Feast of Saint Benedict

 

The boys and I had a blast celebrating Saint Benedict! Its been hard planning and executing our special feasts but I am extremely happy with the way everything turned out the other night. You will have to forgive me because I have several posts that I am going to bombard you with because I have gotten so far behind on my posts. To get things started I printed off this coloring sheet for the boys from Equipping Catholic Families

  Little Man wanted to use as many colors as possible and Squishy wanted to be just like brother! I love watching them play and color together, it is so sweet and heart warming. While they colored, I read what each part of the medal symbolized and it was exciting to see Little Man retain a lot of the information. For the most part Little Man just colored and didn't really seem interested as to the "why" we are coloring and eating specific meals. Lately he has been asking many questions and I feel like it help Squishy have another reason to be excited too. Since Squishy is only 2, the feast days are just fun activities and he doesn't understand much more than this is fun!

Moving forward... I saw this idea on a blog somewhere and I can't remember where so if you know which great blog this idea came from, please help me out! We made Saint Benedict Medals out of pepperonis and black olives on a personal sized frozen cheese pizza. I believe the family that originally did this made their pizza homemade! I wish I could have done that but our summer schedule has been crazy so to save some time frozen pizza it was! As you can see from the pictures Little Man tried very hard to make his "perfect" while Squishy tried eating his pizza frozen. He had eaten most of the pepperonis and olives off the pizza before the oven was ready.

There is a story that is told of Saint Benedict about an attempt to kill him with poison wine. While Saint Benedict blessed the food and drink, his glass shattered. This caused the poison wine to be spilled and saved Saint Benedict's life. The boys love their plastic wine glasses I bought at the Dollar Tree so we decided to have "poison wine" with our meals aka Dr. Pepper :o) It was nice having several stories to incorporate into our talks about Saint Benedict. Obviously the boys were very excited to have soda, it is a luxury in our household, and their special glasses I think made it taste even a little sweeter. Speaking of sweet! There is another custom where Benedict metals are hung from beehives and blessed on Saint Benedict's feast day. I do not have any bee hives and even if I did I would be way to afraid to approach one. I thought having some Sleepy time tea with honey would be a nice substitute. It was a nice relaxing way to end the evening but I think I may get Honey buns or something similar to enjoy as an after dinner treat for next year!

NOVENA TO SAINT BENEDICT

Glorious St. Benedict who taught us the way to religious perfection by the practice of self-conquest, mortification, humility, obedience, prayer, silence, retirement and detachment from the world, I kneel at your feet and humbly beg you to take my present need under your special protection (mention here). Vouchsafe to recommend it to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and lay it before the throne of Jesus. Cease not to intercede for me until my request is granted. Above all, obtain for me the grace to one day meet God face to face, and with you and Mary and all the angels and saints to praise Him through all eternity. O most powerful Saint Benedict, do not let me lose my soul, but obtain for me the grace of winning my way to heaven, there to worship and enjoy the most holy and adorable Trinity forever and ever. Amen.

Pray 1 Our Father, 1 Hail Mary, and 1 Glory Be.

I hope everyone else had an awesome time celebrating with the ones they love. These traditions are so much fun and getting everyone involved is so easy! 

Saint Benedict, pray for us!