O Key of David

Let the baking begin...and the candy making!  We finally have everything we need to get started and the boys are having fun in the kitchen.  They especially love the clean up process in between recipes!

I managed to get the boys to sit down and have our Bible devotions before we got started.

The Bible passages are starting to converge to the one story of Jesus... a sure sign that Christmas is almost here!  The Gospel of Luke was our main focus for both the Mass readings of the day and the Jesse Tree ornament.  We read about the angel coming to Mary to announce Jesus becoming incarnate in her womb (Luke 1:26-38).  I had the boys think about the experience...Mary was being told the impossible...and yet it was true that she would be the Mother of God with a simple yes.  Then I had them imagine what that would mean for them.  Could they think of an impossible mission that God would send a message asking them to do?  I told them that God does ask of us to do things in our lives...we must be prepared for that calling.

I placed the shepherd in our nativity scene today...this also was an opportunity for the children to add our extra animals to the scene.  We are asked to imitate their watchfulness; stress in your speech and thoughts the idea that Christmas is important because Jesus will be born again in you. "Jesus, teach us to love Thee above all things.  Amen."




Then the boys were racing into the kitchen to make:

Fool-proof Fudge

Chocolate Carnutty Bars

Snowballs

We started with some of the easier ones...hoping that we could have an easy time on our first day of making Christmas goodies.  We always make enough for ourselves and for the nuns (we visit the monastery on Christmas morning...more on that later!).  We had a HUGE mess but they had fun and it was all cleaned up...just in time to make dinner!

After dinner, we prayed the antiphon for the day:

"Come, and bring forth the captive from his prison.  O Key of David, and Scepter of the House of Israel, who opens and no man shuts, who shuts and no man opens; Come and bring forth the captive from his prison, he who sits in darkness and in the shadow of death.

"The key is the emblem of authority and power. Christ is the Key of the House of David who opens to us the full meaning of the scriptural prophecies, and reopens for all mankind the gate of Heaven.

Recommended Readings: Isaiah 22: 22-25."

I thought about the key that opens our hearts to the true king...the King of Kings.  This made me think of a wonderful book about a man who had to find a key to open his heart to love again...he found it in a little boy who dared to show him love...just as Jesus shares Love with us.  The book is called The Christmas Miracle of Jonathon Toomey by Susan Wojciechowski.  I love this book of transformation of a man's soul over the "Advent" season.

We have decided to not read the Jesus of Nazareth book until we are close to Epiphany (January 6) as the rest of the book focuses on this aspect of the infancy years.  This allowed us more time for discussion of the day and it worked well.

Also, we have worked very hard to design 27 unique quilts for our Christmas project.  We are so excited to be able to show the unique gift each of these people brought to this world!  We look forward to beginning the process in making these quilts a reality.  Our plan is to show what we learned along the way about each of them throughout the Christmas season.

Sean and Edward finally got there room clean in order to bring Joseph and Mary into their room.  I think that means I need to clean my room next!  Oh my!  Hopefully, that will not take to long because tomorrow I make one more trip to the store for last minute food for Christmas dinner.  I also need to buy white dress shirts for these boys!  They keep growing on me...and surprise me when I am not looking!  LOL!  I am just glad I realized it before the weekend.