Lent is soon upon us!

Yay! It comes when I need it most. How about you?

Are you ready? And what about your family?

I truly believe the BEST place to start with any new season or endeavor, especially those related to our spiritual life, needs to BEGIN with PRAYER.

God calls us to prayer.

“Prayer is a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God” (CCC, no. 2558)

Your homeschool is truly all about relationship. Yes, relationship with God and relationships with each other.

And the Church in its wisdom provides an entire season to foster our relationships!

Did you know that there are five basic ways of praying? Adoration, Petition, Intercession, Thanksgiving, and Praise. 

Each way of praying will be my personal journey this Lent. By utilizing these five paths, I have a ton of ideas to draw upon such as adding formal prayers, Scripture verses, prayers and litanies of the saints. And I can’t forget the people I promise to pray for, so I will add their intentions in my prayers this Lent.

In the past I have experienced, quite nicely, vocal prayer but haven’t truly explored the other two expressions of prayer, meditation and contemplation. 

Perhaps giving time this Lent for true reflection will help me make it my own and discover my heart moving towards the One who longs to hear from me. 

Yes, I want to build a better habit of prayer this Lent!

The daily habit of prayer is vital, necessary in our relationship to God. Makes sense that recently at Penance Father suggested that I follow the counsel given in Hebrews 3:13:

Encourage yourselves daily while it is still “today,” so that none of you may grow hardened by the deceit of sin.

Then in another God coincidence (is there such a thing?) I came across our old prayer journals. I remember all too well that it was my hope that by creating our own personal prayer journals our family would increase and deepen our individual prayer lives. These journals could’ve become a springboard to come to a deeper understanding of prayer and relationship.

However, it really only suited me! Haha!!!

Sometimes our Lenten plans don’t work out the way we envision them.

However, there was a seed planted.

To this day I find a sense of focus when I write out my thoughts. There is something truly wonderful and natural in putting pen to paper and handwriting my thoughts. Our brains work better at meditation and focus this way too!

In past Lenten seasons I have used blank books I created and sometimes I have used Bishop Barron’s Journal for Lent. This year I am looking at the Blessed is She prayer Journal where they actually have community tied to these reflections too!

My family will come along for the ride too!

I will encourage my family to find ways to be re-educated in prayer too! Invitation is great too, joining me in vocal prayer, saying our rosary together and come with me to my regular Adoration time each week.

“The Christian family is the first place of education in prayer. …..the family is the ‘domestic church’ where God’s children learn to pray ‘as in the Church’ and to persevere in prayer.” (CCC, no. 2558)

Guidance for learning prayers with children.

Perhaps this Lent can be a time to introduce new prayers or get better with those you regularly say together.

We added prayers to our children’s daily memory work.

As a new prayer is introduced to your child, it is especially helpful if the entire family can recite the prayer together at some point in the day, be it morning prayers before school work begins or nightly family prayer time.  This way, your children will see that these prayers are meant to be recited aloud with loved ones, and that we can offer our prayers for the intentions of those around us. 

Ask your children to suggest people for whom they would like to offer their prayers.  As we take them to Mass, offering our Mass intention for others.  A really good book that illustrates this for children is Josephine Nobiso’s The Weight of the Mass. 

When the whole family needs to learn a particular prayer, then make a big poster board version of the prayer and hold it up for all to see and read until everyone learns it by heart. 

This was especially the case for learning prayers in Latin, and guess who took the longest to learn them? Yup, mom and dad, haha!!

I have always written out copies of the prayers each child is working to memorize onto a 5X7 index card, oriented vertically, and placed it with their daily memory work.  Once a prayer is memorized by the child, it is then reviewed once a week to keep it fresh. These cards then became thier own personal prayer books!

I will make time for true silence, for God speaks to our souls.

As a busy homeschool parent, silence is a rare commodity.

However, it truly is in the silence of our hearts that real relationship to the Lord is realized. The conversation begins here.

Here are two of my favorite saints and their inspiration leaves me speechless…

“In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.”

Mother Teresa

“For me, prayer means launching out of the heart towards God; it means lifting up one’s eyes, quite simply, to heaven, a cry of grateful love, from the crest of joy or the trough of despair; it’s a vast, supernatural force which opens out my heart, and binds me close to Jesus.” – St. Therese of Lisieux

Want more of this?

St. Therese’s autobiography The Story of a Soul contains a beautiful chapter on prayer, where the above quote comes from. (Here are FREE Audio versions, to listen with your children, perhaps as part of your Lenten Reading Plan.)

Prayer is the cornerstone of peace.

You and your spouse are the foundation. Begin by praying together. Then invite your children into that prayer too! Yes, and that includes the teens.

There are so many ways to connect your life to Christ even for the busy parent. 

It has changed significantly for me during each season of life. I only got a small window of time alone each week, and yet some of the best time with the Lord was in those tough times when I literally did not feel like praying but prayed a Hail Mary out loud, right in the middle of the chaos.

Model this for your children this Lent. Help your teens to move towards their own prayer routines.

We host a LIVE Weekly Rosary Time in the Catholic Homeschool Community, please join us LIVE or watch the replay together and know you are united in prayer with other Catholic Homeschool families all over the world.