Ways to Observe Lent at Home: Stational Churches and Lent "Wreath"

After all the great family things for Advent (the wreath, Jesse Tree, calendar, etc), Lent can seem like a bit of a let down. Plus, you are suppose to be doing penance and fasting. But seeing as we are only two weeks from Lent it is time to start getting ready!

Over the course of our marriage, we have come up with two things that we really like for keeping us focused on Lent as a family: a Lent "wreath" and following the Stational Churches of Rome on a map.

Lent "Wreath"

This "wreath" was inspired by the Tenebrae (meaning "darkness") service of the last three days of Holy Week. The prayers at the service are Matins and Lauds for those days, but it also includes a ritual extinguishing of candles. After each set of prayers one candle is extinguished so that the prayer ends in darkness and silence. The first time I ever went to a Tenebrae service I was struck by the beauty of the prayers and the symbolism of the lights being put out as Christ is placed in the tomb.

I wanted to imitate Tenebrae in our home throughout Lent, so I decided to make a Lenten centerpiece with six candles, one for each Sunday of Lent. We pray prayers from Tenebrae each Sunday and extinguish a candle each week. The rest of the week we just light the appropriate amount of candles for that week. Leaving none lit during Holy Week.

The main part of the Lent wreath is the cross trivet. I purchased ours from here. The cross holds six tea candles perfectly to mark the six Sundays of Lent. I have a PDF of the prayers for each Sunday for your use here. Really you can use whatever for your centerpiece. The main idea is the six candles.

Lenten Stational Churches

Normally, when one thinks of "stations" during Lent, one thinks of the Stations of the Cross. These are wonderful for praying with during Lent. We decided to include another type of station into our observation of Lent: the Stational churches of Rome. The Pope used to celebrate Mass in a different Roman church everyday for all of Lent; there are also stations for other liturgical seasons. The Pontifical North American College still follows the tradition of attending Mass at each of the stational churches. There is a more detailed history of the tradition on their site. Since we are not in Rome (though maybe we will be blessed with a Rome semester at some point), we mark the stations on a map.

Here we have our giant laminated map of Rome. M bought this during our visit to Rome while we were studying abroad. It is pretty neat and has a lot of the churches marked already. This map looks like it includes the necessary parts of Rome and it comes laminated.

The New Liturgical Movement had posts on the Stations a few years ago which I used to compile a list and photos of each stational church. I also made another document that has teeny tiny photos with the comparable number from the first document. These I printed, cut out, and "laminated" in clear packing tape (I like to think of that as being resourceful). If you are interested in trying this out, feel free to use my documents.

 I think they are pretty cute!

Compared to a pen in size.

Every day of Lent look at the above linked document of the stational church, and read about the church from our Lenten volume of Dom Gueranger's Liturgical Year. (St. Thérèse of Liseux and her family used his works) If you do not have this volume, following the posts at the New Liturgical Movement would work, or many 1962 missals of the Extraordinary Form Masss also mention the Stational Churches.

Here it is with our traditional St. Andrew Missal.

We use this map in the St. Andrew Missal to find the location of each church and then stuck them to the map with sticky tack.

It is neat to "travel" around Rome during Lent, especially knowing that the NAC seminarians and priests were actually celebrating Mass at the stational church each day. The kids loved gazing at the map, looking at the pictures of churches, and discussing how the martyr saints died.
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I hope these ideas help you and your family observe Lent more fully! Let me know if you have any questions. I would love to help!

Also, I am thinking of adding an activity for the kids when they make a sacrifice or do a kind deed, but I have not looked for any yet.

Blessed is She: Obedience to God's Law

Presentation of Christ at the Temple by Hans Holbein the Elder

The Presentation of Our Lord, traditionally known as the Purification of Our Lady or Candlemas, is the traditional end of the Christmas season. Mary has waited the required 40 days and is now fulfilling the law of Moses in going to the Temple to be purified and to present her Son.

How beautiful it is to see God Himself submitting to the law, granted it is the law that He established. But God lowered himself to become a man and then showed us the perfect way to be a man. Mary, we know because of her perpetual virginity, did not need to be purified; she was always pure. Jesus did not need to be presented; He was the Lord, Himself...
Read the daily readings and the rest of today's Blessed is She devotion (written by yours truly) here...

Seven Late Takes: Septuagesima Sunday

1. This is the last weekend of my husband's winter break. His school has a January term, in which teaching is voluntary, so he has been researching and class prepping since we got home from the the girls call, "our travels." We are really going to have to live it up this weekend. It is nice when the semester starts because it helps us establish a better routine. We have been pretty good about home schooling, but getting up for morning Mass has been a struggle. We have been pulling the tired pregnant lady card when the alarm goes off, and while it sounds legitimate, the mornings we do get up I am just fine.

2. The weird thing about this semester is that once finals are done we will be at the due date for this next baby. We have not had a new baby in over two years so it will be a family adjustment. I think it will be easier than the transition to three. When F was born, G was not even 4 and L was almost 2. It will be much different with a 6 year old, a 4.5 year old, and a 2.5 year old, who all play well together.

3. Speaking of a 2 year old, potty training is still going on. It has improved greatly over the weekend from the small accidents we were having last week. The only question is when to stop awarding her with chocolate every time.

4. We finally employed our Ikea greenhouse. We planted our amaryllis from M's aunt and found some potted herbs at Trader Joe's. Now I need to get around to planting some basil and find another good indoor flower to get us through until our bulbs come up outside. I really like the greenhouse largely because it is easy to move the plants if we want use of the whole table and it mostly keeps the little hands away from the plants, unless they get a desire for some fresh parsley.

5. We have been spending our last two evenings watching movies about St. Francis of Assisi. The first, Francesco directed by Liliana Cavani, I recommend never watching; it is just not worth your time and really does not portray his life well at all. Cavani does not grasp St. Francis or his motivations whatsoever. The second movie was The Flowers of Saint Francis. It is based on several episodes from the book The Little Flowers of St. Francis, and it embodies Franciscanism beautifully. The neat thing about it is that the director, Roberto Rossellini, used real Francisca friars to play the part of the Franciscan monks.

6. Today, in the old tradition of the Christmas season, we took down our Christmas decorations. F finally got to indulge her toddler desire of taking ornaments off the tree for as long as she desired. I really like the rhythm we have around our Christmas celebration. Taking down the tree listening to Christmas music was an appropriate end cap to our putting it up listening to the same music in December. Tomorrow is Candlemas, the Presentation of our Lord, and we are going to celebrate by having crepes, which is another traditional food. Today also happens to be Septuagesima Sunday, which means buried the "Alleluia" until Easter, and we are 70 days from Easter and less than three weeks from Ash Wednesday.

 
7. Finally, for people like my sister who like to see it, I present my 22 week bump (and my new favorite, super soft sweater that I found on clearance last week):

 

 Linking up with Kelly @ This Ain't the Lyceum!