First Holy Communion on Beatification Day

My dear 'George' made his First Holy Communion this Sunday past, on the beatification day of Mother Mary MacKillop, Australia's first saint. A memorable day on both counts!

Prayers at Our Lady's altar after their first Holy Communion.

A delightful Holy Communion breakfast!

Oh Joy!

Rejoice with Australians today! We receive our first canonized saint! Mother Mary MacKillop or Mother Mary of the Cross!

Our joy overflows!

Praying the Rosary ~ Luminous Mysteries

This is part two of a four part series on the Rosary and how we as a family, have used an image slideshow to help deepen our meditation and to aid our ability to concentrate during the rosary.

To how to create this slideshow, go to Part One and it is all explained there.

In this posting I am sharing some of the Luminous Mystery images I have collected and also what our family altar looks like and how the slideshow works in with our family altar.

Click on any of the images to see in full size.

Our family altar sits upon our entertainment unit ~ our unit contains a fairly big TV screen. We do not have normal channels connected to it, only EWTN. Behind the right hand door of the entertainment unit we use to have a stereo and speakers, but upon going over to iphone, we now listen to our music via the phone and a dock. So in that, now spare space, we keep an old computer so that we can convert the TV into a computer screen and it is from there that we show our slidshow images, using the computer.

Here is a full view, when doors are closed.

Here are some photos of the slideshow in operation. You can see how the IrfanView slideshow takes each image and allows it to fill the screen. The background is black and so I have put a few images that are not rectangular or square in shape, into paintshop pro, in order to colour the surrounding areas of the picture, black.

The image above would have been one example of that except the original image had the background as black around the spires area (thank goodness! that would have been a difficult one to work on eitherwise.)

If you do not have a similar set up, there is no reason why you cannot put a slidshow on a laptop and place near to your usual family prayer area.


As I mentioned in my previous posting, I have five images to a mystery and I set the slideshow up with a 20second gap between changing images, this allows for two Hail Mary's per image.

Usually we have the keyboard and mouse out of the sidedoor to operate the slideshow and dh or my eldest ds will operate it from a chair that they set in front of them.

Though we do have room to set up the keyboard and mouse in front of the TV screen, it's whatever works best for us at the present time.

THE LUMINOUS MYSTERIES

~ THE BAPTISM IN THE RIVER JORDAN ~

~ THE WEDDING FEAST AT CANA ~

Another Carl Bloch painting.

~ THE PROCLAMATION OF THE KINGDOM ~

When I think of this beautiful mystery I think of this passage of scripture: Luke 4: 16-21

"16And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.

17And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,

18The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

19To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

20And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.

21And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears."

So when I search for images for the Proclamation of the Kingdom, I search for images that reflect the words Our Lord spoke from scripture in the synagogue, so there is just so many beautiful scenes from the New Testament to find for this mystery.

Carl Bloch

~ THE TRANSFIGURATION ~

~ THE INSTITUTION OF THE EUCHARIST ~

Praying the Rosary ~ Joyful Mysteries

1506 Our Lady of the Rosary Day by Albrecht Durer

This is the first post of a series of four, starting on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary (7th Oct) in the month of the Holy Rosary.

Our family recites the daily rosary in the morning, along with our morning prayers and daily Mass readings. Years ago, I had made up flip books for the children that contained a beautiful old masters painting of each mystery of the rosary. I had printed these images from the internet.

Recently we've gone a bit more high tech. I collected 20 images for each mystery (20 mysteries) doing a google image search. Mainly old masters images but some are sculptors, stained glass windows or mosaic. Any image that was beautiful and uplifted the soul. I really wanted my children to be immersed in the mystery through these images.

Once I had collected 20 images for each mystery, I created folders: ~ rosary 1 ~ rosary 2 ~ rosary 3 ~ rosary 4. In each folder there were sub folders: Joyful Mysteries ~ Luminous Mysteries ~ Sorrowful Mysteries ~ Glorious Mysteries. In each sub folder were the mysteries for that particular decade. In each individual mystery there were 5 images. I chose images that were at least more than 400 pixels on each side, the bigger the size, the better.

Once we had collected and sorted all of this, I put each mystery with it's 5 images into 'Irfanview' to create slideshows for each mystery...I set the 20 seconds between the changing of each image..it takes about 20 seconds to say two Hail Mary's. Once completed we were ready to go! The idea of having four sets of five images for each mysteries is that you are having a good rotation, so that the children are not seeing the same images continuously, they will revisit those images every two weeks or so.

Our family altar is situated in the main family lounge and it sits on top of our big TV cabinet where we watch EWTN. There is a side compartment where dh has a computer, the computer is connected to our big TV screen and so the slideshows are viewed with big, beautiful images directly underneath our statues.

I will share photos of our altar and our slideshow in action in the next posting, featuring the Luminous Mysteries.

I've shared below just a few of the images collected for each mystery from the JOYFUL MYSTERIES, you can click on each image to see it to full size.

~ THE ANNUNCIATION ~

I was able to collect so many beautiful images for the Annunciation, more than any other mystery, so I had a very hard time choosing, in fact, I created 6 sets of 5 just for this mystery, I just couldn't short list down to 20 pictures!

~ THE VISITATION ~

I particularly love the work of Carl Bloch, I tried to find his artwork with as many mysteries as I could.

~ THE NATIVITY ~

I had trouble finding many images search under the words, "the Nativity" but once I changed to "Adoration of the Shepherds" I then found many beautiful images!

~ THE PRESENTATION OF OUR LORD ~

I love this image because with the map of the world across Simeon

it makes me think of the passage,

"Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted"

~ THE FINDING OF THE CHILD JESUS IN THE TEMPLE ~

This is my dh's favourite from this mystery..

Carl Bloch's work again.