Sponsoring a Novena Mass

To commemorate the feast day of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, the Shrine has been holding a series of Theresian talks and celebrating a novena mass for the past few days. The office sponsored the seventh day of the novena. Officers and staff were on hand at the Shrine for the mass. The good part is that we had 95% of employees there. The sad part? For such a huge church and a first Wednesday mass, there were just a handful of attendees. The priests handling the Shrine need to do something about being more involved in the surrounding communities to draw people in. I swear, it's just the office doing stuff! Sigh!

Anyway, we had the staff be more involved in the entire mass, from the readings, the novena, and the offertory. It was comical at times but it was great to see all of them being so into the mass for St Therese.

October is also the month for the Holy Rosary. I told myself that I wanted the kids to know more about the Rosary and how to say it, especially; this is my mission for this month. So yesterday, we started. Poor planing on my part (or last minute planning? hehehe), I wasn't able to pass by the store to get rosaries. And I couldn't find any rosary at home, except the one that Mommy Nena gave us from Jerusalem. So we had that, and I hurriedly surfed the internet and downloaded everything we would need.

So, with ONE rosary between the 3 kids and Japa and myself (my mother would CRINGE if she reads this!!!) and a bunch of printed out Rosary prayers and the Litany, we began. The kids' eyes were glued to their papers, scared to look up for fear they would lose their place. The papers had a drawing of the rosary beads on them, as well as the numbers for the corresponding prayers.

It was funny, cute, and touching to see them throw themselves into the prayers. I purposely recited the prayers slow, just so they could read along. You could see their fingers going up as they counted off the number of Hail Mary's for a decade. We each took our turn leading, so they would get used to it.

So today, during the Rosary, Raegan was the leader. She announced the mysteries at the beginning of each decade, and led everyone in the Litany. Great job, I thought! :) Now, the goal is to keep this up, and make this a part of our daily lives. I remember Boydee and I many many years ago, when we would do the same thing with Lola Luz. I am not kidding when I say that I probably had the entire Litany memorized then! :)

Some catch up scraps, starting with Raegan's 7th Month of The Sisterhood Challenge!



TTFN!