Cradle Catholics Help!

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SoonerSweetie

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My fiance and I both converted from the Southern Baptist faith. We will be getting married in May of 05 and we have no idea on how to raise a Catholic family. What were some of the traditions and special Catholic things you used to do with your family when you were a child? Did your parents pray the rosary with you? Did you light candles at advent? help please!
 
Growing up Catholic in a large family was fun but I am not sure it was easy on my parents.

We prayed the rosary everynight, (as all the rest of the neighborhood was out playing hide and go seek) and there we were just praying for it to be over.
Later in life I learned the value of those rosaries ( each rosary is like a life jacket thrown to one more drowning person)
They also helped me to return to my faith.

We went to early Mass and sat in the first pew every Sunday (yes even on vacation)

When the church got rid of all the statues somehow my mothers large family inherited many of them. So there sat St. Peter, and St. Joseph in the middle of the living room.

A crucifix in every room, and a picture of Mary.

Holy water font by the doors that was refilled often.
To this day I have holy water in my home with two fonts and I was amazed at the football players of all denominations that would bless themselves because they watched my son do it.

Advent candles with the prayers, the Nativity under the tree always learning the true meaning of every holiday. In my home now I also have a stocking for Jesus that is used for sacrifices.

Even down to stations of the cross every week during lent learning to make sacrifices from a young age, for lent and other times of the year.

Grace at every meal.

The love of the saints especially someone like St. Anthony who daily helped someone find shoes, socks boots etc.

Thank you for posting this sometimes to write it all out you finally appreciate the beauty in all that hard work your parents did.
Before my mother died I often thanked her for my faith, but I wish I could have thanked her for each individual thing that I have posted.

May God bless you on your journey.🙂
 
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SoonerSweetie:
My fiance and I both converted from the Southern Baptist faith. We will be getting married in May of 05 and we have no idea on how to raise a Catholic family. What were some of the traditions and special Catholic things you used to do with your family when you were a child? Did your parents pray the rosary with you? Did you light candles at advent? help please!
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SoonerSweetie,

Your forum nickname suits your question. I am a cradle Catholic that raised four children that I dearly love. Over the course of parenting the biggest mistake I made was not providing enough spiritual leadership. My wife and I had at times set things on auto-pilot. As time went on we began to wake up and smell the coffee, and tried our best to help our children know the Lord, and we continue to pray for them.

When I grew up as a child we said the rosary frequently as a family. This is a great practice and I still say the rosary almost everyday.

Praying with your children before meals, and at bedtime are very important. Most importantly is to teach your children what it means to pray “all the time.” Our relationship to the Lord is like the relationship to our family. Our relationship with the Lord is, however, the unltimate relationship. Children need to see that their parents extend this sense of relationship in the family to their relationship with God.

Since we are constantly communicating with our children and they with us, they can easily learn to do the same with the Lord. We should pray all the time. Every transition during the day can be a quick moment for prayer. The moment we wake up we can say a prayer of thanksgiving and praise. Teach your children this idea and have them say little prayers throughout the day as they go from home to school, study to play, and from chores to meals. Whatever the interval of change in their activities is a new opportunity to get to know the one they love.

The love between spouses is also a wonderful example to children. Explain to them that your happiness and love is because you let the Lord into every part of your marriage. Just fill their lives with moments of prayer and the joy that only the Lord can give.
 
Welcome Home! Unfortunately I was raised in a nominal Catholic home so there weren’t many Catholic traditions. I do remember going to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and occasionlly getting our baskets blessed on Easter.

Now that I’m married and have a child of my home we’ve tried to instill some traditions. We do the advent wreath at Christmas, and still do midnight Mass (even when my daughter was a toddler). There’s just something about the silence of midnight walking into church on Christmas Eve that just truly brings home the spirit of Christmas to me.

I don’t know if this is a “Catholic tradition” but we make the sign of the cross when when an ambulance or fire truck goes by with sirens on. (That I got from my older sister.)

We gather as a family before bed and pray the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be and an Act of Contrition and we read from the Bible. (We also have spontanious prayer.)

During Lent we’ve said the Divine Mercy Chaplet as a family on Fridays. (There’s a beautiful sung version by Vinny Flynn on tape that we use.)

We’ve tried the Rosary as a family but it’s till hard for my 9 year old to sit still thru it.

I know there’s probably many other wonderful traditions that people do, I look forward to reading them and maybe adding some to our own.
 
SoonerSweetie,

I agree with Toni. Religious symbols in the home are very important. They help remind us of Jesus and our heavenly family. Small reminders like this prompt spiritual thoughts and prayers.

Teach your children reverence, especially in church with special love and reverence for the Eucharist. Teach them the meaning of the word “holy” and then show them what it means by how you live and how you love one another.

Holy families raise holy children. I will pray for you and your husband.
 
There are a lot of good books on Catholic traditions. Try the CA bookstore or Ignatius Press to start. I grew up with what I thought was a lot of Catholic traditions but I’m amazed to find out how much more there were that were really neat!

I say steep them in tradition now because the world will do it’s best to counteract whatever you do now! Give 'em a good foundation to draw on!
 
I could have been in Toni’s family for all her suggestions sound familiar. I will add to that.

We went on vacactions and stopped at all the Catholic spots- grottos, churches, basillicas, missions, National Cathedral, Mother Houses or religious orders, Catholic cemeteries, and WE NEVER MISSED MASS EVER! When we went to visit someone at the Catholic Hospital, we went to the chapel first to pray and then went to their room.

We went to every wake of every 3rd 4th, and 5th cousin of my parents. We prayed special intentions all the time for everyone in the family and neighborhood.

We went to visit great aunts at the convents, and we spent hours with the clergy. We would dress up in our communion dresses the day after our First Communion to go and visit them since they couldn’t be there on the real day with us.

We worked at the rectory as high schoolers. We anwered phones for the priests (before the days of answering machines), cleaned when the cleaning lady was out, and took them to the store if they needed it.

We went to every religious planned activity at church. I mean every activity. We even went to away parish’s activities on vacation. We even went to neighboring parish activities that were special- like spaghetti dinners.

In addition to daily rosary after dinner, we had the traveling Blessed Mother Statue at our house once a year, and neighbors came over to pray the rosary with us.

We said bedtime prayers every night, on our knees. Even my parents did this. It was routine.

We read the lives of the saints-every one we could get our hands on. We listened to Catholic stories from our Catholic teachers. You know- stories about good God fearing people that ended well because of PRAYER AND BELIEF IN GOD!

There is one difference. I never thanked my Mom for all this. I sure complained enough when I was growing up. I know she knows that I am appreciative. I just wish I had thanked her. I pray on one of her rosaries that she made (she belonged to a group that made them and sent them to the missions) every day, and I feel like in the end we really do become our moms.

I recently found a sign that my mom hung in our kitchen when I was young. It was popular at that time. It simply says: SMILE GOD LOVES YOU!

Congratulations on becoming Catholic and just be sure to do some of these wonderful things with your children. They will love you for it when they are older.
 
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Toni:
Holy water font by the doors that was refilled often.
To this day I have holy water in my home with two fonts and I was amazed at the football players of all denominations that would bless themselves because they watched my son do it.
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Wow tha’s just beautiful!🙂

We also have Jesus and Mary pictures in every room. A large Crusifix in the living room, and one in all the bedrooms. Small St. Statues mixed in with other knick-knacks around the house. Holy cards tacked up in differant places. A picture of the Pope hung above the fireplace along side other family photos. A holy water font by the front door, rosaries hung about thru out the house. A garden statue of Mary in our front yard. I think I’ve covered everything.😃
 
I’m a cradle Catholic, but apart from Lenten fish Fridays, the Advent wreath, the Nativity scene on the mantle, and grace before meals (and Mass most Sundays) you would never know it in my family’s home. Our family wasn’t big on sacramentals when I was growing up.

I’d like to have a more “Catholic” atmosphere for my children, so I’ve done a bit of investigating. One really neat book I’ve found (haven’t shelled out the money for it yet, but I seek it out each time I go to the bookstore) is The Catholic Home by Meredith Gould. She’s actually a Catholic convert from Judaism who wanted to express her new faith in her home, so she did a lot of research on various traditions in Catholic home worship and sacramentals. It’s a neat read- gives the historical meaning of things like the Advent wreath (and many others), talks about what people in different cultures do and eat on major feast days, gives ideas on how to observe the different parts of the liturgical year, etc.
 
My family was, unfortunately, Catholic in namesake really, like another poster said. There were four boys and two girls. All six of us went to Catholic school and to this day navy blue plaid has a special place in my heart (although at the time I wanted to wear jeans or something more trendy). We went to morning mass at school, older kids did the readings. We cleaned the rectory on occasion and used our old church as a gym floor when the the new one was being built. You never had to guess what was on the lunch menu on Friday–no surprises there, fish, of course. I too have fond memories of midnight mass–the one mass that seemed even more mystical through sleepy child eyes. I loved bingo at the K of C (Knights of Columbus) on weekends where I could get Shirley Temples complete with the cherry on top. My aunt and her family were more devout Catholics. They had ten children and were quite poor. At their house I remember rosary by candlelight, crucifixes and the last supper on the wall. And, yes, Mary was in the front yard for all to see. Now that I have three children of my own, I try to incorporate our faith into every day. My two boys love to say the rosary. Last year my six year-old was the first to know all his prayers in catechism class and did the “bonus” act of contrition for a special star. (He’s very competitive–but I take it how I can get it 🙂 ) Last week my five year-old got a good report after his Sunday class that he had helped lead the other children in the rosary and helped them find the right beads.

Welcome home and good luck starting tradition in your family!
 
Before I started kindergarten (and all through gradeschool during the summers) we would go to mass at a nursing home every Friday. This is especially good because it gives you a “feel” for the mass from a young age, you realize that Church is more than just an hour on Sunday. Not to mention the Old Ladies (I capitalize because they were/are that important) love having little kids crawling all over them and talking and playing with them.

Although the people that I crawled all over are long gone, those people still have an affect on my life. I don’t know any of their names, or any of their background, but they are probably a large part of why I turned out the way I did. Not to mention that the Middle Aged Ladies who went to mass there are now “Old”, and they are a kind of Fan Club for me. My mom still sights them when I have an orchestra concert or a play or something like that.

We used to do Night Prayers every night, we had a votive candle that was under a crucifix, and we would light it every night for Night Prayers. I wish we would have kept up that tradition.

And another thing–once you start a tradition, don’t let it fall away. Make it a point to keep praying the rosary, keep going to mass, keep saying night prayers, keep praying OUTLOUD at restaurants, etc, etc throughout the entire time your kids live with you, and then even after they are all grown and gone.

Good luck, God bless,
PioMagnus
 
I am a convert, but my wife was raised Catholic. One thing we do, that she grew up with is celebrating feast days. We remember a family member on their feast days with some sort of recoginition (gift, do the chores for them, etc.) as well as other significatn feast, like St. Francis and Guardian Angels.
 
I’m a convert, one tradition that I “inherited” from Catholic friends - blessing our son. Every night before bed, I trace the sign of the cross on his forehead and say a brief prayer for him. He is now a big 14 year old 165 LB lineman, everynight - even in those grumpy teen evenings or when he has friends sleeping over - he’ll come to me and kind of push his forehead toward me. Makes the evenings special no matter what is going on!
 
What a great thread!

Our family always said grace at mealtimes, always prayed before bed, and always went to mass on Sundays.

During Lent, the whole family gave up something and we would give to a particular charity. I think it was called Operation Rice Bowl or something. It was a little cardboard thing you had to put together and then you put money in it. We also always had to stay in the house on Good Friday between the hours of noon and 3 and pray the rosary, or read the Bible, etc. which I remember as being so hard because we finally had a day off of school and I had to spend it inside!!! 🙂

During Advent, we’d pick angels off the Christmas tree at church , and they were our adopted family that we would get to buy gifts for. We always had an advent wreath and lit a new candle each Sunday evening at dinner.

During the Christmas season, the nativity was always promptly displayed and we said a prayer in front of it to baby Jesus every night before bed. We have pictures of my brother and I as toddlers kneeling in front of the nativity praying. I cherish those pictures.

Anyways, that was a great trip down memory lane… thanks for the ticket! 🙂
 
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