All posts filed under: Family Prayer

Holy Week in the Domestic Church

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I can hardly believe that Palm Sunday is in a few days. This is going to be a very brief post sharing what we have available here on this site to help us celebrate Holy Week at home this year. Family Prayer for Holy Week and Easter Last year, I put together a this family prayer booklet  to help families go through the collects and events of Holy Week. It’s essentially family prayer from the 1928 Prayer Book. The suggested readings follow the events of each day of Holy Week. I’m also going to print out the images above. I formatted an image a day with the collect for the day and we will look at the painting during our family prayer time. I’ll then display it on our “little oratory” throughout the day. Here is the Holy Week Family Prayer Booklet (and here it is as a PDF with pages arranged as booklet) Here are the Holy Week images with collects. (Please email me at thehomelyhours@gmail.com if you would like any of these files in another format …

Common Prayer & Parenthood — The North American Anglican

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I’m excited to be a new monthly contributor to the North American Anglican. Here is my first article, summarizing the changes in my understanding of common and private prayer:  From when I was a teenager, silent mornings of Bible study and prayer rooted my spiritual life. This “quiet time” habit served me well—until I became a mother. And then, it was ripped away from me and I resented it. Despite efforts to wake up before my children, their infallible instinct that I was awake, plus the creaks of our old house, made this time alone impossible. When we could manage it, my husband would watch our kids so that I could slip away. But it was never enough to fill me up for the demands of life with a toddler and infant. So, in my soul, I raged against my children. Because they were “bad sleepers,” I practically didn’t have a relationship with God anymore. Of course, I tried to fit prayer and Scripture into the crannies of my day. But, inevitably, it was accidental, …

Family Prayer in the New Year

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Happy New Year! As 2020 begins, perhaps you are resolved to build the habit of morning and evening family prayer in your home. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by options and resources. But, whether you are Anglican or not, if you appreciate the Book of Common Prayer, you can find a simple place to start. The Shortest Form of Morning and Evening Prayer Here is a printable for the most basic form of a family prayer in the 1928 Prayer Book. It contains the Lord’s Prayer, a prayer for morning/evening, and a benediction. (If you own a 1928 Prayer Book, you can find the section on “forms of Prayer to be used in Families” at the very end, after the catechism and before the Articles of Religion). When you click on the printable, you’re probably going to think, “Really, that’s all?” It is indeed very short. But, as the great Anglican Jeremy Taylor said, “I’d rather your prayers be often than long.” Even though it’s short, you’re still praying the “Lord’s Prayer” at least twice …

Celebrating St. Michael and All Angels

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As we finish up the Autumn Ember Days, we turn our attention to Michaelmas. When we started this site,  I wrote a little post musing on the question “Why the Church Year? and reflected, The church year means that we don’t accidentally exclude a truth or event that is important for the life of our souls. I remember my first Michaelmas, realizing that I didn’t remember the last time I had thought about angels. My imagination needed Michaelmas to remind me that the cosmic realms are densely populated, not empty, with beings who serve the Lord and us. Ever since I first experienced Michaelmas, I’ve connected it with the wisdom of the church year. I’m grateful to remember the reality of angels — intentionally weeding out what is kitschy and cutesy in my imagination. And, I hope that celebrating the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels with my children helps them to associate the angelic realm with all that is glorious, noble, and courageous. Here is what we’ll be doing: Michaelmas Booklet A few years back, …

Prayer and a Place of Beauty

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Thanks to Anna-Kathryn Kline for this new submission in the vein of our Meaningful Home series.  When she emailed her post, I was delighted for several reasons: 1.) It’s always very fun to receive guest posts 2.) We here are all admirers and fans of Leila Lawler/Like Mother, Like Daughter and 3.) I’ve been meaning to finish a post on The Little Oratory for months. So, clearly, it’s a pleasure to publish this. If you are ever inspired to write something that you think would fit on the Homely Hours, please email thehomelyhours@gmail.com. One of the most appealing aspects for me as we have journeyed towards classical Christianity is the theology of the Incarnation. I grew up with a healthy respect for God’s transcendence, but leaning into His imminence has allowed me to tap into the spiritually thick atmosphere around me. So, you can imagine my excitement when I found a book called The Little Oratory: A Beginner’s Guide to Praying in the Home by Catholic bloggers Leila Lawler and David Clayton. In it, Lawler encourages families to …

Family Prayer and Julian of Norwich

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This week, my small children have been in vacation fallout mode and it’s made me very thankful to return to our family rhythms of morning and evening prayer.* I set church bells as an alarm on my phone, so ideally, around 9am or so, we gather together. My 3 year old generally fights it (but she fights everything). It’s very normal for her to energetically cry through the first half of our prayers. But it doesn’t matter. This year, I’ve become less easily deflated by my kids’ resistance, knowing that it’s just as vital for us to structure our day with prayer as it is to have regular, healthy meals. The 3 year old resists food as well, but it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t need to eat in order to live. And for me, I’ve come to realize that family prayer isn’t only a matter of parents catechizing our children. It’s not just for them. These times aren’t the “kid version” of the real thing. It’s all the real thing. When we pray together, …

The Third Week of Lent

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Collect: “We beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants, and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty, to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.  Feasts, Saints, and Blesseds Monday, March 25: The Annunciation of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary On this feast day, we remember the holy moment recorded in  Luke 1:26-38, when the angel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that she is “highly favored” and will be the bearer of the Christ. The feast day is exactly nine months before the Nativity on December 25th. While the first authentic records of “Lady Day” are in the mid-8th century, it may have been celebrated at least since the late 4th century. Here is an excerpt from St. Cyril of Alexandria, preached at the council of Ephesus in 431: “We hail you, O mysterious and Holy Trinity who has gathered us together in council in this church of Holy Mary, the God-bearer. We hail you, Mary, the God-bearer, sacred …

Quinquagesima

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Collect O Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without love are nothing worth; Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee. Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen. Saints and “Blesseds” Monday, March 2: John and Charles Wesley John and Charles Wesley were born in the early 1700s to an Anglican priest and a Puritan mother. They were first called “Methodists” because of their habit of attending Holy Eucharist every Sunday, as opposed to the popular habit of attending three or four times a year. Both ordained as Anglican priests, they set out to reform the English church with a strict “method” of faith and practice, influenced by German pietism. Their message grew so popular with laypeople (and so unpopular with Anglican clergy) that they had to preach in open-air meetings. They always intended a revival within Anglicanism and not to separate, though the …

Lenten Family Prayer (+ Doing Nothing New)

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“Given the many layers of meaning in Lent, we won’t grasp all of them in a single year. But imagine if we were to observe Lent every year for the rest of our life — imagine how much we would grow and mature.” This quote is from my priest, Fr. Wayne McNamara. What a thought to keep us from being overwhelmed by options. Lord willing, we have many Lents ahead of us. What does He want us to focus on this year in 2019? The Lenten “triad” of Fasting, Prayer, and Acts of Compassion concentrates our efforts into what really matters as we prepare for Easter. And we can pray for guidance: “O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgement, and light riseth up in darkness for the godly; Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what thou wouldest have us to do, that the Spirit of Wisdom may save us from all false choices, and that in thy light we may see light, and in thy straight …

Giveaway [closed]– Make Room: A Child’s Guide to Lent and Easter

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For the past few years, we have been recommending Laura Alary’s Make Room: A Child’s Guide to Lent and Easter. My daughter’s godparents gave it to her for her (Lenten) birthday and we love it. I’m so thankful for Alary’s clear and lyrical explanation of Lent and Holy Week.  And I appreciate that it simplifies Lenten plans: you can essentially use this book as a guide for all your family activities during the season. Because I think it’s so helpful, I contacted Paraclete Press to see whether they would be interested in giving away a copy on our blog. I’ve never done this before, so I was thrilled that they said “yes.” You can just comment below before next Tuesday to be entered into the giveaway. I wrote a recommendation of this book two years ago.  Here are a few excerpts:     “In the book, Alary sets out a map for Lent, explaining in simple but lovely prose that Lent is for “making time,” “making space,” and “making room” for the kingdom of God in our everyday lives. …