Yesterday our homeschool group had its annual Saints Day Party. We did it a bit early this year because this coming weekend is another Miles Christi silent retreat for some of the dads in our group and we didn't want them to miss any of the fun!
Every year we have our saints procession.
After that, each family gets to introduce themselves and tell what saints they are, we have a living rosary, a big pot luck dinner and games for all the kids. This year one of the families introduced something new that I thought was really neat and so I'm passing it on for anyone who has yet to have their saints party.We were introduced to the tradition of "souling". From what I have gathered this is an ancient tradition and there are various ways that people used to go about doing this. The way that we did it was to have each family write down the names of deceased family and friends on individual slips of paper. Then, the moms each sat down in a line with their slips of paper and some candy or holy cards or whatever they wanted to hand out. All of the "saints" processed through the line and each mom would put a slip of paper and a treat into their bag. The kids were told that each time they ate a piece of candy or took out a treat, they had to say a prayer for one of the people whose names were in their bag. While this was happening, there was a souling song playing in the background. The words to the chorus are:
A soul, a soul, a soul cake
Please, good missus, a soul cake
An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry
Any good thing to make us all merry
One for Peter, two for Paul
Three for Him who made us all
We came home with quite a stack of people to pray for. It should keep us
very busy for the month of November. It really was a nice addition to our
yearly event.
Also, as a reminder, today starts the last nine days leading up to, and
including, the election, so now would be a good time to start a novena
or a fast. I am aware of one group who will be doing a nine day bread
and water fast through election day. There are also many prayer vigils,
holy hours and public rosaries going on during this time. Let us storm
heaven so that God's Will will be done for our country.
God Bless!
