Happy Birthday Uncle Charlie!
Today we attended a birthday party for Great Uncle Charlie. Great Uncle Charlie and Great Aunt Gloria are the parents of 13 children, all of whom are fully grown. This makes for very large and fun family get togethers! 6 out of 13 of Charlie and Gloria's children entered the religious life! (for those of you who don't 'speak Catholic' that means that nearly half of their children became priests, nuns, brothers, sisters, and/or consecrated religious!)
Pictured above is Ben looking through old photographs with Gloria's sister who is a nun. The Brother in the background is a friend of the family who was visiting from Atlanta.
Leo and Ben enjoyed watching the papal Mass in Yankee Stadium on television with his cousin, Father Christopher, who is one of Uncle Charlie and Aunt Gloria's sons.
Before Father Christopher left, we all jumped on the opportunity to receive a blessing!
2 comments:
Okay, have you picked the brains of Uncle Charlie and his wife to see what they did as parents to inspire six of 13 religious?! That's great!
Yes, we see them very often. Actually, two of their sons are religious Brothers at the TLM we attend most Sundays. I've asked Gloria countless times, and here's her answer: Breastfeeding (I know you'll appreciate that), nightly family rosary, gentle discipline, and living out your faith as parents. She also would send all of her kids away to a religious Order just for them to see if they liked it when they were 16. I really respect them, because while they definitely favor the Tridentine Mass, their children have a very healthy understanding of the Novus Ordo Mass (a few of her children who are religious are members of orders where the new Mass is predominant). And they still managed to keep their faith! She did, however, ALWAYS sit up front at Mass, and tried to instill in them a proper understanding of the Latin Mass before introducing them to the vernacular Mass. Their first introduction, I believe, was at family members' weddings, funerals, baptisms, etc. Inspiring, don't you think? Gloria is really one of a kind. In her seventies, she took a 'retirement job' delivering lost pieces of luggage to airline passengers just so she could stick Catholic pamphlets in their bags and just so she could get paid drive (she LOVES to drive, and didn't take it because she needed the money). The woman never slows down!
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