Our Life Our Sweetness and Our Hope!

...Our Life Our Sweetness and Our Hope!

Our Blessed Mother!

Indeed she is!

In the past two months, we celebrated a couple of Feasts in Honor of Our Blessed Mother and I came to realize that our favorite way to gather during these festivities is by hosting a liturgical tea after the recitation of the family Rosary.

Our tradition seems to go back to when I was a teenager, my family lived in an apartment at the time, and next door to us lived the sweetest sisters I had ever met; they were older, wise, and very pious Catholics. On the other hand, we were not as pious, only my mom; the rest of us prayed occasionally the Holy Rosary as a family. These wonderful ''angels" as I call them, always lead us by example in how to be a true Catholic. They were always filled with joy and hope, radiating such a magnetic presence! They were the best storytellers and loved to invite us over, every Friday for tea. At first, they drove us in for all the baked goods and the great time we had. We loved to visit them, but eventually, we shifted the reason for our stay; for the time in prayer and the wise reflections, they always had on matters of the Faith.

The afternoon always began with the most animated conversation, it felt almost as if we were a part of the family; they always made us feel that way. They gathered us into prayer in the most agreeable way to be thankful for the good times together. They gave us each a set of beads and lead our family into a meditated Rosary where each Hail Mary evoked Scripture. This kind of Rosary is called: the meditated Rosary by St. Louis Montfort (see the five different methods to pray the rosary by St. Louis of Montfort HERE the Fourth method was the one we prayed) and even though it seemed longer than the traditional Rosary it truly made an impact on us as teenagers and it brings me today to the sweetest memories.

Shortly after the meditated Rosary, they always prepared for us the table for tea: It was adorned with a lovely linen tablecloth, gorgeous vases with roses, and a lovely tea set. They baked the most delicious cookies and other pastries. It was the reward for joining them in prayer! During tea time, they shared vividly many stories of their youth and their insights on life and faith.

I must say that this gentle approach made a huge impact on us. It became almost a tradition and we looked forward to doing it every Friday. It strengthen our own prayer life as a family and taught us to slow down, to meditate instead of reciting, and to celebrate the fruits of prayer at the table where we gathered to share.

I am now passing on this beautiful witness and tradition to my kids! We are working intentionally on making prayer time, a time to gather joyfully, and a space for creativity in the Faith to make fruitful and memorable moments...

For the Feast of The Auxilium Christanorum or Mary Help of Christians (May 24th), for example, we decided to celebrate with a Rosary made of cupcakes!

In my opinion, the best way to highlight Our Lady as the true Sweetness and hope for all Christians.

A Rosary made out of cupcakes takes preparation and a bit of planning, but the results will be imprinted in your friends, family, and children forever. I invite you to try this at any Marian feast.

Below I will share the easy steps to do it.

WHAT YOU NEED:

• 53 regular baking cups

• 6 mini baking cups

• 4 boxes of your favorite cake mix. Our favorite: Betty Crocker vanilla-super moist

• eggs (as required for cake mix of your choice) in our case 12 in total

• vegetable oil (as required for cake mix of your choice) in our case 2 cups in all

• water (as required for cake mix of your choice) in our case 4 cups in all

• 6 tubs of icing

• food coloring ( pink and blue)

Our Large family had a couple of days snacking on these if you were wondering :)

Finally, we added to our celebration this wonderful coloring page HERE

Our next Marian feast was the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (June 25th), here we went all in!

Our Liturgical Tea party was awesome!

For this important feast, we decided to design our cupcake toppers for our liturgical tea into Immaculate Hearts. The easiest way to achieve hearts is by using strawberry halves. To recreate the flowers and flame effects I decided to use mini marshmallows held by toothpicks onto the strawberries.

I suggest that for the sword that pierces the heart is best to use a toothpick, I was thinking the cocktail sword picks were perfect, but I did not find them. Maybe next year I will have more luck!

The cupcakes we used were store-bought this time around, We could not resist these raspberry cupcakes from Costco and the color was perfect to go with our theme: Our Sweetness and Our Hope, The Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Very feminine!

Once we defined the baked goods that would pair with our Liturgical Tea, we centered our attention on the banner! I cannot celebrate feasts without banners :). It is a must for me.

I worked on THIS particular one for a couple of days. I downloaded the file, printed, colored, cut, and assembled it on black paper to highlight. Once it was finished, it went across the dining room. It truly gave us the right ambiance for our gathering.

Lastly, we felt we could try out another dessert idea for our tea time. I think it is easy enough for anyone to recreate. This idea has been around liturgical groups and Pinterest and is called: "flaming strawberries".

You can make them by pitting the strawberry top off and filling the dent with liquor to fire them up. Long story short... we tried but It was a big fail! So, I kept looking for alternatives and found another mom who tried this instead, it was an easy one and required only a candle-through.

Simple enough, it worked like a charm! Flaming strawberry hearts are a great idea for this Feast or feasts like Seven Sorrows, Sacred Heart of Jesus, or even a birthday party.

They are super cute and fun.

All these small fun ways we have found to supplement and enrich our family gatherings and prayer time had made us come closer on so many levels. Staring with the anticipation of the feast to enjoying the final product. We have found so much joy and also a source of creative love for serving one another in hospitality.

Liturgical tea and baked goods could bring sweetness to your prayer family life. especially after the recitation and meditation of the Holy Rosary. For our kids, it has been a great incentive, a reward even,

But the true sweetness in our lives is not only the sugar-coated treats we can offer, but the realization that we do all of these gestures and events to grow closer to Our Blessed Mother, who always waits for us in the Rosary, so we can, by her guidance, meditate on the mysteries of Our salvation, because her maternal concern for our souls and her constant protection is the greatest consolation we can ever hope for, in this valley of tears.

She is our true joy, Our Sweetness, and Our Hope!

Pray for us O Holy Mother of God,

that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ.