As promised, here are a few Halloween reads for your Catholic family. If your home is blessed with a fire place, you can gather your kids around it and read to them because ghost stories are always better in company. You could begin with poetry recitals. Here are three famous ballads, two gloomy ones and one a grotesquely funny tall tale: Edgar Alan Poe: The Raven Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The Erlking Robert W. Service: The Cremation of Sam McGhee How was this? Are you warmed up for some slightly spooky picture books? This is an excellent abbreviated retelling of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. The story tells about Ichabod Crane, teacher in a small town on the Hudson R

What could be a better time than the time before Thanksgiving to study the greatest thanksgiving ever: the Holy Eucharist? What could be a better way than study the way great artists, poets and composers express thanksgiving in their work? Here is a unit study plan for teachers and homeschoolers: Unit Study: Thanksgiving in the Eucharist: Faith: Talk about the meaning of the word Eucharist: https://www.etymonline.com/word/Eucharist: "sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the Communion," mid-14c., from Old French eucariste, from Late Latin eucharistia, from Greek eukharistia "thanksgiving, gratitude," later "the Lord's Supper," from eukharistos "grateful," from eu "well" (see eu-) + stem of khariz

The Eucharist is our ultimate thanksgiving to our Creator. It is the only worthy prayer of thanks because Our Lord Himself is praying with us. On the human level, His creatures have established autumn harvest thanksgiving celebrations dating back to pre-Christian times. In the United States, the term "thanksgiving" evokes the very special celebration of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation in 1621 which was declared a public holiday by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. There had been earlier Catholic thanksgivings celebrated by Spanish explorers. The Plymouth plantation event was chosen as symbolic for all colonial thanksgiving celebrations because it was felt to mark the beginning of the United St

It has been a while , since I wrote a post about the story of our book: St. Rosaline, the Carthusian, the Saint with the Shining Eyes. Here is a book providing some background information. Saint Bruno, the Carthusian by Andre Ravier, S.J. is a very readable biography of the founder of the Carthusian Order to which St. Rosaline belonged.The book is suitable reading for young adults. Saint Bruno lived from 1050 to 1101, an extremely troubled time in the history of the Church (yes, it has happened before). He was a famous teacher at the prestigious cathedral school of Rheims in France. His former pupil, Pope Urban II called all of Christendom to the first crusade. Bruno and six of his companion

Studying the different cultures within the liturgical traditions of the Catholic Church can be a rich and fascinating school or homeschool project. It is important to teach your kids that not all Catholics are Roman.You may be a Roman Catholic but there are many other Catholic churches often overlooked because they are small in size. You may wonder why I often publish Orthodox materials here. Our family belongs to the Ruthenian Catholic Church of the Byzantine liturgical tradition. The Greek and Russian Orthodox churches also belong to this tradition. We share the same church architecture, vestments, liturgical prayers, icons and feasts. In fact, the only way to tell that you are in a Byzant