Catholic Roundup

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Introduction by Katie from the Celebrating Saints Podcast

Overview of our Ductape family’s Great Lake Erie Circumnavigation

Canturbury Folk Festival, Ingersoll, Ontario

Catholic Familyland Holy Family Fest

1. Familyland.org

2. familycatechism.com

3. familyland.tv

4. Cardinal Arinze Podcast

It would be wonderful if members of the online Catholic community could arrange their summer vacations in 2010 to spend a week at a Holy Family Fest at Familyland. We will try to help coordinate this.

Interview with Michael James Mette

Song: Michael Mette : Know, Love, Serve from Luke 18- SSYM

Franciscan University is Awesome. We met Father Seraphim from the Catholic Under the Hood Podcast and the Orsborn Family from the Celebrating Saints Podcast.

Baby Report: Welcome to Ada Clare Kedinger – Born to Daniel and Anna Kedinger this week. Daniel is a host on the Catholic Underground podcast. Apologies to Mattie Claire Sweeney for getting her name wrong on the last podcast.

Interview with Sarah Reinhard from Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering

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1. Send your feedback, podcast, blog and website promos ideas etc… on the blog at http://catholicroundup.com by email at (catholicroundup@gmail.com) catholicroundup (at) gmail (dot) com or by calling 206-337-0611.

2. Theme Song: Lost in Christ (©) Bryan Murdaugh

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Sarah at Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering brings us a wonderful reflection on learning about motherhood from Mary, the Mother of God.

Aiming for Mary

January first, the feast of Mary, Mother of God, holds a special place in my life. Four years ago, on January first, my oldest daughter was born.

Celebrating Mary’s motherhood has become a celebration of my motherhood. The obligation of Mass has turned into a thanksgiving for a blessing I didn’t think I wanted. Through our shared feast day, I have come to know the Blessed Mother with a whole new appreciation.

I was never going to get married or have children. There were two main and many other underlying reasons I would have cited, had you asked me all those years ago. All of those “reasons,” though, led back to one thing: my lack of hope.

Reason #1: Why get married when marriage was obviously such an outdated proposition – and one that only left pain when it didn’t work out? My own family was evidence of this, and all around me in the wider world, it seemed that the only marriages that lasted were of my grandparent’s generation, and that was only because they didn’t know any better.

Reason #2: Why bring a child into a world such as ours? I didn’t need to look far to find support for this argument. There was heartache everywhere: rise in crime, increasing abortion rates (people not wanting their children), split homes. The world, as I saw it, was a hostile place. I often thought it was too bad that I was in it.

My reasons were shattered slowly, and my hard heart was softened by the touch of three mothers: my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, and the Blessed Mother herself.

First, I watched a couple bury another son with grace and dignity. I watched a woman arrange the funeral for her daughter’s son, her grandson. I watched the funeral director with tears streaming down his face. I sat beside the man I would someday marry after he carried himself there, and I watch him still struggle with what was the third small white casket for his family.

Surely, in this grief, there was despair. And yet, what I took away, what I still learn from that experience, was hope. Everyone cried, yes. And then…they comforted each other. They held on to hope. They continue to hope.

Then there was a Mother’s Day Mass the year before I became Catholic. My relationship with my own mother was very fractured at that point, and I was in the midst of a five-year period in which I did not talk to her or communicate with her at all. It was at Mass, as Father was talking about the love Mary has for each of us, how she holds us and comforts us, that I found myself sobbing, shaking and hiccupping and crying in great gulps. I had to go to the back of the church and I was unable to come back in. Afterwards, I was unable to tell anyone what came over me. I didn’t know myself. Looking back, I think Mary must have touched my soul, and my hard heart must have softened enough to let the light of God’s love shine just a bit onto it.

Motherhood is a gift to me now. I am so blessed to be on both ends, receiving and giving. My relationship with my mother has been mended for some years now, and I’m surrounded by other mother-figures in an almost endless community of saints-to-be. Our Blessed Mother walks with me, and comforts me so very often.

As we contemplate Mary, the Mother of God, I find myself viewing my struggles with a more humorous eye, rolling my eyes at my dramatic moments, and finding inspiration in a humble approach to the hardest job I’ll ever hold. When I see the daughter whose birthday we celebrate on this Marian feast, I remember that I’m aiming for Mary in my vocation: to be a little more like the Mother of God each day, drawing closer to Jesus and better cooperating with the grace of God.

Join us tomorrow for more reflections produced by great Catholic New Media personalities as we journey through the 12 Days of Christmas.

1. Send me your feedback on the blog at http://cc.ductapeguy.net by email at (catholicroundup@gmail.com) catholicroundup (at) gmail (dot) com or by calling 206-337-0611.

2. Go to the Catholic New Media Advent Calendar

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Today, Sarah at Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering brings us a reflection on Advent Silence

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Sometimes, I get an idea that won’t leave me alone. It will work its way into my prayer time, be the thing that comes to me as I drift off to sleep, come to me at odd times during the day. Just before Advent started, I had this idea that I needed to turn off my iPod.

But…but….but…my protests began, in increasing volume in my head, How will I keep up on those great Catholic podcasts I listen to? How will I pray the spiritual Rosary? How will I…listen to my iPod?

That last might sound ridiculous, and it is what clued me in to the fact that this wasn’t my idea. I would never voluntarily turn off my iPod. In the year that I’ve had it, I do think I’ve become a better Catholic, better educated, and better listened. I have become part of a larger community, and my iPod has easily become my favorite gadget. I listen while I drive, I listen while I work, I listen while I put the baby to bed. It’s the perfect companion for doing dishes, folding laundry, and working out. As near as I can tell, my iPod is perfect.

However, in the year that I’ve had earbuds plugged in, I’ve also had less silence. There hasn’t been the time to be reflective, because those odd moments of nothing-else-going-on have been conveniently filled with a podcast or audio Rosary. Neither of those are bad things in and of themselves, but as I thought more about turning off my iPod for Advent, I came to see the wisdom in it.

I have a tendency to go too far with things, to get addicted. It happened when I got my first laptop and high-speed internet connection. The resulting correction was offline evenings, which restored the balance while not limiting the good I experienced from the online community I was now a part of. I realized, when a few different people made comments to me about my iPod and I responded enthusiastically about my love for it, that things were getting out of balance.

Advent is only four weeks. Four weeks of silence, of listening to the still, small voice that has been drowned out in podcasts and audio books. Four weeks of remembering how I used to pray the Rosary the old-fashioned way, one decade at a time or all at once at the kitchen table, on my fingers or using a guide, in the shower or in the car. Four weeks of preparing for a baby in the best way possible, by slowing down and enjoying life around me.

I’ll be turning my iPod back on, but perhaps, just as I have offline evenings, I will have mute mornings or two show Tuesdays. (Or, possibly, I’ll have something less alliterative.) When I turn it back on, though, I’ll do it with a mind to the silence I’m savoring this Advent.

Join us tomorrow and every day in December for more reflections produced by great Catholic New Media personalities.

1. Send me your feedback on the blog at http://cc.ductapeguy.net by email at (catholicroundup@gmail.com) catholicroundup (at) gmail (dot) com or by calling 206-337-0611.

2. Go to the Catholic New Media Advent Calendar

Subscribe to CNMR (RSS).

Subscribe on the Itunes Music Store