Our family has been praying this Novena to the Holy Spirit for the past nine days. We will begin it again as a novena of thanksgiving. This novena is traditionally used before the feast of the Pentacost but it can be used any time of the year, of course. We have not officially started school. I want this year to be one where we incorporate learning throughout the day and night.
Currently, all the children are doing their math and reading lots of literature.
We have realized our schedule is unlike anything I could have planned for our homeschooling adventure, yet everything seems to eventually get done.
Core for us is our family gathering of prayer time in the mornings.
We pray a decade of the Rosary, pray for the intentions of our families and friends, read from the Bible (We just finished Hebrews and we are reading Ephesians.) We discuss the scripture we have read. We then pick each pick scripture cards out of a little "treasure box" and then each of us take turns reading aloud the scripture we have picked. We usually choose a scripture to memorize for that week. After this, we usually pray a novena.
This coming together in prayer as a family has been such a blessing. If there has a been a morning in which this hasn't happened yet, we have our sweet little reminder, Molly, coming to us and saying, "Mom, we haven't even prayed together yet." And then she runs to tell everyone it is time to pray or as we have termed "D.E.A.P."..."Drop everything and pray". This prayer time has in the past been so difficult to obtain and now I know why. Unless we think it is absolutely NECESSARY we will never put this time aside as a family. For us, it has become so necessary and therefore the number one priority at this point in our lives.
We have been following this sort of prayer schedule for a month and our hope is for it to become a habit among our children...a habit that they can take with them the rest of their lives.
I no longer worry about rushing through the prayers so we can get to work or our studies. Phillip and I eagerly listen to what the children have to say about the things of God. They always have such wonderful questions and before you know it we seem to have formed a rabbit trail of topics that otherwise would have never come up! And many times we look these questions up in The Catechism of the Catholic Church. We know devoting time to praying and learning about God is the most important thing that the children will ever learn. We treasure this time together. And somehow, after prayer time, there is always enough time throughout the day to get those other things done!
Keeping you all in our intentions!
Blessings,
Marianne
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