Each station begins with the traditional “We adore You, O Christ and we bless You because by Your holy Cross You have redeemed the world” and is then broken down into “I think of Jesus” which describes the action of the station and “I talk to Jesus” which is a conversation with the Lord that should help a child to gain understanding of the significance of each station.   This is an important introduction to personal prayer which teaches children how to speak intimately with God as if he were right there with them.      Each “I talk to Jesus” section ends with a reminder of the penitential theme “Teach me to love You as I should and help me never to sin again” prior to closing with a simple two line rhyming prayer.

For example, the “I think of Jesus “section of the third station demonstrates the completeness of Christ’s humanity and His acceptance of the frailty of His human body:  “Jesus is God but He does not use His powers to make His cross easier.  He falls because the cross is so heavy and He is so weak from the scourging and rough treatment of the soldiers.  Our sins have made Him very, very sad.  But He wants us to be very, very happy so He gets up and continues to carry His cross all the way to the end.”

The sixth station, Veronica wipes the face of Jesus, calls to mind the words of Isaiah:

And he shall grow up as a tender plant before him, and as a root out of a thirsty ground: there is no beauty in him, nor comeliness: and we have seen him, and there was no sightliness, that we should be desirous of him: Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and his look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows: and we have thought him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his own way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all – Isaiah 53:2-6 (Douay-Rheims 1899American Edition).

Then under the “I think of Jesus” section:

Jesus does not look like Himself; His face is all covered with blood and bruised and swollen.  He cannot see well because of the blood in His eyes.  Veronica feels sorry for Him and risks making the soldiers angry by stepping out of the crowd and wiping His face with her veil.  Jesus is grateful and leaves a picture of His face on her veil.

“I talk to Jesus” for the tenth station leads children to the understanding of their own part in Christ’s crucifixion:

Jesus the soldiers hurt you over and over again.  When I am mean to others, I hurt You too, because You live in their souls just as You do in mine. I hurt You also when I am selfish, because You gave everything for us, even Your clothes and every drop of Your blood.  Help me to be kind and generous to others.  Teach me to give to others and not take form them.  Teach me to love You as I should and help me never to sin again.

This reaches out to us even beyond Lent to remind us of the need to be giving.  Another reminder that can reach our hearts even beyond the Lenten season arrives in the closing rhyme of the thirteenth station, “Jesus I will never go astray or make a mistake if I obey.”  This is a reminder of Christ’s obedience to His father even unto death.

The book ends with a closing prayer which continues to instruct, “Jesus, on Easter morning, Your body will rise from the tomb and You will continue to give and teach for forty more days.”  The prayer continues and asks our Lord for help to remember His sacrifice and love as well as the joy that follows sorrow.  There is a space at the end of the book that children can use to copy a scripture verse and illustrate it and another page on which children are encouraged to write a prayer or poem of their own for Jesus.

Over all, I found this book to be well written at a level that will be easily understood by children.  The black and white illustrations are very well done and the purple cover sets the tone of penance for the Lenten journey.

I found the description in the fourth station’s “I talk to Jesus” section problematic.  It refers to Mary, Mother of God and reads, “…she knew that You had to die so that I could live forever with You, but it hurt her heart to see you suffering so much.”  While Mary certainly was hurt by watching her son suffer, it is presumptuous to assume she knew or understood the reasons for Christ’s death until after His resurrection.

This book does not have a nihil obstat or imprimatur, although it has been submitted for such approval.  Canon 827 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law says that writings dealing with catechetical formation cannot be used without an imprimatur.  So this book can be freely used in a home setting, but might have to wait until it will be a good fit for a CCD class or school.  It could be used as a supplemental in a parish with permission of the priest.

The author, Kathryn Mulderink is a homeschooling mother of seven, President of the local Community of Secular Discalced Carmelites, and the Director of Faith Formation for St Isidore Parish in Grand Rapids, MI. She is also a Marian Catechist.  She was the only English-speaking writer to be a finalist for the Rielo Mystical Poetry Prize in 1998. She is a sometime poet, oft-time blogger, and author of several books for adults and children.

Clare Mulderink is a graphic design student who published several book covers before graduating high school. She has designed promotional materials for the local Harbor Fest and other large events. She continues to offer her services in formatting graphics for publishing, particularly book covers and business cards. She is also Kathryn’s daughter.

Fr. Victor KyNam was a seminarian and artist from Vietnam when he first found Kathryn’s poems and was moved to illustrate them. He worked with her again on her Way of the Cross coloring book for children. He is an accomplished artist and has completed several large statues in the Grand Rapids diocese, where he is currently pastor of St. Anthony and St. Edward parishes.

Help support catholic Exchange by getting this great Lenten resource for your children from our online store.

Not only is Aaron angry with God about the move, but he has preformed opinions of the area to where his family is moving:  “I opened my eyes to see a lady in the car next to me blowing her nose.  ‘What am I doing   sleeping with my face smashed against the car window?’  I wondered.  My mind was in a groggy, just-woke-up fog.  It took only seconds for me to remember the awful truth  – we were leaving Montana and headed to a place I had thus far only heard about in jokes.”

Aaron fears he will be unable to make friends.  The first person his age that he sees is a girl who pelts him with a snowball and the first boy he meets is openly hostile — all this before he even starts school.  He is jealous of his younger brother Luke’s ability to make friends easily wherever he goes.  When he does start school, he discovers that the hostile boy, Josh, is in his class and worries that will Josh influence the other kids against him.

He begins daydreaming about being a hero and his attempts to make this happen lead to a series of misadventures — including recruiting his little brother to pretend he has locked himself in the bathroom so that he can be “rescued.”  When Aaron finally has to explain everything to his parents, his father tells him, “Real heroes don’t cause problems and then act like they saved the day.  It is dishonest.”

Things turn around for Aaron when he stops trying to make things happen and begins to rely on God.  He prays for forgiveness for the dishonest things he did and asks God to help him to put God first.  Once he realizes that he should just be himself, things get better.  He risks losing his new friends by doing what is right instead of what is easy, and he winds up helping the class troublemaker to fit in and become” just one of the guys.”  This, along with another surprise chance to be a real hero, shows Aaron that God is still on his side — even in North Dakota.

There are vocabulary words and thought-provoking questions for each chapter located in the back of the book.  The only thing I would have done differently would have been to place the questions and vocabulary for each chapter at the end of each chapter, instead.  An advanced third-grade reader would have no difficulty with this book, and it would be appropriate for children through sixth grade.

I will be using this book in my home school to help my son understand to trust God always, even in difficult circumstances. But this book is useful for parents who are not homeschooling also, to open up communication about the prayer lives of their children.

Patti Maguire Armstrong does a great job exploring Aaron’s feelings as he goes through these changes,  skillfully demonstrating that children often have the same difficulties in their faith lives as adults, and that they may feel alone and unable to express these feelings.  As a mother of ten children, two girls and eight boys, including two adopted AIDS orphans from Africa, she has a great deal of experience dealing with children’s emotions.  Her husband Mark was a broadcast journalist for many years and she draws on this for the father’s job in Dear God, I don’t get i! She has co-authored the Catholic Amazing Grace book series and is often featured on Catholic Exchange.  Her website is raisingcatholickids.com.

Freelance commercial artist Shannon Wirrenga illustrated the book in a style reminiscent of the Beverly Cleary books — a style very appropriate for this story of a boy’s blunders and recovery.  Her cover art captures the frustration that Aaron was feeling when he was leaving his home in Montana to move to North Dakota.  Wirrenga also illustrated The Little Cloud by M.G. Maher and Chicago Bob by Scott Eide.  A resident of Bismarck, North Dakota, she seeks to serve God through her artwork and is the coordinator of Artists Celebrating Christ (March 18-21 at the Benedictine Center at the University of Mary in Bismarck).   You can learn more about her at http://www.shannonsartroom.com.

My family is celebrating this time of preparation and penance with a Jess tree for the first time this year. I had heard of Jesse trees a few years ago, but not until about half way through Advent last year did, I understand the Jesse tree. The Jesse tree provides as series of lessons on Salvation History from creation until the birth of Jesus. It includes important events and people from the Old Testament and the people from the genealogy narrative in the gospel of Matthew and the Nativity narrative in the gospel of Luke. These events and people are depicted with ornaments. Our ornaments are made of paper and include scripture references.

We started yesterday with an ornament of the Earth. We read the creation narrative from the book of Genesis. We will continue today with the creation of Adam and Eve and add significant events and people including Noah and the flood, the Exodus, Jericho, Gideon, the rebuilding of Jerusalem as found in Nehemiah, Zechariah and Elizabeth, John the Baptist and the Nativity. I found an excellent list of events in A Treasure Chest of Traditions for Catholic Families by Monica McConkey. You can find this and other resources for Catholic families at Arma Dei. I also found resources at Holy Heroes Advent Adventure and at the official website of the diocese of Erie. Using all these resources, I made up ornaments out of paper.

We have chosen to hang the ornaments on our undecorated (except for lights) Christmas tree. You can do the same or you could use a branch from a tree with smaller branches, or you can find ornament trees at craft stores. The ornaments can be as simple as you like, or as fancy. Many people choose to have their children draw pictures for each Scripture verse. Others like to use clay to sculpt ornaments. There may even be ornament kits available, although I did not look for any.

I am praying that this exercise in remembering will bring my family closer to Christ this Advent season, and remind us of the reason for the season, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I hope that your family, too, will have a Christ-focused Advent.

With autumn her in New England, come the apples. Cold Spring Orchard is about a half hour away from us and has many different types of apples. At the beginning of the season, you can check to see when your favorite will be ripe. They sell the apples already picked and bagged, in bulk as seconds, or our favorite way: Pick your own!

As the weather turns cooler and the leaves start to change, we will make at least one trip to the orchard. We look for a sunny, clear day. Sometimes it will still be warm; often it is a bit nippy out. We will buy two large bags and head out into the orchard on each trip. When our children were smaller, it took considerably longer to fill the bags. Only the two youngest of our seven will come to the orchard. They will eat at least two apples while filling the bags that their father and I will carry.

Beautiful woodlands and farmland, with a beautiful view on the Holyoke Mountain Range in the background, surround the orchard. If we have time and the weather is nice, we may also stop at the Quabbin Reservoir to enjoy the views and have a picnic.

We have picked apples at other orchards, but Cold Spring is our favorite. There are no bells and whistles and “new-fangled” contraptions. A huge storage barn contains the “store” and the storage. You walk out into the orchard to pick your apples, and you can be as quick or as poky as you like. The workers are a combination of students from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and folks who have worked there for years.

Each year the apple season heralds the beginnings of the new school year, the autumn, the fall foliage and the cooler weather. It is one of my very favorite times of year, although it is bittersweet. It indicates the passing of time and the changes in the abilities of our children. As they grow, they become more proficient at finding beautiful, ripe apples. They also seem to be less fond of poking around at the orchard, and more impatient to return to the loud, rushing pace that marks our world.

Going to the orchard reminds me of a slower time. Even when I was a child, things moved more slowly. The stores all closed by six o’clock on Saturday. Sundays were family days. The only place open was the convenience store, and you only went there if you were completely out of some staple. We raked leaves as a family before coming inside for a cup of hot tea and a bowl of hot stew. There might have been a football game on the television. Overall, though, those days were a time for family to be together.

Maybe this fall my family and I can capture some of that unhurried pace on the weekends. We can play cards and board games as we eat our fresh apples and sip tea or cocoa. I pray that we can hold on to the innocence of childhood just a little longer as we gather together, and the family trip to the orchard is part of that holding on.

Thank God Ahead of Time, The Life and Spirituality of Solanus Casey by Michael Crosby, OFM is exactly what it describes itself to be: a book about the life of Solanus Casey.

Prior to reading this book, I had been hearing the name of Solanus Casey frequently.  Fr.  Benedict Groeschel had mentioned him on Sunday Night Live, and I had heard him spoken of on several different podcasts.  My curiosity was piqued.

As I read about what a humble man Fr. Casey was, and about his sincere belief that all prayers are answered, I found my own way of praying changed. I found myself thanking God for answering my requests as I prayed instead of waiting for a result. Solanus Casey often referred to himself as a poor sinner and requested the prayers of those who sought him out. He believed that God’s power was available to each and every one of us if only we had the faith. He lived his life in the service of the Lord as a Capuchin Friar, and he lived the corporal works of mercy by example. He sought to help those in poverty, whether spiritual poverty or a lack of worldly means. He was obedient to his superiors and sought to accept criticism with grace and humility. While he sought justice for those who were downtrodden or wronged, he never sought it for himself, and it is said that he never spoke ill of another.

I pray that his example of how to draw closer to Christ will help me on my journey, and I recommend this wonderful book to any who would also seek to be closer to God.

Oh, and by the way, Solanus Casey is Venerable Solanus Casey. His cause for canonization is being reviewed.