Hey families,

It has been a crazy week, and I hope and pray you are all adjusting to our new temporary normal. First, let’s remember to keep each other in our daily prayers and especially entrust our families to Our Lady’s Intercession. Please join me in the Hail Mary when you read this. We can’t rely too much on our Mother’s intercession, especially in this time of family quarantine.I want to talk today for just a moment about the Domestic Church. I think we have a great opportunity within this suffering to grow our Domestic Churches. If you are not familiar with the term, that is how the Church refers to the family. It is the first place that we encounter God and it is the primary place where we learn who God is. During this time when we are caught at home and when we are without our normal sacramental parish lives, we can focus on how we are living and growing in our relationship with God at home. What structures are you incorporating at home to grow?

I have a couple recommendations for you right now, and if you look below I have a few links for further reading and viewing.

1) Create a prayer space in your home. We are deprived of our chapels to pray in, and having a space set aside for prayer helps us to focus when we do come for prayer. Set a chair or two and maybe a couple pillows to kneel on in a corner of the house. Put a bible, some spiritual books, rosaries, and some religious art in that corner for something to read or look at while you pray. It could be as small as a holy card. Make it a priority to pray in that small home chapel.
2) Take daily time for personal prayer and family prayer. Create a new routine. Maybe you decide to do a family rosary at night or every morning you could do the morning offering. Pick a time that you will pray on your own every day. It doesn’t have to be much, by create some consistency in your family prayer when consistency is lacking just about everywhere else. Schedules are really important for us and our kids, and when we are deprived of our school and work schedules we NEED to create our own.
3) Try to keep your normal Sunday schedule. Get dressed up for mass and sit on your couch together to watch your parish stream the mass. Or maybe you prefer to read the Sunday readings together and talk about what God is speaking to you through them. Then make an act of spiritual communion and grow in your desire to receive God in the Eucharist. When we are finally able to once again, it will be that much more powerful. I’ve got a great article that I posted for your kids as well that gives some tips and some powerful reflection on the loss of mass. We also sent them this google doc which has the links for our local and some nation wide streams of mass and other prayers.

Don’t try to totally upend your normal home life, and don’t try to take EVERY opportunity you can. Pick just a couple things that you want to incorporate and take a week or two to make them normal. After that you can consider if you want to add more. We have some time to ramp up. And remember that we are here for you, as are your priests and youth ministers. Reach out if you need any support.”