Mondays

"A well cared-for, organised, beautiful home helps to keep life humming along so much more smoothly and happily, leaving space for fun, relaxation and friends." - French Ties.  Love, Life & Recipes by Jane Webster

The Wind in the Willows - Inga Moore

Thursday

"But apart from the accepted will of God, nothing has any lasting reality.  So if God wills that you should be bowed over the sink instead of over the pew in your favourite church, then washing dishes is for you, now, the most perfect thing that you can possibly do." - Holiness for Housewives by Dom Hubert Van Zeller

The Kitchenmaid (1720) by Giuseppe Maria Crespi

Women

"Woman must be a cook, but not a competitive cook, a house-school-mistress, but not a competitive school-mistress, a house decorator, but not a competitive house decorator, a dress maker but not a competitive dress maker.  She should have not one trade but twenty hobbies, she, unlike the man, may develop all her second bests...  Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow; on the the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad." -  Brave New Family by G. K. Chesterton

Pride

'Pride is at the bottom of all worldliness:  that desire that drives people to attain more and more things, more and more honour, more and more glory, of having the whole world revolve around themselves.  Disobedience, rudeness, the lack of compassion toward our neighbour, all of this is pride.  Selfishness is an effect of pride.'  - Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality

S. Saelig Gallagher - The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde

Stay With Me

Stay With Me, Lord - Prayer by Padre Pio

Stay with me, Lord, for it is necessary to have You present so that I do not forget You. You know how easily I abandon You.

Stay with me, Lord, because I am weak and I need Your strength, that I may not fall so often.

Stay with me, Lord, for You are my life, and without You, I am without fervour.

Stay with me, Lord, for You are my light, and without You, I am in darkness.

Stay with me, Lord, to show me Your will.

Stay with me, Lord, so that I hear Your voice and follow You.

Stay with me, Lord, for I desire to love You very much, and always be in Your company.

Stay with me, Lord, if You wish me to be faithful to You.

Stay with me, Lord, for as poor as my soul is, I wish it to be a place of consolation for You, a nest of Love.

Stay with me, Jesus, for it is getting late and the day is coming to a close, and life passes, death, judgement, eternity approaches. It is necessary to renew my strength, so that I will not stop along the way and for that, I need You. It is getting late and death approaches. I fear the darkness, the temptations, the dryness, the cross, the sorrows. O how I need You, my Jesus, in this night of exile!

Stay with me tonight, Jesus, in life with all its dangers, I need You.

Let me recognize You as Your disciples did at the breaking of bread, so that the Eucharistic Communion be the light which disperses the darkness, the force which sustains me, the unique joy of my heart.

Stay with me, Lord, because at the hour of my death, I want to remain united to You, if not by Communion, at least by grace and love.

Stay with me, Jesus, I do not ask for divine consolation, because I do not merit it, but, the gift of Your Presence, oh yes, I ask this of You!

Stay with me, Lord, for it is You alone I look for. Your Love, Your Grace, Your Will, Your Heart, Your Spirit, because I love You and ask no other reward but to love You more and more.

With a firm love, I will love You with all my heart while on earth and continue to love You perfectly during all eternity.   Amen

Thoughts

"Character is both formed and influenced in the world of your thoughts.  If you are master in your thoughts, you are master everywhere.  If you have learned to control your thoughts, you have yourself completely under control.  If you have a kind heart, your words and deeds will also be kind.  If you fostered more kind thoughts, you would necessarily be richer also in kind deeds.  It must, therefore, be very important to cultivate kind thoughts." - The Hidden Power of Kindness by Lawrence G. Lovasik.

Gossip

'To gossip means to talk needlessly about the faults and failings of others and even to invent such faults and failings where none exist.  To gossip means to watch closely the conduct of one's neighbour and to indulge in unwarranted criticism of his motives and in rash judgement as to the nature of his sins.
'Gossip is the most common of all sins of the tongue.  Although often called harmless, it is in fact rarely so because it hits at character...
'Gossip is drawing a wrong picture or drawing a picture you have no right to draw.  Careless gossip is no to be tossed off light.  God's command is "Thou shalt not bear false witness."...
'Gossip may also give the right picture and still be gossip because it is drawn for those who have no right to see it." - The Hidden Power of Kindness  by Lawrence G. Lovasik

Qualities

'Go around the room and pick out three beautiful qualities in each member of your family.  We do that in the monastery.  The sisters will say, "Mother, you're generous, understanding and loving."  I say, "I can buy that."  Then I began to wonder.  I think, "Angelica, if you are all these beautiful things, how come you're impatient and have a hot temper?"  And I began to reason, and I found that I am generous by nature, with things and my talent, but I was not generous with my time.  If a sister came up to me and I was in a hurry, I would say, "What are you bugging me now with this trite little thing for?"
'God had already planted into my heart a tool:  generosity.  When I worked on being more generous, that thing that I already am, I suddenly become patient.  So point out the virtues of your family members - build on those, and the rest will fall away.'  Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality

Working Women

"I have never understood myself how this superstition arose: the notion that a woman plays a lowly part in the home and a loftier part outside the home...  Most work done in the outer world is pretty mechanical work; some of it is decidedly dirty work.  There seems no possible sense in which it is intrinsically superior to domestic work." - Brave New Family by G.K. Chesterton

Morgan Weistling 

Mothers

"How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe?" - Brave New Family by G.K. Chesterton

Mother Reading With Two Girls by Lee Lufkin Kaula

Over Population

"The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him whether he is the surplus population, or if he is not, how he knows he is not." - Introduction to A Christmas Carol

Gaetano Bellei (1857 – 1922, Italian)