Scapular Cookie for Our Lady of Mt Carmel Feast

We enjoyed these yummy scapular biscuits (cookies) for the feast of Our Lady of Mt Carmel yesterday, pop over to Catholic Cuisine to see how easy they came together for us!

Cloak of St Martin Cake

We've just made our sweet treat for Martinmas Day, pop over to Catholic Cuisine to see how we made it.

Our Lady of the Pillar craft and cake

Today is the beautiful feast of Our Lady of the Pillar. I love this apparition, it is dear to me, because it is very dear to a blessed friend of mine. I love it because Spain's love of Our Lady is traced back to this title and image and of course Spain has had an enormous influence on a great part of the world (South America in particular.)

It is Our Lady's first known apparition except that Our Blessed Mother did not decend from heaven, but in fact bilocated from Jerusalem (where she was praying for St James' missionary success) to Spain where St James was also praying fervently for the conversion of the country, in which had bore no tangible fruit so far.

I talked about this apparition in depth on last year's feast, along with the story on one of the Church's greatest miracles that took place in the 1600's. There was also a follow up story which I blogged about earlier this year. They are both must reads, make them read alouds with your children.

As you can see above, we have done up our little 'daily feastday' altar. Below is the image of Our Lady of Pillar on her jasper pillar (covered in bronze and silver now) only a small portion of the jasper is left exposed, which has been 'won out due to millions of kisses' according to the custodians of the shrine.


Behind this ancient image is a turquoise, marble background with 148 gold stars, 80 of them are bejewelled. Behind our altar I hung material and the children stuck on gold star stickers. I added some scrap voile material around the base to represent her biolocating through the air to St James.

To create Our Lady of the Pillar, I printed up this image from the Mother of God colouring book, I highly recommend this book because it has all the well known images and stories of Our Lady as well as many of the lesser known titles and images.

Then I wanted to add to the back of image of Our Lady and the Child Jesus the halo that always seen behind the orginal statue. The shrine halo is jewelled and is affixed to the marble directly behind the head of the statue. I had some gold paper in the house so I did a google search on 'round patterns' and found this:

I took the pattern below and printed it onto the gold paper and we cut it out and glued to the back of the cardboard image of Our Lady of the Pilar.

Here is the pattern, I just put it into paintshop and softened it a little. If you click on the image it will go to full size which you can use as a template.

Then I thought about the pillar itself. It is patterned, sort of like a paisley patten in some ways, it is also raised and textured.

So I found this pattern and printed it up onto gold paper. If you click on the paisley image it will go to full size for a template.

I had cut a piece of cardboard to roll into the pillar, I stuck the gold, patterned paper in the center of the cardboard. I also found some bubble wrap to create that raised, textured look.

Here is the pillar, just waiting for the bubblewrap to go around it.

Lastly, here is Our Lady of the Pilar cake, pop over to Catholic Cuisine to see how this was created. Or if you are pressed for time, buy a swiss roll cake and just pipe on some icing around it!

PRAYER

O Virgin Mother of El Pilar, deigning to appear to Thy beloved disciple, St. James, promising him the victory over paganism, and blessing so abundantly his labours for the spread of the True Catholic Faith, secure for us also, who are the children of that same Faith, the victory over our many foes and the paganism that is laying waste the harvest of souls in our day.

Through the intercession of Thine Apostle, St. James, the "Son of Thunder", may we as clouds flying through the air at the least breath of the Holy Ghost, establish everywhere the true devotion to Thy Immaculate Heart that Jesus wills for the conversion of all sinners. Amen.

Dios Te Salve Maria...

Interesting to note that:This prayer is said on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays throughout the month of October,and as a triduum before the Feast of Our Lady of El Pillar.

Had to come back and share this little photo, our first miniture roses from our new Mary Garden, at the feet of Our Lady of the Pillar.

Rosary for the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary

Inspired by Ruth's Cupcake Rosary over at Catholic Cuisine, we decided that we would make on for today's beautiful feast.

I decided to use marshmallows for the Ave beads and I COULDN'T believe it, when I counted up all the white marshmallows in this pack to discover there were exactly....53....really!

The Tim Tam's were going to be used to make the crucifix.

My dearest friend gave me this lovely heart-shaped pan in June and finally I get to use them for the feast of the Holy Rosary.

I used 1/3 of a recipe of a simple cup cake recipe and these cooked up perfectly! Not too thick, just right. We made up the icing, colouring it blue.

Below is our iced heart-shaped Pater beads. I iced on each one some words:

"Pray Rosary" "We love Mary" "We love Jesus"

"Ladder to Heaven" "Roses for Mary" "Blessed Chain"

Before enjoying this edible rosary we sang together, O Queen of the Holy Rosary.

Our sorting center is our mini altar that we like to use for special feast days, usually it is St Anne's home, but today on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary I draped some rosary fabric over the picture above the sorting center and it cascaded down over the top where I sat a lovely little statue of Our Lady, some flowers and rosary beads..it is our lovely visual reminder for today.

Tonsure of St Francis of Assisi Cake

Pop on over to Catholic Cuisine, where I share how I made our 'Tonsure of St Francis' Cake!

Happy Feast Day!

St Rose of Lime Biscuits/Cookies

Today I made some St Rose of Lima biscuits for her feastday tomorrow (not usually so organized!) pop over to Catholic Cuisine to see how I made them..

Feasts of St Augustine & St Monica

Today we celebrated with dear friends, the feast of St Augustine..no, the double feast of St Augustine and his mother, St Monica.

The highlight of the meal was this cake which focuses upon the famous words of St Ambrose the bishop who said to the distraught St Monica, "A son of so many tears cannot be lost."

The cakes represent the prayerful tears of St Monica, the St Augustine biscuit/cookie on top tells us that he was raised to a bishop and raised to a saint through those prayers and tears.

I have to say it was a YUMMIEST catechetical lesson ever!

Pop on over to Catholic Cuisine to see how I made it and then you may like to read my posting on St Monica, St Augustine and spiritual motherhood over at Spiritual Motherhood for Priests.

Happy Feast Day!

The Queenship of Mary

Today is the Marian feast of The Queenship of Mary. We crowned Our Lady and enjoyed a lovely meal together. The Queenship of Mary is a particularly beautiful feast day and one that is fairly new:

"Pius XII established this feast in 1954. But Mary’s queenship has roots in Scripture. At the Annunciation, Gabriel announced that Mary’s Son would receive the throne of David and rule forever. At the Visitation, Elizabeth calls Mary “mother of my Lord.” As in all the mysteries of Mary’s life, Mary is closely associated with Jesus: Her queenship is a share in Jesus’ kingship. We can also recall that in the Old Testament the mother of the king has great influence in court.

In the fourth century St. Ephrem called Mary “Lady” and “Queen” and Church fathers and doctors continued to use the title. Hymns of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries address Mary as queen: “Hail, Holy Queen,” “Hail, Queen of Heaven,” “Queen of Heaven.” The Dominican rosary and the Franciscan crown as well as numerous invocations in Mary’s litany celebrate her queenship.

The feast is a logical follow-up to the Assumption and is now celebrated on the octave day of that feast. In his encyclical To the Queen of Heaven, Pius XII points out that Mary deserves the title because she is Mother of God, because she is closely associated as the New Eve with Jesus’ redemptive work, because of her preeminent perfection and because of her intercessory power."

What I notice in particular in that quote is this, "At the Annunciation, Gabriel announced that Mary’s Son would receive the throne of David and rule forever." The throne of David and the Jewish Kings was not one with a married couple reigning as King and Queen, but it was the King's mother who was given the venerable title of Queen.

It was the mother of the King who would interceed on behalf of his subjects. Now if Jesus truly sits upon the throne of David as scripture tells us then Our Lady MUST be His Queen, the Queen who interceeds for us...

Here is our Crown for a Queen Cake from Catholic Cuisine. It was so visually delightful, such a splendid idea for this feast! Pop on over and download the template for the biscuit/cookie shape, it was all very easy to make. I used a white chocolate mud cake recipe for the cake.

I added a Fleur de Lys to the top of the cake as it is a Marian symbol that also represented royality.

We read from My Nameday: Come for Dessert the following beautiful meal prayer.

Father: Come, let us adore Mary's Son, alleluia.

All: O Virgin now our Queen, O'er all creation though dost tower,

And every form of loveliness, In rich abundance is thy dower.

Adorned with merits numberless, Give heed to us as now we sing,

And in thy gladness, pray, accept; The humble homage we would bring.

Father: From the encyclical of Pope Pius XII. From the monuments of Christian antiquity and prayers of the liturgy, in short, from all sides, we have gathered evidence affirming the pre-eminence of the Virgin Mother of God in her royal dignity. By our apostolic authority we have therefore decided to insitute a feast of Mary the Queen which is to be celebrated throughout the world each year on the thirty-first day of May.

All: Thanks be to God.

Before we cut the cake we sang the hymn, Hail, Holy Queen Enthroned Above, here is the lyrics.

Tonight we were also able to have Fr Pine with us for the first time in celebrating a feast! To see my posting of Fr Pine and his vestments, pop over to my recent thread with lots of photos.

Happy Feastday!

The Feast of the Assumption

Yesterday was the beautiful feast of the Assumption. It was a sad, reflective day for me, thinking of Mary Ellen and the family. In that sorrow we joined together as a family and treasured a beautiful meal around the table that evening as a family, appreciating from the bottom of our hearts, the presence of each other.

The meal itself was delicious. I made a lamb casserole with 'assumption clouds' of mashed potato. Then for sweets I was greatly inspired by Jessica's Blueberry and Strawberry Cobbler, over at Catholic Cuisine, which we served with 'clouds' of whipped cream!

I highly recommend the cobbler recipe, just fanastic! It was so good, that I made a second one for a baptism today and it was very popular!

I had bought some beautiful mini, oval ceramic bowls that are light blue on the outside, perfect for serving up casseroles or yummy cobblers on Marian feast days.

I hope your Assumption feast day was a blessed one with family as well, God Bless you all!

Happy Feast Day for The Cure of Ars

Head over to Catholic Cuisine, to see my explanation for this very symbolic meal in The Cure's honour.

Then pop on over to Spiritual Motherhood for Priests to read my posting about the indulgences connected with today's feast in the Year of the Priest and read a wonderful story of his life! {It makes a great read aloud for the children, I read it to my 6 year old and above group.}