Our Prayer Corner

In the upcoming week I plan on providing a post with all of the links to Lenten posts from last year, so those prayers will be easily available for use. I will also continue to add prayers throughout Lent. Eventually I plan to include a page in the top bar that has the prayers sorted by month and Liturgical season to simplify prayers even more. I will also post about some of our family’s Lenten plans.
Today, however, I wanted to share our family’s prayer corner. I would love to have a separate room in our home with a few kneelers just for family prayer or anytime someone wants some quiet time with God. However, with six kids that will never happen in this house. Perhaps someday…:)

Currently we have set up a corner in our living room where we gather for family night prayer. (Please ignore the thermostat).

 It began with this beautiful crucifix my brother gave us when we got married and has progressed from there.

Now our little prayer desk includes my son’s Infant of Prague statue, my St. Anne and Mary statue Seamus gave me for Mother's Day one year, and this beautiful holy card that my mom gave me years ago. I have always loved it, since it depicts Mary so gently and beautifully!

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Two items, the candle and vestment on the cross, get changed to represent the correct liturgical color, depending on the feast or Liturgical season.

Black is used for All Souls Day and Masses of the Faithfully Departed; traditionally it is used for Good Friday as well.

Red is used on Feasts of Our Lord's Passion, Death, and Cross.  It is also used on the feasts of martyred saints, Palm Sunday, and Pentecost.

Gold can be used to replace white, red, or green; however, it cannot replace violet or black.

Rose is used for Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, and Laetare Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent.

Violet is used for days of Advent and Lent.  In the Traditional Mass it is also used for days of Septuagesima, Rotation Days, Ember Days, and Vigils.

White  i is used during the Christmas and Easter season, on the feasts of Our Lord, excluding feasts of His Passion, feasts of Mary, feasts of angels, and the feasts of saints who were not martyred.

Green is used on days after Pentecost and days after Epiphany.

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The idea for the vestment I found from Jessica, and I even printed her pattern, which can be found at the end of her post, to use for the Traditional Roman fiddleback vestments. I love the traditional vestments! (Jessica has so many great ideas, doesn't she?  On her site Jessica provides links to the various blogs which inspired her design.)

While they took some time to complete, I enjoyed making the vestments, and I am very happy with how they turned out. I used Jessica’s pattern to cut the vestment from fabric. Then I used a fabric glue to attach the trim around the edges and the detail on the front and back.

I gave the set of vestments with the wooden cross stand to my kids one year as an Easter gift.

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The candle holder contains a simple white pillar candle, blessed by our parish priest. The glass holders I found at our local Catholic books and gifts store. They were on clearance for $2 each, so I picked up a color for each liturgical season, except white and black, since they did not have those. I know blue is not actually a Church color, but since there was not a white option, we decided to use the blue one for Marian feasts.

Each night after family prayer we look ahead on the calendar to the next day’s feast and replace the color and vestment with the correct color. I use this planner, which includes traditional, new, and historical feasts for each day, and the beautiful calendar from the FSSP (the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter). This provides a brief preparation for the upcoming feast day early, which is helpful since mornings can be rushed around here. I find this helpful since I can quickly gather any prayers, saint books, or materials I might need for the next day’s feast.

This week we will be praying the Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes and the Consecration to the Holy Family, besides are nightly rosary or decade. I am gradually preparing our family prayer ideas for Lent, which seems to be approaching quickly.

God bless!

+JMJ+