Let’s thank our educators with gifts during Christmastime and at the end of the year! Find inspiration for the perfect gifts for the Catholic teacher gifts in your life right here!
(A lot of these gifts are also great for non-teachers so think of others on your list too!)
With the Advent season upon us, many of us are Christmas shopping for our loved ones and what better place to spend our money than by supporting our religious sisters?
Here are Catholic Gifts Homemade and Created by Nuns & Monks!
Pin this article for future gift-giving ideas (because birthdays happen too)!
Need a reminder to say the St Andrew Christmas Novena this Advent? Keep your cell phone wallpaper or lock screen set on one of these beautiful, free St Andrew Christmas Novena wallpaper images and you’ll always have it at your fingertips!
What is the St Andrew Christmas Novena?
It is a novena prayer which starts on Saint Andrew‘s feast day, November 30th, and continues to Christmas Day.
Why do you pray it?
This novena is a beautiful way to keep Christ at the center of your Advent and to prepare your heart for His coming on Christmas!
How do I pray it?
This novena is said daily, 15 times per day. You can set a reminder on your phone or simply say the prayer overtime you look at your phone and see one of these wallpapers on it. More importantly though, say the prayer with love and reverence!
To download, click the image and another will pop up. Manually save that to your phone and set it at your wall paper or lock screen.
As Christmas draws nearer, you realize that you haven’t properly prepared for the coming of Christ. Maybe you’re been busy with hosting guests or you only focused on the family and your kids’ Jesse Tree… but you don’t feel prepared.
Avoid those feelings by steeping yourself in prayer and reading a Catholic meditative book to prepare yourself throughout Advent for the great Christmas season!
Here are some recommended books to read this Advent:
The Advent of Christ
Reflect on Scripture to prepare your heart for Christmas. Edward Sri brings you back in history to live during the actual time the Messiah is born. Live it as it happens! Find it on Amazon
The Joy of Advent
Prayerful reflections from Pope Francis and scriptural verses will bring you peace and joy as you prepare for Christmas this Advent season. Find it on Amazon
Advent and Christmas with Fulton J. Sheen
Walk through Advent towards Christmas and through Christmas with the words of Blessed Fulton Sheen. Celebrate all of the days of Christmas! See it on Amazon
Celebrating a Merry Catholic Christmas
If you’ve ever wondered why we use an Advent wreath, this book digs into the spiritual significances of the traditions we do and helps to enrich your family’s preparation for Christmas (including ideas for the feast days)! See it on Amazon
A Catholic Family Advent
Devotions and reflections for the Catholic family to prepare for Christmas throughout the Advent season! See it on Amazon
Meditations for Advent
Slow down this Advent with meditations for each day leading up to Christmas, led by Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, one of the greatest homilists in the history of the Church. See it on Amazon
Located in the Diocese of Birmingham, Alabama, the The Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament hosts a unique pilgrimage experience and a history with Mother Angelica.
Hanceville, Alabama: The Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament
Mother Angelica, a sister in the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration (PCPA) had a hand in building this beautiful shrine (which you can read more about here). The Poor Clares still reside at this shrine and keep Perpetual Adoration going!
The prayerful environment at the shrine is an idyllic location for your next pilgrimage!
Do you want to learn more about God’s love? Here is what several saints have said about His unending love! Take it to heart and discover what it looks like to St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Maria Goretti, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Catherine of Siena.
“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” -St. Augustine of Hippo
“He loves, He hopes, He waits. Our Lord prefers to wait for the sinner for years rather than keep us waiting an instant.” -St. Maria Goretti
“God’s love for us is not greater in heaven than it is now.” St. Thomas Aquinas
“When did God’s love for you begin? When He began to be God. When did He begin to be God? Never, for He has always been without beginning and without end, and so He has always loved you from eternity.” St. Francis de Sales
“Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind.” -Saint Catherine of Siena
I hope the quotes from these Catholic saints inspire you to contemplate the great love God has for you and the people in your life!
On a recent trip to Indonesia, I had to visit the Catholic Cathedral in Jakarta. I’ve visited countless Catholic churches and cathedrals throughout the US, many in Europe, and a handful in Asia. I love seeing the beauty and differences (and similarities!) between the churches in different areas.
Gereja Kathedral, the Catholic cathedral in Jakarta, Indonesia, was no different. Here are some images of the trip with a hidden, beautiful Catholic gem that you might overlook if you visit without reading this first!
Gereja Kathedral (also known as St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral) is a Neo-Gothic church which has twin ornamental towers, constructed of steel. The interior of the church has beautiful stained glass depicting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38694537
A statue of Our Lady of Indoneisa, a lifelike statue of Pieta, and perpetual Eucharistic Adoration are also present in the church.
Side view of the Cathedral
The outside of the Cathedral is also beautiful!
cathedral courtyard
A lovely grotto is just outside the church where our surprise relic is found.
The grotto in the courtyard of the cathedral
And, lastly, here is the beautiful, VERY hidden gem: a rock from the actual grotto location where Our Lady of Lourdes appeared! Amazing!
A rock from where Our Lady of Lourdes appeared!
If you find yourself in Jakarta, be sure to check out this beautiful cathedral. Parking is free and easy and all denominations are welcome to tour it.
The theme of the Conference, My Soul Magnifies the Lord, is supported by a Eucharistic procession, Adoration, Mass, and multiple speakers and events for the entire family.
A command center is always a good idea if you like to be organized, have a big family, lots of moving parts, and you want everyone on the same page… or wall. 😉
But when you’re moving full speed ahead, how can you remember to look to Heaven in those moments throughout your week?
Let’s make a Catholic command center! It’s just like your command center, but with bells and whistles that will keep you on track to grow in prayer throughout the month and bring the people closest to you closer to Jesus too!
Not only are these some essential steps to creating a Catholic command center, but these printables are excellent tools for organizing your Catholic prayer life!
And…..Here’s the free printables to make your Command Center Catholic!
This is our family’s command center. I wiped the personal stuff so you can see it really well and not get distracted by our *stuff* going on.
In the center is our main calendar where we note anything the family is doing outside of the house: daily Mass, Bible study, soccer practice, etc. It’s the heart beat of keeping us all organized!
On the top left, you can see the Weekly Organizer where I can track my “to do’s” for the week, who I need to call, etc.
Below it is our Meal Calendar so I can better manage groceries purchases and the kids know what they’re getting (ha!)
I also made this one for those of you who like color and a different layout!
To the right of the calendar is our Saint Study sheet. This really helps me to pick a feast day and saint to focus on every month. Sometimes I get too excited by all the feast days and want to celebrate all of them in every way possible and… well, that’s just not possible!
This Saint Study helps me to focus and dive deeper into one saint. It also helps the kids to remember that saint and what they have in common with him or her later on!
Below that is our Weekly Homeschooling Schedule. It’s the bread and butter of our education and so, so important to making sure we stay on top of everything!
If you don’t homeschool or you prefer to swap out some of my organizing papers with someone more prayer-sustaining, check out these printables!
(Press the right arrow to flip through the pages)
They are excerpts from My Catholic Prayer Journal: Pocket Edition. I created them to help me focus on my prayer life and grow in my relationship with Jesus Christ every month. They really do help!
Below the calendar is our Weekly Cleaning Schedule (sourced from the Printable Crush blog) and two daily cleaning magnet flaps for my big kids.
My kids loooooove these magnet flaps. It turned one of my chore haters into a kid excited about doing the magnet flaps… after getting her chores done. 😉 It took me a bit of DIY time to make it, but it’s worth it for our family! Here are the directions to DIY it.
Above the calendar is the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary… perfect for the Summer and focus on the Month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and on the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but also a special devotion for our family. That’s why they get an important place in our home: right smack in the middle of our busy schedule!
And of course: Christ crucified. Take a moment to contemplate on His Passions and the worries of the day will become so much less.
I swap out the prayer card on the calendar for certain months and feast days. If we’re focusing on St. Therese of Lisieux in October, then I will have her prayer card up on the calendar. Likewise, in April we focused on Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday so we had a prayer card of Jesus’ resurrection and an image of Divine Mercy.
Make it your own, just don’t make it complicated. This is a source to help you find balance in your life, between the busyness of the day, organizing everything, and bringing it back to God to find peace.
Here’s where to get everything you need to copy this Catholic Command Center and organize your life:
Now, having this awesome Catholic command center doesn’t mean I can all of the sudden DO IT ALL! I am not a seven-armed mother who can conquer the world.
But, by organizing, being a good steward of my time and resources, and bringing them to Christ before bringing them to fruition, I allow Christ to work through me… which, in turn, allows me to accomplish more things for His glory. Let your life be prioritized and organized in that fashion.
God bless you; JMJ
P.S. please check out our main page and see what Catholic events are happening in your diocese or add an event from your parish so more Catholics can connect! Thank you! <3
If you’re traveling through the USA or looking for a place to pilgrimage to in the US that has a lot of your favorite saint relics, this is the place for you! But, first, let’s sign into what exactly classifies as a relic.
There are 3 types of relics:
First-class Relics: a part of a saint’s body (like fingernails or fragments of a bone)
Second-class Relics: an item used by a saint (like a shoe)
Third-class Relics: an object touched to a first-class relic (my daughter’s rosary that was touched to a vial of Saint Pope John Paul II’s blood)
The Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics contains 1,100 relics in 970 reliquaries representing 900 saints. 95% of the relics are first-class. The collection continues to grow since they receive new relics from the Vatican regularly. It is located in the Diocese of Cincinnati.
Located in the Archdiocese of Chicago, St. John Cantius is home to about 1800 relics.
One very interesting facet of the collection of relics at St. John Cantius Church is the relics of the saints from the Lenten Station Churches of Rome. In the fourth century, pilgrims could journey to Rome and visit churches honoring various saints.
St. John Cantius is known for its celebration of the traditional liturgy and the Station Churches which are listed each day of Lent in the traditional missal.
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