ faith grows even more when he finds himself in a tricky situation. The title of the story is ‘Lost until the Light Comes’. The pictures in this blog are from my first book, as I want the second book to be a complete surprise!

Like my previous story, it is based on truth-truth from our family history. Unlike my previous story, I have approached the making of this book from a different angle. With ‘A Prayer from the Heart’, I basically wrote the story, broke up the text into pages and then used this to decide on the matching illustrations. I didn’t touch the text after I had written it.

However, with my current story, I wrote the story first and then broke it up into text for each page, as you see here in this short video (from 4:23 mins in).

Then, after dividing up the text, I started drawing small thumbnails with what I envisaged all the illustrations could look like. I got this idea from the following video (about 6:12 mins in)

There was so much in this video that helped me!

However, as I drew the illustrations and then tried to match them to the text, it made me rethink some of the text and I changed the latter to become even better page turners! It was a real eye opener! Not only had my attitude to the layout of the book as a whole changed, but I even saw an opportunity to have a page without any words- where the illustration would speak for itself. I found this whole process of drawing all the illustrations as mini pictures eye-opening and exciting. I feel that it helped me grow as an author of picture books.

This second story has plenty of tension- as is needed in every story… and as in my first book, it has a happy ending. I chose this particular event from my brother’s life as it’s something that frequently happens to children and I felt that lots of children would be able to relate to it.

The clue to the story is in the title…. ’Lost until the Light Comes’ ! It’s one of life’s most scary moments for parents, as well as for the children themselves. If you have been there, you will know what I mean. I was about 10 yrs old when we lost Chris. At that age, I remember saying a prayer that we would find him…but not being an adult, I didn’t feel the weight of responsibility. When we lost my niece, I was an adult and the stress and the fear was just awful. I tried my best to stay calm and to pray…it was so hard. In this second story our 6-year-old Chris also has to rely on God like he has never done before.

As with my first story, there is a little something extra at the end – This ‘something extra’ will, I hope, delight the children and help them want to draw closer to Jesus.

What is the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS)?

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 17:16:32 GMT

What is the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd or CGS?

Take a 4-minute peek at children involved in The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.

It is a catechesis which offers a cycle of presentations to children, aged between 3 and 12 years of age. It is a time of preparation where children can learn and then receive Jesus’ love before they can fully understand the mass, the sacraments, the scriptures and what it means to be a Catholic Christian. It takes place in a sacred space called the atrium. Ideally, the atrium should be a dedicated space used just for children taking part in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS). From my own research, during my MA thesis on the CGS (2011, Maryvale Institute), I found that a space that is brought out and then packed away just doesn’t have the same feeling of dedication and being ‘set apart’ for our children- or of the permanence of God. I think it works in a similar way to our churches: these are anointed/set apart and used for worship and faith matters alone. Roman Catholic churches would not bring in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and listen to secular music in order to raise money on behalf of a charity- no matter how good the music was!

A session will start with a small group of children who are gathered around a rug, with a Bible and a candle or they may be seated at a prayer table with its own Bible and candle. There may even be a procession to bring special objects to their rightful place on the prayer table. A candle is lit to show that God is present in His Word and then the appropriate passage of scripture is read aloud, straight from the Bible. The catechist will then start a conversation with the children, explaining any new concepts.

A new sensorial material will then be presented to the children. The presentation ends with a prayer or song. Once the material has been presented, the child can work with that material whenever they want. Follow up activities (tracing packets, drawings, etc.) are encouraged.

So, for the rest of the session the children engage in which ever material the Holy Spirit draws them to, whilst the catechist prays. Children are supported by the catechist to, for example, light a candle or in any way that they need help. The idea is for the child to work on their own and to be touched by God. The catechist’s role is to remain in the background, prayerfully, whilst being observant and stepping in to support gently.

At the end of the session, there will be a gathering of the children, with some discussion of what touched them and perhaps finishing with a song or a prayer. Sessions can last anywhere from 1 to 2 hours.

The Growing Relationship between the Child and Jesus

“ I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father”

John 10:14-15

This scripture verse invites us into a relationship with Jesus, our Good Shepherd. He already knows us from before we were conceived and He wants us to know Him. This is what the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd offers all children.

A relationship with Jesus.

During the various levels of the CGS that are offered for the different levels of development of the child, the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS), has a way of reaching the child’s heart mind, soul and spirit. These are some points that show how this is achieved:

Catechists are praying for the children, whilst the catechesis is in session.
The sacred space of the atrium, where the children work, should be blessed and holy.
The CGS respects the dignity of the child – allowing the child to ruminate on the things of God at his/ her own pace and at the child’s level. As many resources as possible are made by hand for the child. This shows the child how much they are loved and how strongly they are invited into the beauty of their Creator God.
By surrounding him/her with the good, the true and the beautiful : the transcendentals.
The good and the true -learning about God through scripture, the mass and the Catholic faith via the resources.
The beautiful – all resources have been handmade for the child by the catechists to reflect God’s beauty. This is seen from the beautiful dioramas to the scripture booklets and the models used in the parable activities. The ordered, peaceful and beautiful atrium is brimming with activities which attract the child.

Below are examples of presentation materials used in the CGS:

To find out more about training up for the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd or where there are Atria in the UK or in the USA, please follow the links:

UK: https://www.cgsuk.org/

USA: https://www.cgsusa.org/

A deeper view of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (4 minutes).

How Often Should We Hug Our Kids? The Power of Hugs

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 17:43:49 GMT

Babe in the Womb

One of the things that struck me as a midwife was how the womb hugs a baby and how this seems to have an impact on our later emotional life.

It’s just some insight that I had whilst working in this career. Having lived alone for so many years (24 yrs) and being part of a ‘kissy’, but not really a ‘huggy’ family, I have felt the effect of the lack of hugs. I seemed to manage emotionally while I lived at home but once I started to live on my own- devoid of human contact…the lack of being held and hugged became acute. When I opened up and shared this during a time of ministry at a prayer meeting, I was shocked at the response: a smirk! The lady who was ministering to me just didn’t get the pain of not being hugged/ touched regularly.

My own experience

My parents were awesome (RIP), and I definitely felt deeply loved…but they could only give me what their parents gave them. I didn’t feel nurtured enough or important enough in their eyes….or just plain …enough! I wanted to have parents who were interested in the colours I liked or who would just hold my face in their hands and tell me things that they loved about me. Instead, they stressed the importance of studying and anything else about life took second place. I kissed my parents ‘good morning’/’goodnight’ and even throughout the day…but it was usually initiated by myself. Don’t get me wrong- I love my parents! And as I said- I knew I was loved…But somehow, I still wasn’t getting enough…

The close friends I made in my 20’s also didn’t hug that much….only on saying hello or goodbye. Maybe I was attracted to people who were just like me!? Or maybe it’s just a British thing?! I was hoping that a romantic relationship would sort all this out…but that didn’t happen in any meaningful way, and so I just remained ‘unhugged’.

My theory

But back to my theory! I feel that God created us to be held in tightness in the womb for a reason. This is our start in life, and the sense of being covered by our mother’s love, safety and loving warmth is partly delivered through this huge tight hug from our mother’s womb. This ‘tightness’ is something that we all need to have replicated in order to continue to feel loved throughout our lives. Hugging brings with it a sense of belonging, comfort, being cared for and that you really matter! So, I guess what I am saying is that we are always looking for that sensation of being held throughout our lives so that we can feel good, happy and that we belong. This need to be held, in my thinking anyway, is God’s design.

Hug for good and long!

20 second hugs release the ‘feel good’ hormone oxytocin. It has been nick-named ‘the love hormone’ for obvious reasons. It creates a sense of closeness and belonging with the other person…of feeling loved! Vital if we are to survive on this planet. It also increases our immunity, decreases stress and improves our mental health. It gives us all sorts of cues that show us how to interact with one another socially. Single people as well as those in families need it. We all need it without exception.

I think I read somewhere, that to thrive, we all need at least 8 hugs a day! Are you receiving and giving 8 X 20 second hugs a day?

For those of us who can’t get regular hugs there are other ways that we can receive our daily dose of essential, life-giving oxytocin – though nothing will ever replace a 1:1 interaction with a human being! Please check out the video link below for how to achieve this. It’s really helping me!

This is how God made us: “It’s not good for man to be alone” Genesis 2:18. Screen time on Skype/ Zoom just doesn’t cut it!

I came across this lady who gave a TedX talk on the importance and sheer necessity of living in a hugging culture. Take a look below and see what she has to say! What do you think? Happy Hugging!

Nurturing a Child's Relationship with God: "A Prayer from the Heart"

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 18:17:31 GMT

A Personal Relationship with God

Dear reader, in this first blog, and through the next five, I hope to show you that my storybook could be used as a valuable tool for the New Evangelisation of young children and that you might promote it.

In ‘A Prayer from the Heart’ one of the main threads of the story is the main character’s relationship with God. Chris is a 6-year-old Catholic boy who has the beginnings of a personal relationship with his Creator. Chris speaks to God during his bedtime prayers. He believes that God is listening, even though the answer to his prayers have not materialised.

The Beginnings

In my story, all Chris wants is a friend, along his road, to play with. This is why he is praying. This is his heart’s desire and this is what matters to him. So, at this point in his spiritual life, Chris is happy to pray out loud and from his heart. He has not as yet learnt to listen to what God might have to say on the matter- either in the stillness of his heart or through any form of prophecy. At this stage in his spiritual life, a subtle whisper from God probably won’t cut it! He just wants this ‘prayed for friend’ to be physically in front of him, so that they can play!

My hope for this book

My hope for this book is that children will see that having a relationship with God is a good thing. I also hope that they will also see how easy and natural it is. Initially, it’s just chatting to God from the heart about whatever is on their mind. My hope is that they will see that God hears every prayer and that He will answer them in His own timing. Of course, in this story, Chris’ and God’s Will are one! I like a happy ending and so I couldn’t write it any other way!

Encourage prayer very early on

It is so important to encourage children to have an ‘alive and kicking’ relationship with God. And my belief is that this needs to start at an early age. Those early years when children believe everything that is spoken to them are the years to develop a relationship with God. As an ex-nursery teacher, I found this ‘sponge-like’ quality of children so beautiful, so trusting. Leaving ‘prayer from the heart’ till First Holy Communion preparation is too late in my view. Also, as a previous midwife, I believe that we can take this one step further by talking to and praying over our unborn children. In this way, the unborn will be surrounded by and filled with the Holy Spirit. What a beautiful gift we can give our children! Out of the womb, a relationship with the Holy 3 in 1 will then come so naturally to them!

Faith is about a relationship

Faith is about a relationship and I hope that my storybook will make this obvious to every child who reads it.

When I wrote my book I had a strong desire that every Catholic primary school child should have this book read to them or to read it themselves when they become competent readers! Yes, there are already picture books which deal with a relationship with God, but I have yet to come across one where God is depicted as the Holy Trinity on every page! This is a unique aspect to my story. It wasn’t something that I planned. God just knew what I would write and then He nudged me about how God should be expressed visually!

My inspiration to write…

I was inspired, by God, to write this story in 2015. I wrote from the depths of my heart: about my family and about God Himself. I expressed God as the Holy Trinity because of the great impression that was made upon me during my MA in Catholic Pastoral and Educational Studies (Maryvale Institute, 2011). It was while doing this course that I realised, for the first time, and at the age of 49 years, that our faith hangs on the Holy Trinity. This floored me and I never forgot it.

How God Answers Prayers: "A Prayer from the Heart"

Tue, 11 Apr 2023 19:44:02 GMT

The story so far

In my storybook, 'A Prayer from the Heart’ Chris has been praying for a friend along his road. During the night someone moves into the house next door. Chris has no idea who has moved in, though he thinks that he can hear a child giggle. Back at school the next day, it is the last day of the summer term and he meets a new girl from India. He is drawn to her but finds it difficult to strike up a conversation with her. When he finally has a breakthrough, they start to chat and laugh. But just as they are getting to know one another, Shani is picked up by her mother and has to go home. The next day, Chris meets the new neighbours and is surprised that it is Shani’s family! Things haven’t been plain sailing for Chris. It took effort on his part to step outside his shy comfort zone to talk to Shani. Isn’t this how we often experience God’s answers to prayer? We have to co-operate with grace and circumstances and then God does the rest.

The Story behind the Story

I think that my story will give children a realistic example of how God might answer prayer. My brother, Chris, whom the main character is based on, met his wife in England. She came from halfway across the world, from Africa, while our family came from Sri Lanka. It’s a beautiful real-life story that has found its way into my book. I hope that children will see that God’s ways are beautiful too. I also hope that they will see that sometimes God’s answers can take time. This goes against our ‘instant gratification’ society and it will hopefully help them stay in ‘God’s lane’ rather than taking the ‘fast lane’.

How God answered my prayers..

When I realised that it was God’s Will for me to start on this mission and to get my story published, I thought, naively, that it wouldn’t take too long! ‘Surely, God will make it to happen soon-children need to hear this!’ How wrong I was.

I swung from one rejection to the other. None of the traditional Catholic publishers were interested in my story. I even hung out for 2 years with a Catholic publisher who said ‘my request was still in process’! I believed them. It took another author to finally make me realise that they were stringing me along.

After that I was taken under the wing of a boutique Catholic publishers and I thought I was home and dry- but no! That dream ended as the organisation went through a crisis. I was at a loss to know where God wanted me to go next!? In prayer I sensed that God wanted me to be ‘equally yoked’ with my co-workers. So, I assumed that God wanted me to work with Catholic’s alone. However, it turned out that the team that I am currently working with are Christian as opposed to Catholic Christians. Still equally yoked. Just when I thought I understood what God was saying! So, finally, after an 8-year period of ups and downs this little book-baby is going to be born in April 2023!

Encouraging Miracles in Faith: "A Prayer from the Heart"

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 19:33:26 GMT

All things are possible with God!

The same today as He was yesterday and will be forever: Heb 13:8

Jesus’ own words from the Bible say this: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26. This is some statement! Is it true? Of course! But how can we encourage children to expect, and to believe, that God can still do miracles today?

How can we encourage children to expect miracles?

In my book ‘A Prayer from the Heart’ God is moving people across the world to answer Chris’ prayers! Shani, comes all the way from India to fulfil the desire of Chris’ heart! God has moved her entire family half way across the world for this! This is all part of God’s plan.

And Chris’ family has come all the way from Sri Lanka to be part of God’s plan for Shani! God is willing, and wants to do whatever it takes to bring these two children into each other’s lives! The storyline has another instance of God doing the miraculous.

For instance, what are the odds that this new girl at school, whom Chris likes so much, is part of the family who have just moved in next door? Perhaps you see this as nice, lovely …but not quite miraculous? In my heart, I feel that this is pretty much a miracle. The way that God brings people together in friendship beats statistics. We can, for instance, be working at the same company as someone and only get to speak to them years later. My parents, for example, worked in the same hospital for 2 years before they actually spoke to each other. All in God’s timing!

The impossible in my life?

If you had asked me when I was 25 years old if I would ever become a ‘happy-clappy’ Charismatic – I would have given a resounding N-O-O!! And if you asked that same 25-year-old if she wanted to publish a children’s picture book – you would have got the same answer. At that time, there was no desire AT ALL to do either of those things. God had to do the impossible, the miraculous: to change my heart.

In early 1987, the 27-year-old me rushed out of a prayer meeting at the first hint of the ‘Charismatic’. In the October of that same year, I attended another Catholic prayer meeting- not realising that it was Charismatic! But this time I was open to the movement of the Holy Spirit. I wanted to stay! Believe me-that took a miracle on God’s part!

Similarly, once I realised that the story God had nudged me to write needed to be ‘out there’, to help Catholic children fall in love with God- I didn’t miss a heartbeat. Now, I am doing all in my power to make this happen. And the Holy Spirit continues to guide me every step of the way..

Passing it on..

How can we encourage an expectant faith in children for the miraculous? I think by modelling it ourselves and making sure that we take every opportunity to show them when God does the miraculous. The Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano which took place in 700 AD, Italy is a good one to talk about and to show images of. Truly, our God is a God of the impossible!

God's Generosity in Action: "A Prayer from the Heart"

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 19:04:01 GMT

The Generosity of God

Chris is praying for one friend along his road. He thinks that this is all he needs. Surely, one friend is enough? Our finite minds have a limit to our imagination.

But God knows what we need and He has decided that Chris needs 4 friends and they need to live next door! God is s-o-o-o generous and shows Himself to be so in my story.

God shows His generosity in so many places in the bible: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor 2:9). This is often spoken about in respect to Heaven…but I think it means here on Earth too! God has been so generous to me in my own life and I am sure that you can find His generosity in yours too! And I want children who listen to this story to hear how generous God is….generosity is very attractive!

My Experience of God’s Generosity

God’s generosity was first evident to me in my childhood when I experienced my parents generous love to us-their 3 children. Mum would save any money we had and spend it on clothes for us! She never put herself first. She didn’t have a lavish wardrobe. What a mother! Dad, also showed the generosity of his time to mum in their marriage. It was only after mum died that dad attended more study days to expand his knowledge as a GP. When I commented on this, he said that previously he didn’t want to go to too many study days ‘because of mum’. He literally wanted to make sure that she wasn’t on her own on a regular basis. I was shocked at his sacrifice, as he loved his medical work. What a gift he gave of himself to my mum! What a husband! Of course, there are many other ways that both my parents were generous – but these are just 2 of them.

I grew up and went to school and to university like many others- but through all that time I somehow didn’t make any long-lasting friendships. I didn’t really question it- I just couldn’t find a real and trustworthy connection with anyone! Then at 27 years of age, I started attending a Catholic Charismatic prayer group and I suddenly found I had lots of friends! This was God’s generosity for my social and emotional needs! These were my people! Here were people who were ‘all in’ for God. They were living life in a completely different, though more exciting, vein than I had ever experienced before! They were listening to God and obeying Him in all areas of their lives and He was directing them and protecting them. This, I realised, was what I wanted too! I found some really close friends through this particular group, some of whom are my dearest friends today.

Pointing Out God’s Generosity

Unless we intentionally show children the generosity of God, they will have less to be thankful for! Take snow for example! Just the beautiful and simple fact that the structure of each snowflake is unique! Why would God bother doing this? Surely, He could have just used a handful of designs? Who would know? To me it seems to be partly due to His amazing creativity …but also due to the fact that He won’t be outdone in His generosity! God is – still being God!

As God says to Job,

“Have you visited the place where snow is stored?” Job 38:22

Perhaps if Job could visit this storehouse – God would be able to show him the architecture of each flake and the care with which He has made each one unique. Today we have microscopes to see His Generosity. I think that the uniqueness of each flake is the secret of snow…and points us to God.

Perseverance in Prayer: "A Prayer from the Heart"

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 19:55:07 GMT

How easy is perseverance in prayer?

6-year-old Chris, finds persistence in prayer hard. I think anyone at the age of 6 can be forgiven for this! Actually, anyone can be!

We all start out strong: praying for our own desires or maybe for a friend’s situation. But then time takes its toll. Our own desires don’t seem to be getting any closer – and our friend’s situation remains unchanged.

Frustration

For me what happens is FRUSTRATION! And this is exactly what happens to our main character, Chris. Chris has been praying with his mum for, what seems to be, a very long time for a friend down his road. Thankfully his mum is at hand to comfort and support him. I, myself, find that sharing my frustrations in prayer with a trusted friend or relative can be really helpful. It helps give us some perspective. In this way we can remain calm and continue to pray.

What is God’s Will?

But it’s not that simple, is it?! What we need to know is if this ‘thing’ that we are praying for is actually God’s Will for us. That way we know if we will actually receive it! For example, why can’t Chris make more friends at school and then have ‘play dates’ with them? Surely, that would solve his desire?! That’s what most parents would do. He would then have plenty of friends to run around with… Well, Chris does have some friends at school- but he is shy and doesn’t find the process easy. And for some reason, he feels that a ‘Best Friend Forever’ who lives along his road is what he really needs. It is a deep desire.

Spiritual Support from Parents

Parental spiritual support is a huge responsibility! In our story, Chris’ mum, is going along with supporting Chris’ prayer because she obviously has some spiritual sense that the fulfilment of this desire would be a good gift from God. She and Chris’ father are his spiritual directors! They know their child and they can see the fruit that this desire is producing. They can see if it is drawing him closer to or further away from God. They can see if it’s a ‘flash in the pan idea’ or something much deeper. I pray that all our children’s parents are so discerning. But what if they are not? In the Catholic church we don’t actually have any formal “passing-on-the-faith-lessons”.

In my humble opinion, and I am not a parent, I think that ‘Passing on the Faith’ lessons are vital and could be ground-breaking for our children!

If each parent did this, they would also have to examine their own beliefs. Are they listening to God or not? Perhaps they are making all their decisions without asking God at all? Unless one has been taught how to do this, most people will carry on through life under their own steam. And how many priests know and understand how to support parishioners in showing them how to listen to God? I recommend the free courses from www.parentingforfaith.org . It’s protestant but can easily be used by Catholics. I came across it through the Catholic organisation Celebrate Trust: www.celebratetrust.org/parentingforfaith

The Lessons

So, in a nutshell, ‘A Prayer from the Heart’ acknowledges that God has a plan for Chris’ life regarding friendship. Chris’ mum feels it is the right thing to urge Chris to wait on the Lord, despite the time that is passing.

So, Chris continues to pray. He is learning some very important aspects of prayer. He is learning that God has heard his every prayer- his prayers have not been ignored.

Understanding the Trinity: "A Prayer from the Heart"

Tue, 14 Mar 2023 19:38:22 GMT

The expression of the Trinity

When I first wrote ‘A Prayer from the Heart’ the Holy Trinity appeared in it in the 3 places: at the beginning; in the middle and right at the end. In prayer, I strongly felt that I needed to show children that the Hoy Trinity is with them everywhere. How good would it be if they realised through the story that the most powerful force in the Universe is with them wherever they go?! Of course, this would just be a piece in the jigsaw of life that will make up their faith. And I am honoured to be part of that jigsaw.

The Holy Trinity is expressed in two ways in my book: Full-blown and as an echo. This first image is an example of how the ‘fullness’ of the Holy Trinity is expressed in my book.

And here is an example of how the Holy Trinity is expressed in most of the illustrations in my book: as an ‘echo’.

Omnipresence

I remember being taught in school about God’s superpower of omnipresence. I learnt that He was everywhere and that I could pray to Him wherever I happened to be. Though I only prayed to God at meal times and bedtimes, this was still good to know! As a child, I imagined Him – somewhere up in the clouds- distant from me and not really interested in every aspect of my life. Because of this there was no way that I could experience emotional security in God, even though I believed He was everywhere. I needed more: I needed a personal relationship with Him. I needed someone to show me that this God was lovely; that He cared about me in every way and that it was the-best-thing-ever to have a relationship with Him.

Upbringing

My beloved parents took us to mass every Sunday and my mother made sure that we prayed before we went to bed at night. These are good and wonderful things to offer children and every parent offers the best they can with what they know. But children need more than ‘doing’ Sunday mass in order to have a personal relationship with their omnipresent God. I had to wait till I was 27 years old before I set sail on my personal prayer adventure… God had a lot of work to do on me before I was ready to open my heart to Him!

Parental modelling

It’s also one thing being taught about God’s omnipresence but it’s quite another thing for it to become a concrete reality in our lives. To help with this, I think that it needs both mum and dad to model the reality of God’s omnipresence. I believe that if they do this, it will go some way to showing their children that not only is God everywhere but that God ‘has their back’ and that He works all things together for their good:

Romans 8:28. For example, parents could do this by praying out loud for a car parking space… as people of influence maybe we should model this to children? I know I felt awkward the first time I prayed out loud with my little niece and nephews in the car…but it became more natural to pray in this way with time. And God found us a parking space too…!

If the Lord doesn’t provide a parking space, well – then it’s an opportunity for us to show that we trust in Him and that He will somehow work this out for us.

Young children LOVE stories, don’t they! We all know that there are some stories that children want their parents to read to over and over again. We know from studies about brain development and psychology, that children engage in the repetition of stories when they are learning something important through them. I hope and I pray that ‘A Prayer from the Heart’ will be one of those stories.

I pray that through the illustrations and the story itself, that children will begin to see that the Holy Trinity is not only with them always, but that God cares about what they care about – and that He has the power to help them in all circumstances of life. I hope that this story will be a stepping stone for little souls to reach for intimacy with God.

Teaching the Holy Trinity to Kids. Simple Explanations

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 19:25:26 GMT

“God from God…. Light from Light…. True God from True God…”

This is what we say in the Creed each time we go to mass….and it took me a long while to realise that we are actually speaking out our beliefs about the Holy Trinity..

One substance….yet 3 distinct persons.

How can we convey this mystery to young children? Should we even try?

Well, I for one think that we definitely should! It is what our faith hangs on and young children will believe it, if we just make the effort to explain…

In the creed it tries to explain the mystery of the Trinity that though they are one God – they are also made up of 3 persons. Now, for any child on the planet who has the ability to believe in ‘becoming invisible’ or in the concept of ‘time travel’, I don’t think that the mystery of The Most Holy Trinity or even the Real Presence is too much of a stretch. They will always remain mysteries, but we can help them have a better grasp of the Holy Trinity through real life examples of 3 in 1!

The Trinity as an Apple

So, there are 3 elements here- and 1 apple!

Peel, flesh and seed represent the Father, Son & Holy Spirit.

What do you think of this explanation?

Look at the ‘light from light’ concept….

The 3 elements here: 1. the sun itself; 2. its light beams and 3. its warmth – all making up the sun. Although this is from a very good source…and it has given me a better understanding of the Trinity…it somehow doesn’t sit comfortably with me. How does it sit with you?

The Three Leaf Clover

The image that I was offered as a child and have always gone back to is the image of the 3-leaf clover.

Three distinct leaves from the 1 clover- now that just makes complete sense to me!

You will probably know what type of image will suite your child- we can only give each explanation a go and see!

Ice, water and water vapour

How does this sit with you?

Another way of explaining the Trinity might be to use ‘Catholic Central’ a Youtube channel. See what you think about their fun interpretation!

The Holy Trinity is a Community

A good thing to remember, is to say to your child that the Trinity is a loving community. They are a family who each love each other to infinity! And because we are made in God’s image, we should love each other similarly: without envy, without competition and by always singing each other’s praises.

And if your child says, “..But mum/dad I just don’t get it!” I think we can get away with saying that “God is such a mystery and our human minds are so very small compared to His, this is the best way we can think about The Holy Trinity till we get to Heaven.” Then we will see God face to face and all will be revealed!

The Holy Trinity in my Storybook

The Trinity is a core element of my story, ‘A Prayer from the Heart’. I wanted to show children that God is everywhere and at all times- that He never leaves them and that He is always for them.

As I wrote God into the story, I conveyed Him as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – not as a teaching point- but it is so wonderful if it can be used as one! You can see the distinct 3 persons in the illustrations and I hope that they come over as one God.

Stirring Up Your Child's Faith: Nurturing from Unborn to Teen

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 11:48:07 GMT

As an unborn child?

Impossible? Not really! As with the handing on your faith to your walking, talking child- we need to lead by example. The loudest voice that an unborn baby hears reverberating down to his/her tiny eardrums is that of his/her mum-other voices will be softer! So, from as young as 16 weeks, your baby will be able to hear what you say.

Babies Listening to the Word of God

Why not feed your baby on the Word of God- you could perhaps pray the bible out loud using ‘Lectio Divina’? Speak out your thoughts as you think on the bible passage you are reading.

Babies Listening to Praise & Worship Music

How about listening to ‘praise and worship’ songs to put you and your baby into God’s presence? How spiritually nurturing is that?! Dance to the music!

Maybe pray the rosary out loud?

In all these prayerful activities your unborn baby is experiencing hearing God’s Word as well as the ‘feel good’ hormones as you dance! Even if you are not dancing, the act of praying will put you both in the presence of God.

If you get to experience the presence of God, say during praise and worship, what’s to say that your babe won’t experience it too? Perhaps he/she will experience God’s presence – even when you don’t! God is so good…whatever small steps we take to bringing His kingdom on earth He will be delighted with and will bless us!

As a child under 13 years old

When I think of how my lovely mum handed on the faith to me, I can see that she led by some really solid example – but I can also see some areas that could have been better. My own mum was a very traditional Catholic brought up in 1930’s Sri Lanka.

I am pretty sure that no one had told her that God could speak to her- or that a relationship with The King of the Universe involved 2-way communication.

Showing Prayer as a part of our Daily Life

Aside from taking our children to mass, when we lead by example at this stage, we need to show our kids that we really believe in God, that we are talking to Him and expecting Him to act in our lives. So, aside for set payers, we really need to show them that we are relying on God for everything. Pray out loud for that car-parking space; your aunt Marge’s illness; finding that cake ingredient in the shop; let them hear you praying for their day, their tests, to make the right friends and to know their gifting.

Celebrate

There are lots of other fun things that you can do with your children to celebrate not only Easter and Christmas but to celebrate other special days through food. For example, the Epiphany is celebrated in some parts of the world with the baking of a ‘king cake’.

We can also reclaim the feast of Halloween! The scary, commercial feasting of Halloween can be transformed into something much more life giving, such as the ‘Night of Light’. This concept is explained in the video clip below. Please follow the link here

Of course, reading good fiction to your children is also very important. A great resource is found on the Facebook page: Catholic Children’s Books.

As a teenager

The discussion with your teenager will be moving from wanting a bike to wanting a girlfriend/ boyfriend and to the desire for sex. They will become more aware of world politics and it’s so important that they have a Catholic perspective on all these issues.

Now is the time to be very honest about emotions and the non-Christian ways of the world. Of course, you may have already spoken about ‘worldly views’ before in terms of ‘not all people know the beauty of Jesus and that He is preparing a wonderful future for us- and so they remain non-Christian’….But now you can talk to your teenagers about views on sex, contraception, euthanasia through the eyes of God and pray for them to meet that right person, to remain faithful and not engage in sex outside of marriage.

There is so much to discuss with your children! Be honest and bring up your own mistakes-we all have them! Then you can also talk about the reckless love of God’s forgiveness and how His Mercy helped you to overcome your sins. Being real is so important.

However, embarrassing this might seem, if it keeps your children within the safety of God’s embrace and His covenant – then it is worth it.

Great Catholic fiction

which deals with these hard topics, can be found on the website – Catholic Teen Books

Teaching Children to Praise God Through Nature and Prayer

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 20:57:15 GMT

All Creation is Praising God-but are we?

God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Genesis 1:3

This is the start of creation as written in the bible…

The beginning of the beautiful universe that He made to lavish upon us!

And in return for His humungous love for us we should be praising Him every second of the day…but- do I?

And as Catholics, do we pass on this awesomeness of creation onto our children? If we did this they can start to touch the awesome love that God has for them.

The image of the Earth above – our home for now! This is the home that God created for us so that we could learn to love Him back. To love Him back for all the ‘over-the top love’ that He sends you and me!

There are so many places in scripture where not only are men & women praising God but so also are the stars, the sun and the moon. It says so in Psalm 148:3. Please check out this short video about creation singing- I think it is p-r-e-t-t-y amazing! I got ‘Holy Spirit bumps’ when I saw this!

Children are Drawn to Nature

I think that all children can become fascinated by nature…and through nature they can be fascinated by their Creator – if we show them how!

Many kids love flowers, bugs, rabbits, fish, the moon, the stars -all sorts really. If we bring this up in conversation with them and help them to thank God for it…then this is surely the start of praise, right?

What struck me in nature – as a child

I can only speak from my own experience- As a child I was really drawn to Forget-Me-Not flowers that grow in England..I thought they looked like someone had drawn icing on them. Can you see it? They actually reminded me of the iced biscuits we had at some parties.

As I grew up, I became more blown away by dramatic and beautiful skies, by blossom on trees -by so many things. They all seemed to flow into my being as I looked at them and their beauty sort of filled me up- It was like I was drinking it in. Have you ever felt like that about anything?

As a Middle-aged Woman

Now as a middle-aged woman, I can see that I MUST praise God for all this beauty and love that He has lavished on us.

More importantly, we must nudge children to do this too. I think it’s harder to be this expressive if one comes from a traditional background.

This used to be me. But being involved in the Charismatic Renewal has really helped me see that that not praising God is contrary to how God wants us to live every day.

Bedtime Prayer

So, you could try as an experiment to ask your young kids to prepare for bedtime by gathering objects and pictures of things they love and find beautiful.

You could encourage them to thank God specifically for what they loved about these.

Then you could bring all their heartfelt thoughts -and yours- together in a song of praise.

This isn’t just an exercise and something fun to do…it reminds them, and us, that God is real and that He is really present with us -and that He hears our every prayer of thanksgiving and petition. He hears everything.

I still have to keep reminding myself of this too…that I am not alone trying to sort out my problems: God is there and willing to help – just ask!!

God sees our sincerity in trying to bring a bit of Heaven to earth and will He will surely reward us by touching our children’s hearts with His grace.

Ask and you shall receive..

Seek and you shall find..

Knock and the door shall be opened..

Praying for the Desires of Your Child’s Heart: Trusting God’s Plan

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 20:38:30 GMT

Help your child discover their true heart's desires

I am sure you know the desires of your child’s/grandchild’s heart! Can I share my experience from life in a way that might be helpful? Not all children have or are aware of the desires of their heart – I know I wasn’t, at least not as a young child. As I reached the grand age of 8 years old, I started to want what my friends had. I remember that one Summer a school friend was to holiday in Turkey and I wanted to go there too!

Now the funny thing that happened was that I misheard Turkey (Europe) for Torquay (England)! So, I badgered my parents to take the family to Torquay…and that’s where we went! Like most things in life-the realisation of desire and so many other issues varies from child to child.

Perhaps they want to be a ballerina or an artist or a competitive swimmer or runner?

I think that it’s always best to take anything to prayer. The God of the Universe knows if this desire is good for your child. Perhaps, in prayer, your child will hear the Lord speak clearly- but also perhaps not! It’s hard for anyone who wants something so much to hear anything other than ‘Yes!’

As well as praying about it, your child would need to have some giftedness towards this desire. For example, is his/her desire to be a world class runner backed by actually being good at running? Even if it doesn’t seem to be clear it would seem good to allow your child to have a go at whatever he/she likes. I remember wanting to do ballet as a hobby, but I gave it up as I didn’t have much of an aptitude for it.

It’s a hard lesson to learn sometimes, but at least there are plenty of other activities to try. Eventually, I became interested in playing the guitar by the age of 10 and I did have an aptitude for it. My school teacher who taught me even suggested that I take up ‘classical guitar’. But it wasn’t a desire of my heart and I eventually gave up.

God never says no!

Fr. Chris O’Donnell, a Carmelite priest has said that God never says no! So, there are 3 answers that God might give any of us regarding a desire of the heart:

Yes
Wait
I have something better for you

This is good news for all …that if I don’t get this desire of my heart, it’s because God has something better for me! From experience, I think that God will show us in some way or another if this is a desire that He thinks is good for us….and even if it is good, it maybe that we have to wait for it for a considerable time!

Some suggestions..

I offer the following as a suggestion:

A child may pray for the desire of their heart every day, once a week…it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that we need to help them ‘surrender’ their desire to God… because we don’t know if this is something that God might want for your child.

Explain to your child that ‘to surrender’ means to say, ‘God this is something that I really care about and want but if you would rather give me something better then I will TRUST YOU because you only want to bless me with things that are spiritually good for me because YOU LOVE ME so much and want the best for me.

Listening to God in prayer

Can I suggest that when your child prays and listens to God – as a parent you should be listening to what God might have to say on the matter too. God may speak to you more clearly, and with this information you can better support your child. Putting our heart’s desire out there is an emotional thing – we all know this!

If God says Yes!

Don’t be surprised if God does speak to your child! God may give your child clear prophetic signs (a word from God; an image, a vision, a bible reading; a sense in their spirit) which says ‘YES’ God is definitely going to give this to you….and it will be confirmed by receiving this gift from God/ winning that competition or getting a place at the Royal Ballet School!

If your child receives his/her heart’s desire-remind them to thank God!

As with all of us- we are fallible and can perceive that an image in our mind’s eye or a ‘sense in our spirit’ is from God when we are desperate for something! We need to be ready to deal with that too!

What if God says ‘Wait’?

You both feel over time that God wants you both to TRUST in His timing? This is hard, because we don’t know when this will actually come. This is where you have to exercise FAITH and perhaps prepare for this gift to come. For example, perhaps your child wants a baby brother or sister and you both feel that God is saying ‘wait’. Thank God that it is coming! Thanksgiving is important for us all to cultivate!

And what if God says, “ I have something better for you”. This is perhaps the hardest to hear. It will cause immediate pain for anyone to hear this….it may cause a sense of feeling unloved by God. For example, your child may have wanted to play Joseph in the nativity but was asked to play an angel instead. Again TRUST is called for….and it’s only with hindsight that we can know why God has decided this for your child.

Try to offer some examples from your own life where God gave you something better than you asked for. Even using the example of who you married would be good. You may have been engaged to someone else/ wanting to date someone and it just didn’t happen. God had a better person in mind for you…and when they came along you married them! Only God would have known who was spiritually better for you even though you couldn’t see it at the time. This is an amazing resource for all of us who are interceding for our heart’s desire..

I really hope this has been of help to you. When we can really TRUST God as children it will be easier to TRUST Him when we are grown up and the stakes are higher! Of course, for a child, the stakes will already feel high ��.

Helping Your Child Wait on God's Timing: Patience and Faith

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 16:19:10 GMT

My own wait

It’s 2022 as I write. I have been waiting for 42 years for the Lord to give me a particular desire of my heart!….I go through periods of frustration, pain, discouragement and giving up on what I thought was His promise- so maybe it wasn’t a promise after all? I have been going around in circles-forever discerning!

If I struggle with this how can a child wait on God?

A Child’s Wait

We all know that a child can barely get through a whole minute of waiting….time for them seems to go so, so, S – L- O – W – L – Y

It’s rare that we get a prophecy- a promise from God that He will bring something to pass in the future- right!

If we did – you would think that it should make the whole ‘waiting thing’ easier…but if you look at some of the characters in the bible…like Abraham and Sarah you can see that it was pretty hard for them too.

Perhaps they want to be a ballerina or an artist or a competitive swimmer or runner?

Well, first we could support them by saying that that seems like a good idea and shall we ask God what He thinks? Discernment is tricky for adults at the best of times but for children without much life experience, they will need a lot of support. Little Chris in my story, ‘A Prayer from the Heart’ , has been praying and waiting for a friend along his road for a L – O – N – G time. In the story we aren’t told if this desire had any prophecy tagged along with it. It simply seems to be a child who wants friendship. The desire for friendship is something very good and normal and a reflection of our relational, Trinitarian God.

Friends outside of school and just down the road doesn’t seem like too much to ask for…but will God give it to him…and when?

How can we help children wait?

I think that using some stories from the bible where God’s people had to wait-and-wait-and-wait is a good place to start. These 2 videos show us and kids how hard it was for Abraham & Sarah and Noah to wait. Watch each one and ask your child..

“What did Noah and Sarah have to do when they felt like giving up?”

Noah had to wait for dry land to appear after the flood. Cooped up in the ark with creatures of ever kind that roamed the earth can’t have been easy! Watch this short video with your child and ask…

“What could Noah have done to help pass the time?”

Children as young as 1 year and 2 years of age start to learn to wait through ‘taking turns.

Perhaps having times during the year where we are making a slow journey with a calendar might help? Such as the 40 days of Lent in the run-up to Easter Sunday?

Or an Advent calendar in the run-up to Christmas Day?

Waiting and boredom

When children are bored and don’t have anything to do, they get impatient…but this could be an opportunity to be creative! Boredom is a great opportunity for young children to learn to find something creative to do! The more they can find ways to ‘while away the time’ the better they will become at waiting.

The video below covers various ways to help children learn the art of waiting..

When it comes to waiting for 6 months, or 1 year or longer this will take serious waiting skills. So, as long as your child has experienced several times of waiting throughout life – it will all stand in good stead.

How to Teach Kids About Purgatory

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 16:03:33 GMT

What were you taught about Purgatory as a child?

I was taught that is somewhere where I will need to be ‘purged’ before I can enter Heaven. I felt that this must be painful. It’s not something that I am looking forward to and I don’t think that I am holy enough to skip it altogether!

Is Purgatory biblical?

In 2 Macabees, Juda Macabee, a military leader in ancient Israel, and his men had been fighting for God and some had died in battle. Their sin had played a role in the fact that they had died during this battle. Had they not sinned they would not have died. So, Juda takes up a collection so that a sacrifice could be offered for his dead soldiers in the Temple in Jerusalem. He also prayed for them.

In 1 Corinthians:3 shows that after our salvation is secure, we will still need to be purged of all the last traces of impurities before we go to Heaven

Though the blood of Christ is enough to forgive all our sins, it doesn’t mean we can just swan into Heaven willy-nilly! No! There are still attitudes in me that are not Christ-like and I will definitely need these sorted out before I can stand before the throne of Almighty God.

Temporal punishments?

Take the example of one child breaking another child’s leg. There are more than simply physical hurts that will remain. In both children there are lingering emotional stabbings that have occurred and these need to be healed in them both. So even when the sins have been absolutely forgiven and absolved, what remains-these emotional and in one case an additional physical hurt all need to be healed. These lingering effects are called temporal punishments and can be healed in Purgatory.

In fact, these need to be healed before we can stand before the lamb of God – We need to be fully healed in order to be able to accept pure love.

So, to Purgatory…many of us will go! These temporal punishments can be resolved through indulgences. But we don’t want to overcomplicate things for children…

Perhaps it’s best to just say that we all need to be healed from the pains & hurts and the attachments of this life as they stop me from allowing myself to be fully hugged by Jesus in Heaven?

Stories for Catholic Children: Nurturing Faith Through Fiction

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 15:43:28 GMT

Power in Children's Stories

As a previous Montessori teacher, I knew that children under 6 years of age ABSORB whatever enters their senses without a filter and – good or bad – it will form their character.

I learnt that young children who loved a fiction story would ask for it to be read to them over and over again and that it became a part of them – that’s how powerful stories are!

Power in Adult Stories

Even as adults, I am sure that you have read stories that have haunted you….so that even days after you have read it – you are still thinking about it.

As a member of the Catholic Writers Guild, I am privileged to have been in touch with Catholic writers and the wonderful fictional stories that they write. They weave themes of the Catholic faith into stories in the hope that children will be moved by them and keep the faith. It’s so wonderful that the Guild exists.

Before I wrote ‘A Prayer from the Heart’ and then met members of the Catholic Writer’s Guild, I had no idea how powerful Catholic fiction could be!

Power in My Story?

Back in 2015, when I read the first draft of my story out loud to myself, I discovered, that without trying, I had written a story that was evangelical. By this I mean that it could show children how to have a relationship with Jesus. ‘A Prayer from the Heart’ also showed that God was taking care of the characters in the story every single second of the day! I had written a story that could help children see that God was interested in them! God had been written into the nooks and crannies of my story-and that alone could touch a child’s soul. I realised that there was something ‘kind of powerful’ in my story! What ‘kind of powerful’ am I talking about? Holy Spirit ‘kind of powerful’!

Gaping holes in the Catholic Church

I have always had a problem with how the Catholic church forms our children. They go through the process of preparation for First Confession and First Holy Communion and then there is no real spiritual formation till Confirmation. Gaping holes…. And then after Confirmation…nothing.

It is a Catholic parent’s prerogative to educate their children – so really, it’s down to them. However, in this day and age where parents are not strong in the faith – having left it as adolescents and then returned only to get married- the soil they offer their children is sadly not fertile enough to help young seedlings put down roots.

This is where Catholic fiction can help!

What if there were a plethora of stories from 5 months – 18 years oozing with the love of God and Catholic themes woven through them…what would that do? Well, there are…and they are turning young hearts around. Before you roll your eyes and say …yeah, right, these will be preachy books …they actually aren’t.

What they do is to provide a great fiction story as a background and which will show the reader how much they are loved by God. This may be more explicit in some stories or more hidden in others.

YA Books

Take this novel by Carolyn Astfalk. Carolyn is the current President of the Catholic Writers Guild (‘22) and she writes contemporary Catholic romance for teens. This is a story where love knows no bounds-even across different faiths. Can Fr. John help the couple bridge their differences or will something else intervene and pull them apart? See the link below.

Another example is ‘Angel in the Waters’ by Catholic author Regina Doman is a fiction story about conversations between an unborn baby and his/her guardian angel.. The angel is preparing the baby for life outside the womb! This book will attract kids 5 months-6 years of age. Though it is not explicitly Catholic, the themes of life of the unborn and the provision of God are implicit. See the link below

‘Baby Come to Church’ by Catholic author Virginia Esquinaldo is more explicit and is a ‘snapshot’ of a baby spending an hour at mass. See the link below

Framing Life for Kids: Helping Children Understand God and Faith

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 13:49:56 GMT

Children need information

Our children spend their days trying to understand the world that we live in…and we spend our days trying to help them! Unless we help them, they will never have that confidence about them and they will always be on ‘red alert’- scared -not knowing what is going on. We all look for more information when we don’t understand the world. That goes for adults as well as children. Remember the last time you went somewhere new…a new job..trying a new route somewhere…doing anything for the first time! It’s daunting. But for a child this happens most days!

Please frame me!

To help children, parents need to frame everything for them- to help them understand how the world works. This way they can grow to be confident and comfortable within their world.

But they need more than just framing about how the world works…

They desperately need to know how the spiritual world works …and we have to help them. Perhaps we can blend the spiritual life in with our daily chat with them…?

I would not have understood the concept of the Holy Trinity had it not been for a nun at school explaining it using a 3 leafed clover.

For example at the ‘school drop off’ you could say, “You and God have a great time…hope the spelling test goes well….see you later!”

Perhaps we could frame our decision making to our children more spiritually?

For example, “2 years ago, God gave us this car- it’s on its last legs and we have been praying about it for ages and we have this amount of money and we are going to see what God does………so we are going to step out in faith and buy a new car”

With this type of conversation, our children will hopefully come to a place where they have become intrigued with what God is doing their lives-And we need to keep showing them.

Show that God is there for us in the bad times

God is with us in the everyday things of life: in the happy and the sad.

If your child is being bullied….you need to walk with him/her through their pain. As well as talking to the teacher…my suggestion is to frame it spiritually…

Children need to know where God is in the midst of the bullying and the pain. You could say something like, “Jesus understands what it’s like to be spat on and mocked….people spat on Him. Jesus forgave them-and ultimately, He wants us to do the same. But none of us can do this without Him. He will give you the grace”

We need to explain everything. Life with God and life in general will eventually merge..

Show that God is there for His people in Scripture

We need to read the Word of God and explain to our kids how the Bible explains life to us and how scripture can be relied upon….and How God speaks to us through it

So, the story about David and Goliath….isn’t just about fighting a giant…it is the story about how David and God, in their life together, fought lions together and sang each other songs. David was the friend of God..David and God walked out on that field to face the giant – together…if we have God with us we can do so much more with Him!

Whatever your child is facing there will be some story in the bible that will be able to help…if you are having to move house….look at Abraham moving home to Ur …Ruth and Naomi moving home to Bethlehem. Look at fictional Catholic books about these issues too. For example, The Adventures of Faith, Hope and Charity-Finding Patience by Virginia Lieto.

This young family has to move home and one of the children, in particular, finds it hard to make friends. She wants friends now! But her shyness and impatience need some working on! Link here

Explain why Catholic Christians do what they do…

Why do we use incense? Is it coz God likes the smell? We might say something such as: “The incense in the thurible reminds us that our prayers that go up to God will make us more like Him and fit for the Kingdom of Heaven where we will worship Him with the angels and saints for all Eternity

Why do we praise God in song? ….

We could say something like: “When we sing to God it’s a way of our hearts touching God’s Heart and chatting to Him saying Yes I mean that – yes I love You. ‘I’ often don’t have the words to say what I want to say to God and the words in the song help me”.

Questions! Questions!

What is happening at the consecration of the mass? Is Jesus really in the host?Do I have to pray? Do we have to go to mass? Children have so many questions.

With any question we can try a 4-pronged approach………….

Ask your child- What do you think about this?
What do we know is the answer to this question-according to the church?
What we do not know or understand about God in regards to this?
How does this affect me?

Take the example of a question like “Is my pet gerbil in Heaven?”

We can panic “How do I answer this?” or try and stay calm..

If we don’t know the answer, we can show children how we can find the answer.

“Why don’t we ask, Jane? She knows more about death of animals than I do- when I see her next Tuesday- I’ll ask her – OK?”

Or we could say…

“I can tell you what happened when I lost my pet, Scratchy. I was sad and missed my pet. I felt that God was with me through it all and I knew that He would never leave me. I felt that He was taking care of Scratchy. How do you feel about it?”

Getting it wrong?!!!

What if, in explaining something, you have inadvertently told your child something wrong…just tell them you got it wrong! Be as relaxed as you can- and you can be, because this is about a relationship with God – it’s not an exam! You could say something like:

“I was thinking-this isn’t right! But I am going to find out more about from Fr. Xaviour and then I’ll tell you what he says, OK?!” They will see from your face that you aren’t worried because your knowledge isn’t perfect…we are all walking the spiritual learning curve together. We aren’t all St. Therese of Lisieux or St. Padre Pio!

Life as a Christian is a journey with God which will be blessed with peace, joy & consolation if we keep looking at Him ��.

These ideas have been taken from a free online video course I recommend from ‘Parenting for Faith’

he presenter says it so much better than me!

Conversational Prayer with God: Helping Children Listen (Part 3 of 3)

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 13:12:17 GMT

How can we help out children have a conversation with God?

We often give children formula’s and ‘set prayers’ to help them pray eg the Our Father or the Hail Mary.

Sometimes, however, prayer can feel like a chore or that God isn’t even listening? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if children could talk to God as if He is a friend? If they could pour their heart out to Jesus? If they could feel and know that they are having a real relationship with Him? That would be a success story right there!

Success in prayer

At the end of the day, we want them to be able to talk to their Heavenly Father about all that is going on in their lives: their tears as well as their joys; about their broken heart as well as the memories from that sunny day on the beach. Having a successful relationship with God means, not only can they express what is in their heart- it also means that they can listen to God’s response..and that goes for us too!

How do we get them there?

If you are already praying and listening to God you can model this by chatting to God out loud! Just now and again- at strategic moments! This gives them a window into your relationship with God. It shows them that it’s normal to talk to Him as a friend. If this isn’t what you are used to, it will feel awkward to start off with….but practise makes perfect!

Maybe you could do it when you are looking for a parking space or for a present for a friend. Eventually, it will come naturally!

If you someone who doesn’t chat to God as yet- give it a go. He longs to help us and guide us. Our Father wants to hear from us -and wants to speak to us… Become comfortable in your relationship with God first before you introduce your child to this way of relating.

Create windows into the times that you chat to God.

“Oh, I had such a great chat with God while I was in the loo. I told Him that I was having a stressful time trying to work out some new meals for the week and He gave me some new ideas and I felt happy. I don’t know why I didn’t ask Him before?!!!”

Nothing is too small or smelly for God!

Once children realise that God is interested in hearing about the small things in their day (e.g. that snail they found) they won’t be afraid to tell Him about the big stuff (Which career should I go for? or is it OK for me to date Paul/ Sandra?).

When we take away the boundaries about what they can chat to God about, it will give them the freedom to laugh and cry with God. It will open up every nook and cranny of their heart to Him! Encourage them to laugh with God.

“Tell God about that funny thing that happened at school today!”
“Tell God about the smelliest fart you ever smelt!”

Prayer is about connection – a 2 way relationship

In the free video online ‘Parenting for Faith’ course, they talk about being careful not to end up becoming like the high priest during biblical times.

He would act as a go-between between the Jewish People and God. If we do this, prayer becomes a 3-way relationship and children won’t be able to pray without you. We need to be more like a ‘spiritual coach’. To provide them with space and the tools to do this. Of course, as a parent, can I suggest that you also listen to what God might be saying on the matter? This will help in discernment..

For example, what if your 5-year-old wants a 2-wheeler bike but they are only physically able to use a 3-wheeler? You could go through the practical reasons why they aren’t ready for this yet or you could encourage them to pray to God for a 2-wheeler in His Perfect timing or… you could ask them to have a chat with God about this.

This means they will also have to listen to what God says back to them. Then, afterwards, you could ask them how the chat went: what did they say and what did He say back to them?

If they didn’t hear anything you could say: “That happens to me too. When I don’t hear anything from God, I think it means that I am not ready to hear the answer. God knows me a million times better than I know myself. He lets me know the answer when I was ready” Perhaps you could site an example? Perhaps praying to get married or to have a baby? Few of us are told by God when or if this will happen – but we get the answer when our husband/wife appears on the scene or when we first know that our baby is on the way! This is God answering our prayer!

It’s always good to encourage a child’s prayer by saying, for example:

“I love hearing what you say to God!”

Prayer for Under-5’s

For those under-5’s who can’t pray in their head yet….encourage them to put their hands over their mouths and whisper it to God in their hands. Ask them to tell God about something in their hands and then can ask them what they said.

Always encourage whatever your child says to God as valid eg “O! He will love to hear about that!”

How might it feel as a child to have freer prayer boundaries?

See for yourself! Just be your adult self and chat to God about any of the following-as much or as little as you feel like..

Tell God about a favourite movie clip & why that’s your favourite..
Tell God what you would eat ridiculous amounts of if it was calorie free..
Tell God who makes your heart sink every time you see them and why..
Tell God one thing you love about your parish..
Show God one place where you hope your child will fly you to for your 70th birthday-free of charge..
Replay for God one thing that made you laugh recently..
Tell God the worst fear about your future..
Tell God the thing that you would wear if no one mocked you for it..
Tell God the one thing that you see in your children’s personality or spiritual life that worries you..
Tell God the 1 thing that you wish you could change in your spiritual life..

How did you feel after trying this exercise? Any freer to tell God what’s on your mind? Did you hear Him say anything to you in response?

God can speak through a thought, a ‘sense’ inside us (people might say ‘I felt it in my heart’), an anointed image that comes to mind, a vision outside of ourselves, a verse from the bible which somehow appears to be ‘jumping out at you’, you may get a scripture that comes to mind (eg Psalm 139) or an audible voice. Some people feel tingling sensations on our skin or feel the touch of a hand (which simply speaks reassuringly that “I am here”). If you have never experienced any of these before, it might sound like it describes someone with mental health issues! I assure you it is not! Of course, some people with mental health issues do experience ‘voices’’, but these are not coming from God.

Listening to God

This is undoubtedly the trickiest part of prayer! It’s often a good idea to encourage a child to close their eyes and listen to what God says to them…. It keeps distractions away! You may be surprised at how clearly they can hear God! Whatever they say – give them a positive response. Time will tell if it’s from God or not. I have to keep reminding myself that God’s Will/Word in any situation produces peace, joy and love…and any other of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. I also have to keep reminding myself that God may not answer straight away- I am so impatient sometimes!

Please see 'Conversational Prayer with God: Learning to Listen (Part 1 of 3)' and 'Conversational Prayer with God: Guiding Children in Faith (Part 2 of 3)'

Conversational Prayer with God: Guiding Children in Faith (Part 2 of 3)

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 12:11:50 GMT

What type of faith are we offering our children

John 10:14 I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me..

John 10:27 The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice..

Real faith has to be alive – a faith that involves a real 2-way relationship with our Heavenly Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We want our children to grow closer to God every day…till one day they will gently slide into Heaven and into Our Father’s Everlasting Arms. Nothing to be afraid of. They know whose they are and where they are going. Isn’t that we all want?

Jesus has told us that He is our Shepherd and that His sheep know His Voice and they won’t listen to anyone else’s voice. All other voices are strangers. We all need to get to know His voice. It’s the only safe voice to follow. We all need to be listening regularly. But we tend not to. I know I don’t listen enough.

Helping kids Recognise God’s Voice

Model your relationship with God: show kids what a relationship looks like. Be spontaneous- this is how relationships are! Conversations aren’t planned. They are organic.

Without modelling a conversation with God, how will they know this is normal? Don’t just tell them good things that God has given you but also some of the struggles that they are able to understand – and how God resolved these things for you.

Perhaps you have never been invited to have a conversation with God and to expect an answer? I wasn’t – till I was 28 years old!

It’s never too late to start chatting with God!

We all need support when we start listening to God. Find a priest who is really open to listening to God or find a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal (CFR). There is a branch in Canning Town in London, England-phone them up!

Or, join a Catholic Charismatic prayer group like I did! Pray to God to find one for you. In this way, if you attend as a family, you can learn to listen to God alongside your child!

But even before you do this-you can start talking to God throughout the day. Encourage your child to do the same and you can both be more aware of His Presence and to any way that He might be speaking to you.

In this way, a child can see that God is relevant to all parts of our lives and not just during prayer at bedtime. This will also show them that God is with them everywhere-not only in their bedroom when mum and dad are praying with them. Nowhere is out of God’s reach.

Bedtime Chatting

Of course, bedtime prayers are a great way to encourage a conversation with God. It’s when the day is over and it’s time to be still: to close their eyes and drift off to sleep. For some children, slowing down at this time of the day is much harder than it is for others!

If your children run you ragged at bedtime, may I suggest you try this excellent book by Catholic author Dr. Bottaro and His wife Barbara Bottaro? It has stories of many saints and a physical exercise your child to do along with the story. The exercise focuses their thoughts on their bodies and helps to calm and support stillness. Just read 1-2 pages to them each night. It’s basically about getting children still enough to pray. Catholic Mindfulness for kids here

Forgive me my sins

Encourage your child to tell God about their day and to thank Him for something He did for them that day. This will encourage you to talk to God about your day too! Don’t be afraid to ask your child to recall anything from the day that would have been out of God’s Will: a sin.

I remember as a child that this was always the first thing that my mum asked me to do as we knelt down for night time prayers. I wasn’t afraid to say my sins out loud for mum to hear. She wisely didn’t make any comments on my sinful behaviour. I can’t remember actually saying sorry out loud- but I knew that what I had done was wrong. Though it’s good to recall and say sorry for our sins- I wish that my prayers started off with remembering how much God loves me and wants to guide me and has great plans for me. Knowing that we are loved is so important- I think it should take first place. It’s a good place from which all other prayer can spring from!

A New Start and Getting it Wrong!

When I first started to have conversations with God, I was so excited and so expectant that He might actually talk to me! And He did! Through other people and through images that He blessed my imagination with. For me, this is the most common way that God speaks to me. However, as I have a good imagination, I often misinterpreted what I thought God was saying!

It’s all a huge learning curve – and this is exactly why we all need other people to bounce off. It’s like learning anything new. We all need support.

And please don’t let what seems ‘unusual’, new and different put you off…for me it’s been the most exciting journey of my life. Career wise it has taken me to different careers (nursing, midwifery, nursery teaching and becoming an author). Spiritually, I have experienced peace and healing that I never thought was possible. And even socially, it’s through the charismatic prayer groups that I attended that I have met my closest friends. My life was changed once I allowed the God of the Universe into my heart and take over the steering wheel of my life!

Please see 'Conversational Prayer with God: Learning to Listen (Part 1 of 3)' and 'Conversational Prayer with God: Helping Children Listen (Part 3 of 3)'

Conversational Prayer with God: Learning to Listen (Part 1 of 3)

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 11:59:21 GMT

Listening to God

Praying to God is a two-way street. We do our part and speak to God..but then we also need to listen. If we aren’t doing this yet then it’s hard to talk to our children about it. There are so many ways that God speaks to us: Though the bible/ through impressions in our minds or hearts/ audibly/ through things friends say etc.

Can you hear God talk to you in your prayer time? – how does He usually communicate with you? Can you recall the first time you realised that He was speaking to you?

My experience of hearing God for the first time

The first time this happened quite took me by surprise! In fact, God hasn’t communicated with me in quite the same way since! It was a long time ago when I was 27 years old….I was a student in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. My friend got me to help out with some singing in church. She led and I did my best to follow! I remember feeling a tiny bit closer to God as I sang. I didn’t have much of a relationship with God at that time. I prayed almost every day and went to church. I tried to keep God’s commandments and I went to confession every 3 months or so.

Then it happened..

I arrived at church just as the parish priest was about to lock the church doors. I asked if I could go in and pray for a while as my uncle was dying of cancer. He agreed. I was alone in the church.

Apart from myself the only other things that were moving were the flames from the tea light candles. I still remember watching them flicker. I prayed for my uncle. Then I prayed for myself.

I started to cry. A young man, a student on my course, who had been kissing me one day had, a few days later, got drunk at some party and made love to a married woman. I wasn’t there – but I heard about it. Then he literally stopped talking to me. Nothing. I was really upset. So, there I was, alone in Church, crying over this guy.

What happened next is difficult to describe..

What seemed like a thought of mine went through my head…in my own voice, quietly – but at the same time it had another tone to it. It also seemed to be coming from everywhere outside of my head- in 360 degrees- and it was loud! The voice said,

“Lawrence is not the one..”

I looked around me just to check there wasn’t anyone else there – but I knew that I was on my own. I stayed a little while longer and then rushed off to tell my only Catholic friend from the course. I asked her, “What do you think it means?”. She said it was obvious – that he wasn’t the right man for me.

I didn’t expect to hear God in that way again – or in any way! But God was on the move. He was preparing my heart to be able to hear His voice again and soon.

The course finished and I had failed it. I had never failed anything before so it was a bit of a shock for me. It affected me more than I had expected. I became mildly depressed-this is my own diagnosis.

Charismatic Prayer Meeting

After a couple of months, I attended a Catholic Charismatic Prayer Meeting in Greenwich, London. Previously, I had avoided this sort of thing like the plague. I just didn’t want to be part of the ‘happy clappy mob’. I felt it was false. Emotion and religion – not for me!

But the strange thing was, as I heard everyone around me pray ‘in tongues’ I felt like I was in Heaven.

What struck me was that these people heard from God! They actually expected to hear from Him! I was amazed and I wanted to hear God more!

Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you” …not maybe, …but “I will”. And my depression? It lifted after the first night!

A Good Father

And I learnt to hear God’s voice through scripture; through images that God gave me in my mind’s eye…through all manner of ways. I very slowly began to realise that He cared for me. I also made lots of mistakes in what I thought was His voice. It’s a process-and you need to be around experienced people. Ask God to find the right group for you. Don’t follow an isolated person who claims to hear God and is accountable to no one. That is dangerous. I suggest this in a grounded prayer group which exudes the gifts of the Holy Spirit- peace, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

“Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them.” (Matthew 7:17-20)

The more you listen- the clearer His voice becomes. What a thrill it was to realise that Jesus wanted to speak to me and to guide me. I wasn’t alone!

Isn’t this what any loving parent would do? ..Talk to their child… guide and reassure them…of course!

Please see ‘Conversational Prayer with God: Guiding Children in Faith (Part 2 of 3)' and 'Conversational Prayer with God: Helping Children Listen (Part 3 of 3)'

Is Being Shy OK? Supporting Your Shy Child

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 10:35:52 GMT

As a child I was shy - were you?

Have you ever wondered why you were like that?

And can a ’shy-as-a-child’ parent support their own shy child?

My selective shyness

I have been thinking about this today as the main character in my story, ‘A Prayer from the Heart ’, Chris, is shy. If you have read my story, you will know that he is finding it difficult to make friends with a particular girl at school. That’s when shyness often shows up…when you want to make friends!

I remember being a quiet and fairly shy girl at school myself: I held back and watched others interact rather than pushing myself forward…in case I made a mistake! Now, I am not shy at all! But I think for me it took a lot of pushing myself forward and trying to make conversations over and over till I realised that I was likeable and fully capable of making friends.

As a little girl at home, I was quite the opposite! I would say what I wanted, when I wanted and pretty much barged myself around our family home.

Shy parent and shy child

So how can a parent help their shy child when they have been shy in their own childhood? There is a lot of good advice in the link below, which is a short video I found on Youtube by a Developmental Psychologist, Dr. Robert Coplan.

Children are naturally anxious about new situations

This video above seems to really accept shyness as a trait that normally stays with people in one way or another. It also says that this is because children are afraid and anxious in some situations – especially new situations.

When I think back to my childhood, I came to England as part of an immigrant family from Sri Lanka. Both my parents were loners, without many friends themselves, and so it’s hardly surprising that I had a ‘fearful’ tendency about relationships too. Living in a country they didn’t know, my parents were probably wary about a lot of things. I know that they were wary of whom I played with. They were happy with me playing with some neighbours but not with others – they were both very protective and didn’t trust many people.

So, it was no wonder that I was afraid and not trusting of people! Whom could I trust to love the real me?! What would have been really good would have been to have a very nurturing mum. It’s this type of mum who will be the ‘wind beneath my wings’. This next video portrays a nurturing mum as well as a more forceful mum in a fun way and, I feel, is worth watching, here

Supporting a shy child

So, supporting our shy child takes sensitivity, using the right side of the brain….and it also takes courage to stay in that zone even when you are amongst a bunch of parents with children who are not shy and are throwing themselves into life! So being shy is perfectly OK…and it just needs 2 well-adjusted nurturing parents to support their child to take small steps to becoming their more confident self.

The Story Behind "A Prayer from the Heart": A Tribute to My Brother

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 21:15:19 GMT

The Call

'A Prayer from the Heart’ started as a thought, some paper and a pen. As I wrote, an emotional warmth welled up from inside of me. The story just flowed out and onto the paper. It came from deep inside my heart. The characters are real people who matter to me: my brother, Chris (RIP) and the family he left behind. God was also in this story – as He is in all our stories.

My Brother’s Death in 2008

My brother Chris was taken from us overnight, and without warning, at the age of 41. He left behind a wife and 3 young children- aged 3, 6 and 7yrs old. It was devastating for us all.

Chris died of broncho-pneumonia and general sepsis. He was a doctor, following in his father’s footsteps, and was also a wonderful husband, dad, brother and friend.

I still remember the day I got the phone call from my dad …I was getting ready for work early on 2nd of January and wishing that I didn’t have to go into work. Minutes later I would be calling into work and telling them that my brother had died and that I wouldn’t be coming in.

Though the whole thing was so sudden and didn’t make sense that someone aged 41 and with a young family would be taken away into Heaven….at the same time, I also felt that this must be God’s timing and so it must be right.

First Draft in 2015

It was 7 years after Chris’s death that God called me to write a story. I didn’t know what I was going to write. When I sat down, I found myself writing a love story. A story in which I was able to bring Chris and his wife together again – and their 3 children too!

You might think that this is a story about friendship- and it is- but as I wrote it, I wanted Chris to meet his wife-to-be again, as if for the first time. I wanted to bring their whole family together so that they could be happy in each other’s company once more.

I remember a beautiful phrase that Chris said about the relationship that he had with Shani – he said that they fitted together ‘like a hand in a glove’.

And when Shani had given birth to their first child and Chris visited her on the ward-he brought her her favourite baguette – Shani said that he was ‘perfect’! It’s not often that you come across such a love.

The Characters

So, the characters are based on real people – on my beloved Chris and his lovely family.

I have changed the names of Chris’ wife and their children for anonymity but much of their personalities are the same. I hope that they can recognise themselves in the story! My brother was quite shy as a child but as he grew up, he became quite the extrovert! Shani, Orr, Zanna and Ozz are all very sociable and very sweet- but then I am biased!

So, as an author I didn’t have to try hard to create the characters for my story – because they were already in existence.

If anyone told me 10 years ago that I would be writing a children’s story based on my family – I would not have believed them!

Is God Too Busy to Hear My Prayers? Guiding Children's Faith

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 13:36:20 GMT

What I believe to be true is what I will teach my kids (if I had any!): The moon moves around the Earth; brushing your teeth twice a day will keep them healthy and that God is up there in the sky being a distant and busy CEO! Yes, you read that right!

And if we were asked to examine who our kids thought God was really like ….not just the ‘answers’ that a child can pluck from the bible or from the catechism or the school teacher… what they feel on an emotional level? What they pick up from mum/dad will greatly influence them on an emotional level. So, for me, sadly, I have always had a notion that God is a busy, distant, CEO type who won’t really see the necessity to truly nurture little old me….like my own parents….so I became self-reliant.

What type of God does your child experience?

Because we may never ask our kiddies what kind of a God they experience – we will never hear their thoughts and so never guide them. So, they make up their own ideas about God – deep within themselves: wrong ideas.

So before looking at 5 typical views that kiddies might have of God- we adults also need to ask ourselves these questions:

What is God really like from my personal experience?
What has shaped my view of Him?

As a child growing up, God was distant and didn’t really stoop down to help me. Over the years I have come to believe that He is not distant but is so close that it is beyond my comprehension. And He does ‘stoop down’ to help me. He is not aloof and He does desire my happiness. Well, this is all a work in progress and some days are better than others! But this is the general direction that it seems to be going!

What changed my view of God as the ‘Big CEO in the sky’? My personal experience of Him, which the Catholic Charismatic Renewal hugely influenced, and from seeing Him work in the lives of other Christians: friends from my own faith and from other denominations.

Here are 5 typical, polarised views that kids have of God which we need to gently guide them away from – because any single view is not right. It turns God into someone who they can’t approach for one reason or other. And that’s exactly what we don’t want!

The busy, distant, CEO God
The jolly, happy, clappy God
The angry God
The mysterious God
‘Buddy’ Jesus

Unless children really like God-they won’t connect with Him. This is the same for adults too, of course! We are all on this journey together…

The busy, CEO God

This God is so busy , praying about everything that is happening in the world; birthing babies and helping the dying go to the right place-He doesn’t have time to slow down and listen to little me. A child may feel their prayers are even too slow and not word perfect for the busy God!

To counteract this, we must first talk more slowly – adults talk twice as fast (at least!) as children under 7 years of age think. We must show them that God has all the time in the world for them. He loves their slow, lengthy prayers… He is close; He is here in the everyday; He is listening; tell them stories of how He was with you when you were cooking and what your conversation with Him was like. When you pray with them you could be vulnerable and not give a word-perfect prayer- make mistakes: “Oops, sorry God- I was thinking of something else…” It’s OK to be slow & messy.

The jolly, happy, clappy God

This is a God who is always happy- never sad- and only wants you to be happy too. Kids will want to keep God happy and charm Him by performing for Him: “Look at me God! I know all the answers! I can do all things for you and be happy always, even when I hurt – because that’s what you want!” Everything is OK.

Where did they get this idea from? Well, we may have helped by clapping and praising their prayers or their thoughts rather than saying:” Wow, you really seem to have connected to God in your prayer…”

Children who have had tough lives can’t connect with this happy, clappy God. They need to know that God is walking with them through their PAIN and their SADNESS as well as their JOY- whether they can remember a bible verse or not. God is with the broken hearted. God helps us heal the pain at a rate that we can cope with. Children need to know that their prayers are beautiful to God because they connect to God- not because they are word perfect.

The angry God

This God not only hates sin but also anyone who is sinning. He hates anyone who isn’t doing anything to perfection! He is waiting for something bad to happen to me. Children will be scared of this God (who wouldn’t be!). Kiddies with this view of God don’t want to pray- they don’t want to be near when you pray.

They don’t want anything to do with Him. It may be because of how we describe sin to them. Do we say that “…sin is like we are hurting God…” A child could be thinking, ”So, maybe He only forgives us resentfully because of Jesus….but, really, He wants to pour out a massive amount of anger on us.”

Instead, give your little ones another description of sin. Sin steals away our JOY and PEACE and our connection with God & others and makes us feel isolated. But God has sent us Jesus so that we can run to Him and drop our sin at His feet. God welcomes this! He welcomes each of us with our sins! And God always gives us a way out of temptation called GRACE- which we all need to hold onto when we are tempted to sin.

He is a God of Love and Grace. The God who forgives. That’s what He is about.

The mysterious God

This is the God we don’t understand- the one who may ask us to move to the other side of the world at a moment’s notice. Highly unpredictable. Some children have a highly unpredictable life as it is- they don’t need an unpredictable God.

This type of God is scary to children. What will happen next?

We may contribute to this image of God by saying things like: “Well we don’t know what God is doing!” We give God so much mystery that they don’t have any solid foundation of God.

We don’t explain Sunday mass! The incense; the Gospel; the offering; the wine and water mixing; the elevation of the bread and wine; transubstantiation where God remains invisible but is present. The miracle of Lanciano is a great way to show them what is really going on.

In this still present miracle, God draws back the veil and shows us His Body & Blood here

Unless we explain what God is like through our lived-out experiences kids will think up their own God. We can’t fully explain God but we can answer questions as well as we can- piece by piece- till they put our small explanations together and understand the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever can be relied upon and does consider them top priority.

Instead, we could say that He is mysterious

because His love is so large. It’s like a massive hammock that we can be rocked in forever.

Buddy Jesus

This God wants to do everything that I want Him to do. He thinks that I am perfect and wants to hang around with me all the time. But like an awkward friend that never goes away…children get bored of ‘Buddy Jesus’. This attitude can also lead to a self-centred life! Life is sweet because it’s all about me and Jesus! Their connection with God, without even realising it, is actually centred around themselves. This has also been a part of my view of God…but I am not sure where or who I got this from!

We can contribute by surrounding them with the good images that God loves them and approves of them without explaining that life is actually all about the wonder and beauty and awesomeness of God- and not all about us!

Tell your children what He is doing in all parts of the world. How He is rescuing people and helping them beyond anything that they can imagine. Tell them God’s stories- especially how He has moved in your life.

It will broaden their view of Buddy Jesus- He is everyone’s Buddy! There are so many views of Jesus for all of us to appreciate. Together with our children we can grow in understanding His fullness.

What is your child’s Heart like?

Asking questions that don’t have the right answers will show you what your child’s heart is like.

How do you think God rested do on the 7th day?

What sort of kid do you think He was he at school?

This post is a summary of what is covered in day 3 of the free video online course at ‘Parenting for Faith’

My Journey into Storytelling: From Bedtime Tales to Publishing

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 21:27:55 GMT

A Bedtime Story Gift

As a child, I made up bedtime stories for my brother Chris. He would have been around 4 and I was about 10 years of age. This is a photo of my mum with Chris at 6 years of age.

I made up Chris’ bedtime stories on the spot and he was always interested in hearing about a new adventure. Telling bedtime stories to young children is such an intimate time. My brother would allow me to snuggle up to him while I unravelled the story. This was always a special time for me.

When Chris married and had children of his own…I would like to make up bedtime stories for them too. I would take them into worlds where they could become as small as mushrooms and where they could play with fairies or find themselves in a land of foodie delight

God spoke through a Thought

Unbeknown to me, this ability to tell stories was a gift from God. It stayed buried inside of me until many years later. Watching a ‘million times seen’ video about a Christian writer’s own journey…it got to the part where she lay in a hospital bed. Her friends asked her why did she think that God had allowed this to happen? When she replied, ‘…so that I could finish the book that I had started’….it was then that I had the thought- ‘I wonder if God wants me to write a story?’

God wants me to Publish!

After I had written my first draft – I read it back to myself. It was then that I realised that it was evangelical and that ‘I had to get it out there!’ I didn’t have a clue about the publishing world but I thought ‘it can’t be that hard-it’s just a matter of googling publishers!’ So that’s what I did….

I went for all the Catholic ones that were taking unsolicited manuscripts (manuscripts without an agent) – like Pauline Books and Media; Sophia Institute Press and Ignatius Press.

There were several rejections from Catholic publishers and one of them even kept me in the ‘publishing process’ for 2 years! I was so naïve – I finally realised that they were never going to publish my book.

All this while, I tweaked my story – editing it and re-editing it. I took the advice of fellow Catholic authors from the Catholic Writers Guild whom I was in touch with. Slowly, but surely, I developed a story arc- who knew a story needed tension!!

Every time I thought I was done…I found something else that needed changing. As a picture book, the number of words should ideally be 750- but I just couldn’t say all I needed to say in so few words!

By 2020 I thought I was finally on my way, but the publisher I had at the time had to let me go because of a personal crisis and the illustrator didn’t work out either

Nearly Giving Up!

Crawling into 2021 without a job, a publisher or an illustrator I felt like throwing the towel in- for the second time. But then things took a completely different twist…

Watching a video from Youtube encouraged me to question who my audience was. It has always been young children in Catholic schools. I wanted to be able to show them how easy it is to start a relationship with God. That it’s just about chatting and listening to His voice. For very young children – God’s voice/ answer to their prayer/speaking will often come as something happening to them. For example, if a young child asks God for a shiny red bike, God’s answer will be in finding this bike wrapped up as their Christmas present! With this Epiphany of who my audience is, my desire to keep going with the whole publishing thing grew – I was back on track!

Then through a conversation with a close friend, I realised that a good route to get Catholic primary school children to read my book would be to firstly talk to the Bishops and Archbishops. They greatly influence what Catholic schools buy in book-wise. So, my marketing plan now involves trying to influence Bishops!

By May 2021 God had led me to a Christian illustrator who would illustrate my book. Other members of ‘Christian Editing and Design’ are also helping me to self-publish! Self-publishing was never part of my plan- but it turns out that it is the best way for me! With self-publishing, I have a greater say in the illustrations. I can ensure that what God had told me should be included in this book, can come to pass: the Holy Trinity’s omnipresence and Jesus’ cross visible with Jesus. Kim Merritt has done a wonderful job of this. Dixie Phillips took my story and added a few tweaks here and there and made the whole thing flow like a gentle river. Shannon Herring has designed the entire book from cover to cover and pulled it together beautifully.

I am grateful to them all.

Tammy Fernando

We Are Easter People: Trust, Surrender & Faith

Who are the Easter people?

What does it mean to be an Easter People?

Easter People Trust in Jesus’ plans for their lives

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Examples from my Life

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Easter People Surrender their dreams to Jesus

Puppy Prayer

Easter People Surrender their fears to Jesus

Helping your child learn to trust God

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Lent Activities for Kids: Journey to Easter Cross

A Child’s Journey through Lent ﻿

What is Lent?

Outline of our Lenten Activity

For this activity, you will need:

Walking through Lent towards the Cross

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Walking through Lent One Footprint at a Time

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How to Teach Your Child to Listen to Jesus in Prayer – A Guide:

Preparing for Good Friday

Easter Sunday

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How to Share the LOVE in your Family

Love like the Trinity—one “Thank You” at a time. ﻿

﻿ The Holy Trinity is a 3-Person Family

﻿ One Way to Share the LOVE is by Saying THANK YOU!

First step to saying “Thank you!”

Second step to saying “Thank you!”

Third step to saying “Thank you!”

﻿ Playing the “Thank You Game”

Epiphany for Children: Why the Wise Men Worshipped Jesus

Showing Your Child How to Worship Like a King

First, children need to know why the kings fell to their knees ﻿

Secondly, children need to know why the 3 Kings removed their crowns to worship baby Jesus. ﻿

Thirdly, make the crowns to remove during worship

Fourthly, point out that where 2 or 3 are gathered in Jesus’ name, ‘the Holy One is here’

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Writing my Third book: ‘The Road to Joseph’

The bookends to my story

The storyline

When my ‘Trust Muscles’ were really s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d

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The Source of my Story

Starting at the end

How was God going to talk to Chris?

Jumble of ideas

Finding My Book Title

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Teaching Children to Pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory

Why We T each Kids to Pray for the Holy Souls

First: Understanding the suffering

Second: St. Gertrude the Great and her visions of Purgatory

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Third: Our responsibility in the communion of saints

Fourth: Make Praying for the Holy Souls in November fun for kids

﻿ During your evening prayer time…

Making Soul cakes

Traditional Soul Cakes Ingredients:

How my Soul Cakes turned out!

How to Teach Children the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary

Why Children Need the Stories Behind the Mysteries of the Rosary?

Where is the joy?

The Annunciation

The Chat: Talking with Kids About Jesus in the Mystery of the Annunciation

The Chat continues: Questions to Help Children Imagine Mary in the Annunciation

The Chat continues even more: Helping Children Imagine Themselves in the Annunciation Story

Feast of the Archangels: Prayers, Crafts & Kids’ Guide

Who are the Archangels? ﻿

Archangel Michael

Archangel Gabriel

Archangel Raphael

Celebrating this Feast Day

Helping Your Child Discover Our Lady’s Motherly Care

Jesus gives Mary to you as your mother

Our Motherhood should reflect Our Lady’s motherhood

By Example

A Child’s Journey through Lent

Love like the Trinity—one “Thank You” at a time.

The Holy Trinity is a 3-Person Family

One Way to Share the LOVE is by Saying THANK YOU!

Playing the “Thank You Game”

First, children need to know why the kings fell to their knees

Secondly, children need to know why the 3 Kings removed their crowns to worship baby Jesus.

During your evening prayer time…

Who are the Archangels?