Friday, April 8, 2011

Family Saints- 7 QuickTakes

St Gregory of Nyssa (c.334-394) brother of St Basil, theologian
Saint Anne- mother of the Theotokos
St John the Forerunner, cousin of Jesus
Saint Mary Magdalene- equal to the Apostles

Venerable Pope John Paul
Saint George the Great Martyr (c. 275-303)

St Gregory of Nazianzus (c.329-390), known as Gregory the Theologian

We have some great saints praying for us! Praying with the saints was one thing that attracted my family to the Catholic Church. I love that the Church has officially declared that so many virtuous people are in Heaven, seeing the face of God. The Church has not declared, however, that a person is definitively in hell.  So we live in HOPE and wait on God's MERCY and LOVE and JUSTICE.

Yes- we only have four children here on earth- so one of these seven patrons is praying WITH our child in heaven for the rest of us...the one patron who has not been officially declared a saint, yet.

find many more quick takes at conversiondiary.com

sources: wikipedia for both St Gregory icons,  John Paul II icon from bridgebuilding.com, all other icons from comeandseeicons.com

8 comments:

  1. Another great idea for a Quick Takes Post! I love it.

    This attracted me to the church as well. Our Protestant brethren really miss out as they reject the communion of the Saints (most denominations do...although I just thought of how some protestant churches are indeed named Saint Luke's...hmmm...maybe I'll need to do some research on that)

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  2. which saint is each person's patron? (i.e. which one belongs to the father? which one is for which kid?)

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  3. Jen- it goes in order of age- dad, mom, girl, girl, boy we lost, boy and girl :)

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  4. Did you and your husband pick each patron? Or did the patron pick each person? (ie, birthday is on the saint's day)

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  5. some of the names are close to the birthday/feast day, but most aren't. And I chose the names - first and middle- most people think my husband chose them because they are all from his country---but I carried the babies :)

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  6. This was a great idea for a quick takes post.

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  7. Haha, that's a GREAT argument: I carried them, I pick the names!

    I'm still slightly confused, but maybe I didn't ask my question correctly--how did you decide on a patron saint for each child? My birth middle name is Elizabeth (legally I use my maiden name), but I don't seem to connect too well with any of those saints with that name. BUT I just noticed that my birthday is day of Gregory the Great. Interesting!

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  8. Rabbit- basically, I chose names/saints I like but I didn't necessarily chose the saints on their birthday- we like to celebrate birthdays and feast days (and baptism days when I remember). Probably Magdalena's birthday is closest to her feast day

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