Happy and a Joyous Easter all Season long! 2022

 Jesus Christ Has Risen, Alleluia! 

Dear friends, I have not posted since April 9. I imagine like myself you have been busy with Holy Week and Easter preparations. This year I was not as busy Holy Week with food preparations as in past years. Why? Because none of the grandchildren were going to be with us. I always enjoy making and baking different treats with the children when they are visiting or when we go to visit them. I will leave a link at the bottom of this post to share some items that I have made with them over the years. Bob and I were blessed, however, to have a dear friend visit for Easter week.

Today, I am going to share the cake that I made for Easter, its recipes, and a short reflection on what it means to celebrate.

Below is a picture of the Lemon Cake found on a Martha Stewart site along with the frosting. I had made this cake for Easter a few years ago. We enjoyed it very much as did others. My husband especially likes lemon desserts, so it seemed the perfect cake to celebrate Christ's rising from the dead this Easter Sunday. 

Lemon Easter Cake 

Here are the links for the cake recipe and for the frosting:

Lemon Cake, Whipped Frosting

CELEBRATING

What does it mean to celebrate a season or feast day in the Church year, the liturgical year? 

To celebrate means to honor, give praise and rejoice in a person or an event. We celebrate family birthdays, anniversaries, retirements, and other events throughout family life. We celebrate with gifts and often parties acknowledging the life of the person we are celebrating and/or the various milestone such as a 25th wedding anniversary. 

In the Church we celebrate with honor, praise, and rejoicing the Persons of the Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We call this special kind of celebrating Worship.

Easter is the greatest feast in all the events of the Catholic Church. In fact it is THE solemn feast when  heaven and earth rejoice at the Lord's triumph over sin and death and His resurrection. It is such a tremendous feast that it lasts 8 days! The eight days after Easter are called the Octave of Easter. 

Easter is not just an 8 day celebration. Easter is an entire season, 50 days! It is 50 days for us to reflect and rejoice and celebrate Christ's victory over sin and death. Some times when Easter Sunday is over or the Octave is completed, we forget we are still in the Easter Season. I encourage you to follow the readings at daily Mass or if you are able to attend daily Mass to recall and reflect what the Apostles and early disciples were doing in the first days and years of the Church after the resurrection and ascension of Our Lord.

As you know I enjoy preparing celebratory foods to celebrate the feast days. Music is another way many who have the gifts and talents give honor, praise, and rejoice in the great events of the Easter season. Prayer is an additional special way we can lift up our voices to the Lord in celebration of this Holy Season. Below I have included the Regina Caeli prayer in English and Latin, which is prayed during the Easter Season instead of the Angelus. If you haven't purchased the book, The Thief Who Stole Heaven by Raymond Arroyo, for your children or grandchildren, I highly recommend it. 

Queen of Heaven

V. Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia. 
R. For He whom you did merit to bear, alleluia. 
V. Has risen, as he said, alleluia. 
R. Pray for us to God, alleluia.
V. Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia. 
R. For the Lord has truly risen, alleluia.

Let us pray. O God, who gave joy to the world through the resurrection of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, grant we beseech Thee, that through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, His Mother, we may obtain the joys of everlasting life. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Regina caeli

V. Regina caeli, laetare, alleluia. 
R. Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia. 
V. Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia. 
R. Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.

V. Gaude et laetare, Virgo Maria, alleluia. 
R. Quia surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia.

Oremus. Deus, qui per resurrectionem Filii tui, Domini nostri Iesu Christi, mundum laetificare dignatus es: praesta, quaesumus; ut per eius Genetricem Virginem Mariam, perpetuae capiamus gaudia vitae. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Link for the The Thief Who Stole Heaven

The Thief Who Stole Heaven

Previous Posts with Easter treats for and with children: April 4, 2015 and April 11, 2020. You can find them by clicking on the link in the Archives to the right of this post.

WISHING YOU AND YOUR FAMILY A VERY JOYOUS AND EASTER SEASON!

St. Maria Goretti, July 6, Heroic Virtues: Purity and Forgiveness

Maria's mother viewing a
painting of Maria

The last young saint for our Lenten 2022 line-up is St. Maria Goretti. We have looked at the holy lives of a number of young saints: Jacinta and Francisco Marto, Chiara Luce Bandin, Dominic Savio, Carlo Acutis during the last few weeks. I chose St. Maria Goretti for Holy Week because like Christ while dying she chose to forgive her assailant.

Some of you may have viewed the relics of St. Maria Goretti in the fall of  2015. Pope Francis chose to send her relics to the United States on a tour before he opened up the Year of Mercy, December 8, 2015. St. Maria Goretti's relics were chosen because of her heroic act of forgiving her murderer on her death bed. The photograph to the left was taken of a picture accompany her relics.

Maria was born on October 16, 1890, in Italy. She was baptized the following day and named Maria Teresa. She was the oldest of six children. Her parents were faithful Catholics but very poor. When Maria was six years old the family moved to a location about forty miles south of Rome. Her father along with another family acquaintance, Govanni Serenelli, agreed to become sharecroppers on the acreage of a wealthy landowner. 

Govanni Serenelli and his youngest son, Alessandro, lived in a duplex type home with the Goretti family on one side and the Serenellis on the other; they shared a common kitchen. In 1900, Maria's father was bitten by a mosquito and died of malaria. Maria's mother had to assume the work of her husband in the fields to raise crops for her family and the owner. Maria was left at age ten to watch her five younger siblings, make dinner, and clean the Serenellis' house and her own home.

In 1901, Maria made her First Holy Communion. She had many responsibilities for one so young, and she rose to the challenges capably. It was during this time that Alessandro attempted repeatedly to seduce Maria. He was eight years older than she and lived right next door. Maria refused his advances and reminded him that God did not want them to commit this mortal sin. Finally on July 5, 1902, Alessandro determined to rape her and if she did not comply to kill her. Maria fought back valiantly saving her virginity, but Alessandro was furious at her refusal to give in to him and he stabbed her fourteen times with a sharp instrument. Maria was taken to the hospital where her wounds became infected and she died the next day, July 6. Her last words were, "I forgive Alessandro Serenelli...and I want him with me in heaven forever."

Alessandro was tried for his crime and sentenced to prison for thirty years. It was in 1908 while serving his sentence that Maria Goretti appeared to him in a vision. She was in a garden with fourteen flowers representing the fourteen wounds she had suffered. She told Alessandro that she forgave him and she offered each flower one by one to him. It was at this moment that his angel as he liked to call Maria in the years to come, brought him forgiveness and obtained for him the grace of a deep and permanent conversion. From that time on, he was a model prisoner full of God's peace. In 1929 he was released from prison and in 1934 he sought out Maria's mother, Assunta, and asked for her forgiveness for murdering Maria. She forgave him. Alessandro entered the Franciscan Capuchin Order in 1937 as a lay brother serving as a porter, gardener, and general laborer. During the canonization process for Maria, he testified to her heroic virtue and martyrdom.

As we enter Holy Week, we might reflect on St. Maria Goretti and her mother's spirit of forgiveness. Both forgave Alessandro. Let us turn to St. Maria and ask her to help us have a merciful and forgiving heart. It can be very hard at times, but few of us are asked to forgive as Maria and her mother have forgiven. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that, mercy is "the compassion in our hearts for another person's misery, a compassion that drives us to do what we can to help him. (Summa Theologica II-II,30.1) It would have been so easy for Maria and her mother to see only how Alessandro had violated their rights and dignity, but instead they looked at him and saw the darkness and misery his soul was in. Maria forgave him on her death bed and interceded with God for him. Assunta forgave Alessandro and extended her forgiveness to such an extent that she called him her adopted son in future years.

These young saints of our Lenten posts give us much to think about as we prepare for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. May they help us to grow ever deeper in our love and faithfulness to Jesus.

Wishing you and your families many graces during the Triduum and a Joyous Easter!

Prayers to Maria Goretti

O God, author of innocence and lover of chastity, who bestowed the grace of martyrdom on your handmaid, the Virgin Saint Maria Goretti, in her youth, grant, we pray, through her intercession, that, as you gave her a crown for her steadfastness, so we, too, may be firm in obeying your commandments.
– The Roman Missal

Saint Maria Goretti, strengthened by God's grace, you did not hesitate, even at the age of twelve, to sacrifice life itself to defend your virginal purity. Look graciously on the unhappy human race that has strayed far from the path of eternal salvation. Teach us all, and especially our youth, the courage and promptness that will help us avoid anything that could offend Jesus. Obtain for me a great horror of sin, so that I may live a holy life on earth and win eternal glory in heaven. Amen.

Books on Maria Goretti's Life

 

Blessed Carlo Acutis, October 12, A Saint Dressed in Jeans, Sneakers, and Sweater!

Blessed Carlo with the Eucharist

Blessed Carlo Acutis was born in the same month, May, and year, 1991, as our youngest son, Michael. Born in London, England and baptized on May 15, 1991, Carlo's family moved to Milan, Italy, in September when he was 4 months old. It is said that when he was four years old, his maternal grandfather who had recently died, appeared to him and asked for his prayers.

Carlo showed an interest from an early age in religious practices and asked his Polish nanny many questions about the faith. When he was seven he received his First Holy Communion. His love for Jesus was evident by his prayers either said before Mass in front of the Tabernacle or after Mass. He is known for saying, "To always be close to Jesus that is my life plan."

Carlo had a deep love for Jesus, but he was also very much a regular kid. He loved soccer, his friends, playing video games, and being a computer whiz. His deep, living faith was woven into his 20th & 21st century life. 

Many who knew him considered him a genius with the computer. His skill level was so developed that at age eleven he began creating a website which catalogued Eucharistic miracles from around the world. He completed it in 2005. The website's link is located below this article. 

Carlo called the Sacrament of the Eucharist, "My highway to heaven." He tried to consistently practice Eucharistic devotion and believed that "By standing before the Eucharistic Lord we become holy."  Venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen who is also in the process of canonization said something similar,  "During the Holy Hour we grow more and more into His likeness."(Jesus).

Of course Carlo had his favorite saints and places. St. Francis of Assisi and the town of Assisi was a special favorite. Other favorites were saints that were young like him: St. Tarcisius, St. Bernadette Soubirous, Sts. Francisco and Jacinta Marto, St. Dominic Savio, and St. Aloysius Gonzaga. 

In 2006, a fulminating leukemia ravaged the body of this fifteen year old young man who loved Jesus deeply. He died on October 12, after having offered his sufferings to Our Lord for Pope Benedict XVI and the Church. His family and friends, all who knew him and his Eucharistic miracles website were grief stricken. He requested that he be buried in Assisi. His body resides in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Assisi, Italy. 

In 2013 the process of canonization was begun. He was declared venerable in 2018 and a miracle was confirmed which allowed him to be beatified on October 10, 2020. Before his beatification, his tomb was opened, and his body was found to be intact. He was dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a sweater as requested, a true teenager! His witness to holiness is a truly uplifting one. A teen of his times who chose to follow Jesus. We can hope that in the next few years he will be declared a saint. It would be wonderful to attend his canonization. I hope some of you will consider it.

Below, I have listed many websites which include a fuller picture of Blessed Carlo Acutis' life. There is something in his story for everyone, old and young. May he bless us from heaven and keep each one of us "young at heart," true lovers of Jesus. A novena prayer is included. Your Catholic bookstores and Amazon have numerous biographies of him. I can not recommend one yet, as I am only getting to know him better myself. Let's ask him to give us a greater love for the Eucharistic Lord as we finish up our Lent of 2022.

Official Prayer: Carlo Acutis. 

Oh Father,

who has given us the ardent testimony,
of the young Blessed Carlo Acutis,
who made the Eucharist the core of his life
and the strength of his daily commitments
so that everybody may love You above all else,
let him soon be
counted among the Saints in Your Church.

Confirm my faith,
nurture my hope,
strengthen my charity,
in the image of young Carlo
who, growing in these virtues,
now lives with You.

Grant me the grace that I need 

I trust in You, Father,
and your Beloved Son Jesus,
in the Virgin Mary, our Dearest Mother,
and in the intervention of Your Blessed Carlo Acutis.

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be

Blessed Carlo, Pray for Us!

 English Website

Official Website

Eucharistic Miracles

Carlo Acutis 

Carlo's plan of life

Tarcisius

Carlo wears jeans

Excellent Parish Write-up