2001: A trip down memory lane

This afternoon, I had a phone call from my favorite brother (whose family is finding it hard to pray for our house to sell in Colorado as they'd really like us to move back...) ... and that started the memories.

Then dh and I were talking (while my sweetheart was cooking dinner -- gotta love this guy!), about all the places we've lived in our almost 11 years of wedded-bliss ... including our visits to said brother and his family in Ripon, England.

Then we started watching our favorite Saturday evening entertainment ...

And, so ... here is a blast from the past ... from our first year in Austria ... and our visits to England

So, we're all a bit older, (and we've added a little sprite since then), but otherwise ... welcome to our world!

Birthdays: Seems like just yesterday ...

... I was missing Christ the King Mass as I was in labor with Bam-Bam. That was six years ago today and I'm still in amazement that dh and I brought this little spit-fire into the world with the help of the Almighty!

I mean, there we were ... aged students with four kids in a foreign country and then the line is pink and we couldn't have been more excited! I was the healthiest I'd ever been during a pregnancy ... all that good, clean Austrian air, the daily walks to the Spar to get groceries, the 2 mi walk to catch the train .... it was wonderful!

Here's a glimpse at the last 6 years:

Happiest of 6th birthdays, to our wonderful gift from God: BamBam!

We love you and know that God has great things in store for you -- after all, he picked an amazing Guardian Angel for ya!

Feast: Our Lady of the Rosary

Today is a lovely feast -- Our Lady of the Rosary commemorates the amazing victory of the European troops (led by Austrian Don Juan) against the Turks at Lepanto. This was the battle that GKChesterton immortalized in his poem, Lepanto (which we read today to give the kids the flavor of the battle).

[here's Bam-bam's version of the "ships" -- they then got out all their stuffed animals (I mean, Turks) and proceeded to fire on them!]

Here's an article from EWTN that explains the origins of the feast:

[this painting, by an unknown artist, shows the port of Lepanto during the battle]

On October 7, 1571, a great victory over the mighty Turkish fleet was won by Catholic naval forces primarily from Spain, Venice, and Genoa under thecommand of Don Juan of Austria. It was the last battle at sea between "oared" ships, which featured the most powerful navy in the world, a Moslem force with between 12,000 to 15,000 Christian slaves as rowers. The patchwork team of Catholic ships was powered by the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Knowing that the Christian forces were at a distinct material disadvantage,the holy pontiff, St. Pope Pius V called for all of Europe to pray the Rosary for victory. We know today that the victory was decisive, prevented the Islamic invasion of Europe, and evidenced the Hand of God working through Our Lady. At the hour of victory, St. Pope Pius V, who was hundreds of miles away at the Vatican, is said to have gotten up from a meeting, went over to a window, and exclaimed with supernatural radiance: "The Christian fleet is victorious!" and shed tears of thanksgiving to God.

At Lepanto, the Victory over the Moslems was won by the faithful praying the Rosary. Even though they had superior numbers, the Turks really were overmatched. St. Padre Pio,said: "The Rosary is the weapon," and how right he was!

The Battle of Lepanto was at first celebrated liturgically as "Our Lady of Victory." Later, the feast of October 7th was renamed "Our Lady of the Rosary" and extended throughout the Universal Church by Pope Clement XI in 1716 (who canonized Pope Pius V in 1712).

Here's what we did today to help remember this lovely feast:
Coloring page from our ever-resourceful Waltzing Matilda ...and "shrinky dink" plaque for the Marian feast.
We then put together a "Rosary Book". I bought "rosary cards" from Magnificat last May (but with moving, etc, never used them) and ...

we pasted those on card-stock. Here is the card for 5th Luminous mystery, the Institution of the Eucharist. Each set of mysteries is separated with a "summary" sheet so we know which mysteries on which days! All the cards are put in order in sheet protectors and the final page of our book is this quote from Servant of God, John Paul the Great:

… it becomes natural to bring to this encounter with the sacred humanity of
the Redeemer all the problems, anxieties, labors and endeavors which go to make
up our lives. “Cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you” (Ps 55:23).
To pray the Rosary is to hand over our burdens to the merciful hearts of Christ
and his Mother. … I feel the need to say once more, as a warm invitation to
everyone to experience it personally: the Rosary does indeed “mark the rhythm of
human life”, bringing it into harmony with the “rhythm” of God's own life, in
the joyful communion of the Holy Trinity, our life's destiny and deepest
longing. (paragraph 25, Rosarium Virginis Mariae)

And for dinner ... well, since Don John of Austria is the main man behind the Battle of Lepanto, we opted for an Austrian feast -- sausages, potatoes with apples and beer (add a salad and you got a great meal!). Since dh's birthday is tomorrow, we didn't make any sloppy-gloppy dessert as those will come over the next days (dh really likes to celebrate his birthday with food!).

Remembering 9/11

Our experience of 9/11 is so very different from many of our friends.

To start with we were in a foreign country, barely understanding hello and goodbye, far from family and friends (some of whom were in harm's way and there was nothing we could do about it and no news available for a few days).

You see, in the Fall of 2001, we were in Austria for dh to start a Masters in theological studies. We'd been gone from the States since June -- with a 10 day visit to a brother, his wife and their (then) 8 children living in England. After putzing about Europe with our 4 youngest -- at the time: 12, 10, 2-1/2 and 1-1/2 -- hitting the top pilgrimage sites like Lourdes, Fatima, nd the Miraculous Medal Chapel in Paris, and riding the Chunnel, we finally arrived in mid-August in a small, Alpine village in Austria (about 1-1/2 hours south of Vienna), a village that will remain in our memories -- Gaming, Niederoesterich, Austria!

The village was very small but had a strong American presence as the Franciscan and Ave Maria universities' semester-abroad programs were housed in the same ancient monastery where dh would attend classes. The villagers spoke minimal English, our landlord even less. He spoke High-German as he was from Vienna and taught by "der Schwestern" in an orphanage during WW2. His wife spoke halting English and her German was heavily laced with the village dialect (think deep South, thick accent). Our village was so small ... shops closed on Saturday at 3 and reopened on Monday morning; shopping was a communal activity done daily, all went to the village church ... it was lovely!

I can still remember 9/11/01 -- Herr Baier came to our flat (2 doors away from the ancient but renovated Carthusian Monastery) after lunch time and tried to tell us about the events in NYC and the Pentagon and that the President was air-lifted from the White House and all the other events ... but he was explaining in very excited High German! All we could understand was that our President and country was physically attacked from ?????!

We slowly got word, through the universities' networks, a little of what was going on ... but the stories conflicted ... there were gaps in the information ... we weren't sure if other suicide bombers had crashed into the White House or were attacking other capitol cities throughout the country. We had no idea how many were dead and how many targets were involved.

Dear Herr Baier ... he came after dinner and brought us to his house so we could watch CNN. Brikhead, than 12, and I went over as dh and the littles were pretty upset. We sat there, watching the CNN coverage ... trying to understand just exactly WHAT had happened, but confused by the German-translating voice-overs ... all we knew was that the Pentagon (very close to youngest brother's house and work) had been hit and that the World Trade Center Towers were gone (we have relatives in NY too). It was almost worse just getting parts of the information.

We tried calling the States but couldn't get through. Even the internet and email were letting us down as communication links ... we just couldn't get any informationl.

We were scared, ignorant, confused and clueless ... helpless. It was VERY scary.

But there was hope.

The events that really are set in my mind are the Austrian peoples' reaction to 09/11/01. Cardinal Schoenborn (who was also the Chancellor of dh's institute) held a special Mass in Stephansdom (the Cathedral to St. Stephan of Hungary in Vienna) with all the politicians, religious and ordinary citizens filling the Church to pray for America and her victims.

Added to that were the notes we got over the next few days ... notes from villagers and foreign students in the village who wanted us Americans to know that they understood the terror of bombing -- some could remember WW2 and some could remember the Communist control. The notes gave us hope and explained that they were in communion with us and were praying for our safety and that of our family members so far away. What we would call the "county-officials " came to our village and held a special ceremony to show solidarity with us.

Hope from our foreign friends. Hope that their prayers and good wishes could help us to get beyond the fear and the frustration and the anger.

After a few days, as communication outlets improved, we finally were able to piece together the facts. And the facts were more horrific than what we had imagined. But we had hope.

And that hope is still alive, seven years later, with all of us back in the States and us now living so close to our Nation's capitol.

Hope that there will never be another enemy invasion on U.S. soil ... hope that the world understands that terrorism or bullying won't be allowed ... hope that our children will grow up in a world that never forgets 09/11/01 but, at the same time, never has to relive another nightmare like 09/11/01.

God Bless America!

Why St. Athanasius?

Many people have asked us, "why is your home learning adventure called St. Athanasius Academy?"

Eight years ago, when we were looking at moving to Austria so dh could get a Masters in Theological Studies (which he's now using to teach at the new John Paul the Great Catholic High School), we began looking at home-educating the older two, Brikhead and Kotch. They were in Catholic parochial school, but not knowing what we'd find in Austria, we looked to home school them.

As we read book after book on Catholic homeschooling and Christian world-view homeschooling and secular books on homeschooling, we became more and more enamored of the idea of steeping the children's day in Catholic teaching while also giving them all the subjects of traditional school. We read more and more about education and began to get involved with online home-education communities.

At the same time, dh was applying to the Masters program in a small village in Austria. He needed to write a divisio textus on a sermon by St. Athanasius of Alexandria. He and I became enamored of this 4th century bishop who fought against security, fame and fortune for the Catholic faith -- being exiled at least three times for his defense of the Catholic faith against the Arian heresy . He did what was right. We decided then and there to place dh's application, our move to Austria and our homeschool, under the patronage of one of the greatest defenders of the Catholic faith.

Eight years later, as we start out seventh year of "living, loving and learning in the home" we again place our school under St. Athanasius' patronage -- asking him to intercede on our behalf, helping us to be good defenders of the Faith, and (most importantly) helping me to raise the now younger crew steeped in the Faith.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria, Pray for US!

Has it been TWO years?

This was the cartoon my very talented brother Paul did when John Paul II died. My family has always felt a certain closeness to the Pope -- he's from the same area of Poland as my paternal grandfather and he was elected in the midst of a rash of Polish jokes which ceased once people realized that Karol Wojtyla was not the stereotypical Polack! Almost 27 years after his election by the College of Cardinals (with lots of assistance from the Holy Spirit), this Great Pope died in his apartment in St. Peter's, and with the words "Be Not Afraid" on his lips.

Sometimes it seems so long ago that the great pope, John Paul II, died; and other days it seems like just yesterday.

We were fortunate to get a personal blessing from the Man back on March 24, 2003. We were in Vatican City for a beatification ceremony of an Austrian eye doctor. Our (ITI's) Grand Chancellor, Christoph Cardinal Schoenborn, arranged for us to be personally blessed by JP2 in the Paul VIth Hall the day after the beatification.

This is how I remember JP2 looking that March day -- increasingly crippled by the Parkinson's that would end his suffering on Earth, having to hold his head up with his left hand.

But when the good Cardinal introduced our baby, Johannes-Paul Stephan (who turned four months that same day) to the man for whom we had named him -- the Pontiff's smile and light in his eyes showed the burning love and life in the crippled shell. This man, who would lead our Church another 3 years, who offered his daily sufferings for his Church and her people, burned with an inner passion and love of us all, but especially the children. I was privileged to see that on March 24 2003 and I will never forget it!

JP2, we honor you today, on the 2nd anniversary of your leaving this vale of tears, wrapped in Our Lady's loving arms. We have pictures, books and memories of your shepherding our Church through some rough times ... of building up our Church with the young people who will carry Her through this new millenium ... of the great sufferings you hid from the World ... Papa, we miss you and pray to you and know you are in a much better place -- but, know that we will NEVER forget you and your work for the Catholic Church!

Here is the prayer JP2 reportedly prayed daily to Our Lady, the Blessed Mother:

Totus Tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea Tua sunt.

Accipio Te in mea omnia.

Praebe mihi cor Tuum, Maria!

translation:

I belong to you entirely

and all that I possess is yours.

I take you into everything that is mine.

Give me your heart, Mary!

Also, if you are interested in helping/tracking JP2's cause for beatification/canonization, please see the official site of the Diocese of Rome.

UPDATE: And if you get a chance, go check out the Loveliness of John Paul II Fair that Sarah hosted over at "Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering" -- it's a truly beautiful and fitting tribute to this great man!

Speaking of color ...

... here's a full view of the knitted wall hanging in the living room. This was a shawl I'd done as a sampler of some Austrian knitted lace patterns. After wearing the shawl in 2002 when we had an audience with JP2 (!) in Rome, I couldn't bear to have it just another "wearable" -- so my FIL made a frame for it (with oak strips) and hammered a gazillion black finishing nails into the frame. I occasionally take it down to launder it and then dry it on it's own frame. (NOTE: we found a tiffany-style desk lamp that has the perfect colors to complement the hanging! Isn't God good?)

I now call it -- "The Blue Ridge Parkway" -- and if you've ever seen the Blue Ridge, especially down near NC/SC, you'll know why.....