Celebrating the 4th of July

Today was her big day! Welcome to the Church, little one! ❤️
#4thofJuly #baptismday #independenceday #brandnewcatholic #freefromoriginalsin #letfreedomring

{A friend took pictures of her actual Baptism and the Latin Mass that followed so I don't have many from the day.
I'll share the rest once he sends them to us. It was such a blessed day!}

Receive this burning light, and keep thy Baptism so as to be without blame: keep the commandments of God, that when the Lord shall come to the nuptials, thou mayest meet Him together with all the Saints in the heavenly court, and mayest have eternal life and live for ever and ever.  #rosesfromhergodmother

A simple Lattice Heart cake from Costco with White Roses and a Pink and White Candy Baptism Cross. 

Pure White Punch for Celebrating the Sacraments - Recipe can be found over at Catholic Cuisine. 

Grandpa sure loves his newest granddaughter and she loves him too! He's one of the few people she will allow to hold her for long. The baptism candle was hand-painted and given to us from a friend. She has them in her Etsy shop.

She wasn't up for pictures in her baptism dress while she was awake...

Finally getting to try out his new Father's Day grill! 

Happy 4th of July! Our children were so happy to get to spend it with Uncle Father T. Gordon this year!
Wish he could have stayed longer than just one day! ❤️🎉 #FSSP #priestlyfraternity

Baby's First Mass

After attempting it yesterday, this evening the baby and I finally made it to (and through!) Mass for the first time since she was born. It really helped that it was at home! One of my brothers-in-law made a last minute decision to make a really quick trip, flying all the way across the country, to baptize his niece after all!

#FSSP #extraordinaryform #latinmass #confessiontoo #baptismwillbetomorrow #deogratias

+ Requiescat in Pace +

In paradisum deducant te angeli,

May the angels lead you into paradise,

 

in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres,

may the martyrs receive you in your coming,

et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem.

and may they guide you into the holy city, Jerusalem.

 

Chorus angelorum te suscipiat,

May the chorus of angels receive you

et cum Lazaro quondam paupere

and with Lazarus once poor

aeternam habeas requiem.

may you have eternal rest

Please pray for the repose of the soul of James Patrick Gordon, Jr. I'm going to miss this amazing Irishman, inspirational father of five (a daughter, three priests, and my husband), and loving grandfather. He passed away much sooner than expected yesterday morning, June 6, 2017.

Update: There will be a wake at the funeral home 6 - 10 pm Sunday, June 11th and funeral mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Nogales, at 10 am Monday, June 12th. Please say a prayer for the safety of all those who are traveling to attend, including my husband and our five oldest children.

Eternal rest, grant unto him O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.

May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed,

through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Our Godson's Baptism and Pregnancy Blessings

"Baptism is the sacrament that gives our souls the new life of sanctifying grace by which we become Christians, children of God, and heirs of heaven." ~ My Catholic Faith

 

We ended up being able to deliver that Spiritual Bouquet to JOY{filled}family in person and hold our darling (two-day old) Godson during his baptism on May 10th! I didn't think it was going to be possible, between my husband camping over at the coast with our five older children May 7th-9th (for our older boys' High School Regional Golf Tournament) and my own pregnancy complications and challenges, but Sean was able to take another day off work and my doctors said the long 11-12+ hour round trip drive would be ok, as long as we stopped every 1-2 hours to walk and stretch. It was such a beautiful day filled with so many blessings!

 

 

Loving God, Creator of all good things, thank You for the gift of life given to our Godson. What a privilege it was for us to stand as witnesses for the Church when our Godson was washed in baptismal waters. Lord, help us to be faithful to You all the days of our lives. 

As our Godson grows in age and faith, enable us to be a good example for him of how to live as a follower of Jesus. Through our love and concern, in moments of joy and sorrow, allow us to reveal Your loving face, O God. We pray this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

After the baptism I was able to receive the Blessing of an Expectant Mother and our baby girl and I were also blessed with a relic of St. Gerard by this faithful and holy priest.

Deo Gratias! 

Requiem - The Fraternity {Sponsored Giveaway}

The FSSP has added a new CD to their superb collection of CDs!  Requiem is the latest addition (available for pre-order now here) and it's quality surpasses their previous works. Even though all three of my husband's brothers are Fraternity priests (you can see pictures from their ordinations here, here, and here!) our family doesn't have an FSSP parish in our state and CDs like this are such a beautiful and welcome addition to our home. (We are grateful to have access to the extraordinary form of the Mass once every other month and a Sacred Liturgy Conference coming up this summer!) I'm especially looking forward to hearing them chant the Antiphon: In Paradisum, one of my favorites. Here is a great video along with the press release for this new CD. Be sure to scroll to the bottom to enter the giveaway for a chance to win one of three copies of Requiem!



An international community of young priests known as The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, or "The Fraternity" as they have lovingly been referred to, includes some of today's most skilled and committed singers of Gregorian chant. The community has been preparing to present ancient melodies anew, on the album Requiem, to be released on May 12, 2017 through their new international collaboration with De Montfort Music/Sony Classical.

Many have heard The Fraternity sing Requiem chants at funeral Masses over the years, often suggesting that the group, who is so close to this treasured music, record this moving collection. The decision to make their major-label debut with the music of Requiem was unanimous among the priestly singers, as they know well that nothing is so universal as the experience of death, the care of souls and as well the many emotions evoked by the living. The text of the Mass – beginning with "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine" (Grant them eternal rest, O Lord) – is spiritually uplifting, meant to convey souls to a particular vision of the beyond; the effect of the music is far-reaching and timeless, bound to touch the deepest emotions of any human heart.

Requiem, the debut major-label release by The Fraternity, was recorded by two of the top talents working in classical music today: multiple Grammy Award-winning producer Christopher Alder and engineer Brad Michel, also a Grammy winner. The executive producers of Requiem are Kevin and Monica Fitzgibbons of De Montfort Music, which has helped cultivate a new audience for ancient choral music by developing several chart-topping albums of Sacred Music. The industry veterans had this to say about the Requiem recording, "It has been an honor to work with The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, as they are excellent ambassadors for this repertoire- they are intimately familiar with this music- thus its deeper meaning is inescapable throughout the album-and the care and excellence that they brought to recording this Requiem is an inspiration."

Fr. Gerard Saguto, the North American Superior of The Fraternity who also sang on Requiem, explains that the daily responsibilities of the priests entail shepherding its flock's greatest joys and its deepest sorrows, from a marriage in the morning to a funeral in the afternoon. St. Augustine's sense of the sacred was a beauty "ever ancient, ever new." This beautiful work that's ancient yet made anew whenever he and his confreres sing it – serves as a message of hope. And for Fr. Saguto, this new recording of the Requiem – was "a way to share some of what we do on a wider scale, to put something beautiful and sacred out into the world."

This recording transfigures the sound of mourning and remembrance into something mystical and beautiful, inspiring a feeling of hope in the cycle of life and an embrace of the eternal through the gift of meditative song. Requiem is a uniquely curated presentation, comprising 20 tracks of sublime melody, mostly monophonic Gregorian chant but concluding with the lush sound of polyphonic motets by the great 16th-century Italian composer Palestrina and a less well-remembered 18th-century composer, Giovanni Battista Martini, one of Mozart's teachers.

Fr. Zachary Akers, music director of The Fraternity and a singer on Requiem, explains the relationship of the words to the melodies by noting, "I've heard it said that the music is meant to 'clothe' the texts." Although most people may only know the Requiem via the celebrated version by Mozart, the composer was himself inspired by the somber beauty and unadorned profundity of Gregorian chant, taking it as an emotional-aesthetic standard. Fr. Akers explains: "In this album we are hearing this type of music that was around long before Mozart, approaching the beginning of sacred music."

Fr. Garrick Huang, co-music director of The Fraternity and a singer on Requiem, reflected on the roots of Gregorian chant, saying: "The style of chant that we sing go all the way back to ancient Rome, but it even has its sources, as certain people believe, in Jerusalem, with certain melodies Middle Eastern in origin. Rome has been cosmopolitan for centuries, of course, so it has always been a crossroads of many cultures. So there are even some sounds that we could say come from the East (Byzantine), or even different parts of the eastern empire." Fr. Huang points out that for monks down through the centuries, it was never enough to simply recite the sacred texts: "We sing them, because it has always been part of human nature to express love and joy, despair and sadness – the gamut of emotions – in song. That said, the Requiem chant is not a performance for us. We say that we 'sing' the Requiem, but it's more that we're praying the Requiem."

Christopher Alder, who has worked with some of the greatest classical singers of the past 30 years, echoes this idea that the words and melodies of the Requiem chant are deep inside the members of The Fraternity. "This community has obviously put a lot of emphasis on concentrated musical training in their education of young men to become priests," he says. "They know this material intimately, as it rolls out of them as if it were poetry that one has recited countless times. They know it by heart, in every sense of the term because the text is being simultaneously believed and sung at the highest level."

About The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter

The Fraternity began in 1988, from its roots in Rome, the community has spread far and wide, now including some 280 priests in missions worldwide. They are a youthful community, with 35 being the average age of its priests. They are located in missions and parishes around the world including Germany, Great Britain, Nigeria, France, Colombia, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, the USA, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, Mexico, Poland, New Zealand and Belgium. In 2017, The Fraternity will ordain 17 priests: 7 in the US, 7 in Germany, 2 in England and 1 in Nigeria. The Roman Catholic community of priests is an ambassador to the world of the treasured traditional Mass in Latin, as well as specializing in Gregorian chant. For more information visit: www.FSSP.com.

.: Giveaway :.

De Montfort Music has generously offered to send three of my visitors here at Shower of Roses a copy of this brand new CD! This giveaway will remain open through Divine Mercy Sunday, April 23, 2017. The winner will be announced in this post and contacted by email on Monday, April 24, 2017.

Please enter the giveaway using the Rafflecopter box below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Pre-order a copy of REQUIEM over at Amazon. 

You can also order directly from The Fraternity here!

Sacred Liturgy Conference :: Register Now!

"Join Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Archbishop Alexander K. Sample and Bishop Robert F. Vasa in Southern Oregon July 12th – 15th for a three-day immersion in the Church’s sacred liturgy and its living musical heritage. The theme of the 5th annual conference is “The Voice of the Bridegroom”, and will focus on sacred liturgy, Church history, and the role of Gregorian chant."

Sean and I are so excited about the upcoming conference which will be hosted at the Sacred Heart Church (where we were married in 1999) and we purchased our tickets last September! 

Archbishop Sample will be there! Father Saguto (he attended Christendom College at the same time I did and is currently District Superior of North America for the FSSP, the order in which my three brother-in-laws are priests) will be there! His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke will be there!

We had no idea that we'd be surprised with another baby, due to arrive just two and a half weeks before the conference, but I'm really hoping that I'll still be able to attend. It is going to be amazing! 

Our older boys will be two of the servers for the various Masses. You can see the full schedule here.  

Will we be seeing any of you at the conference? There is still time to register but seating is limited and is first-come first-served. The registration deadline is April 3, 2017. 

Visit www.SacredLiturgyConference.org 

for more information and to register!

St. Joseph's Day

We spent St. Joseph's Day on the road this year, on our way to visit my husband's parents. It was such a beautiful day filled with so many blessings! 

We finished loading the car at 4:30 AM (after way too little sleep!) and were on the road by just after 5:00 AM... After our first few (of way too many!) hours on the road, we picked up a little treat for today's solemnity of St. Joseph! {The kids loved their doughnuts, but they weren't nearly as sweet as the little surprise dear St. Joseph had in store for us just a few hours later!}

.: St. Stephen the First Martyr :. 

After a few more hours on the road it was time for another little break... I knew we were too late for Mass (we had looked up Mass times before leaving home) plus we all looked like we had just rolled out of bed (our youngest was even still in his pjs) but we decided to drive by the church anyway. Guess who I happened to run into in the parking lot?! It was so fun to see her family, attend the end of the Solemn High Mass (after tidying ourselves up a bit), visit with the priests and parishioners, and join them for their traditional St. Joseph's Table!

.: St. Joseph Altar :.

Each year we usually set up our own St. Joseph Altar at home, but this was the first time we have ever seen one at a parish!!! The kids enjoyed all the traditional foods including all the pastries, various bread shapes, and the Pasta Milanese, the traditional St. Joseph's feast pasta, made with fennel, anchovies, pine nuts, and topped with toasted bread crumbs (Mudica) which represent the sawdust of St. Joseph, the carpenter. It was such a wonderful, unexpected blessing for our family! Deo Gratias!

.: Thomas Aquinas College :. 

As we pulled in last night (late on St. Joseph's Day), and saw this beautiful chapel for the first time, our ten year old asked,"Can I wear my Easter dress for Mass tomorrow? I don't think any of my other clothes are nice enough!"

A visit to the chapel before bed ♥

Glorious St. Joseph, protect me and my family from all evil as you did the Holy Family. Kindly keep us ever united in the love of Christ, ever fervent in imitation of the virtue of our Blessed Lady, your sinless spouse, and always faithful in devotion to you. Amen.