Can We Cana? A Community to Support Catholic Marriages

Monday, January 4, 2016

Firsts and Bests for 2015!!

Proving that 45 may indeed be the new 35, the past year saw me doing a lot of things for the first time in my life. That's true of my husband as well. Bringing equal amounts of fun and fear, here are our firsts for 2015:

first time being vetted by the Secret Service for a press pass to a papal Mass
first vocal solo in a Cathedral
first asked to endorse a book
first asked to endorse a film
first child to enter high school
first child to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation
first time teaching pre-Cana for the Joy-Filled Marriage program of the Archdiocese of Newark
first attendance at the Catholic Marketing Network trade show
first filmed talk
first post to reach over 8,000 shares in five languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish, & Vietnamese)

And here are the best Can We Cana? posts for 2015, according to you, dear readers!

Post with Most Likes & Shares on Social Media

Best Blogposts and Mileposts of 2014!!

Post with the Most Comments

Best & Worst of Bishops Behaving Badly, or Week 2 of the Family Synod

Many blessings on all of you for helping this Catholic marriage support community grow. If there are any topics you'd like to hear more about, please let me know in the comments!

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Thursday, December 31, 2015

Improve Physically, Intellectually, and Spiritually in the New Year

A new year is like a bright, shiny package waiting to be opened or like that moment when you take a deep breath and prepare to ask the all-important question or sing the well-practiced song. It seems anything is possible, if we just have the will to see it through. God has plans for us, plans for good and not for evil. What dreams does he want us to dream? What good works does he want us to accomplish? How much closer can we get to heaven in the next 365 days?

New Year's resolutions are a call to self-improvement, but for Christians they are also a reminder that the main architect of our improvement is our God and not ourselves. Reforming ourselves does no good unless we're also conforming ourselves to the will of God.

As a wife and mother, I know that serving my family is my path to holiness and happiness. So, for 2016, I've resurrected my old habit of making each family member's resolutions my own and helping them to achieve their most important goals in the next twelve months. We all decided to concentrate on three areas: the physical, the intellectual, and the spiritual. You can do the same for your family and then see how far they've come by the end of the year. It's a great way to measure the seemingly unquantifiable goals of family life.

The Santos Family's 2016 New Year's Resolutions

1. Me: My physical health suffered a setback when I sprained my ankle just before Pope Francis' visit to the United States in September, and my lack of exercise has weighed heavily upon me (literally as well as figuratively). My prayer life has also been crowded out by the increasing demands of writing and speaking. And I haven't helped my kids with their homework as much as I'd like. Resolved: Weekly exercise, daily prayer, more homework help for the kids.

2. Manny: My husband fought a major battle to limit his commute time last year, and he won. This year, he should have time to make it to the taekwondo classes that he signed up for but can rarely attend. Because he's now home for dinner more often than not, we can try once again to institute a Spanish-speaking dinner hour so he can teach the Santos kids the language that befits their last name. Although the two of us already pray the fifth decade of the rosary pretty regularly at bedtime, we could make a firmer commitment to it. Resolved: Weekly taekwondo classes, Spanish-speaking dinner hour, daily couple prayer.

3. Lelia (14): A lot of things changed when our eldest daughter entered public high school, and surprisingly most of them were good! She'd like to join the school kickline (think teenage Rockettes) or the color guard. She's gotten out of the habit of praying before lunch in school -- in her parochial elementary school, they piped lunchtime prayers in over the loudspeakers, and of course they don't do that in public school. She's also gotten into the habit of watching TV on her smartphone (accursed gadget) instead of reading. Resolved: Prepare for kickline and color guard auditions, say grace before lunch, read more.

4. Miguel (12): This almost-teenager is already starting preparations to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation in the next school year. He needs to choose a saint's name and a service project. He also needs to learn how to hold fast to his faith when he follows his sister Lelia to public high school in a few years. With more practice and study, he will probably earn his black belt in taekwondo and at last be permitted to audition for the traveling soccer team. Similar to his older sister, he's been spending more time with his favorite technology, in his case video games, than with a good book. Resolved: Prepare for Sacrament of Confirmation, start travel soccer, read more.

5. Maria (10): Maria will probably also receive her black belt this year, and she's just started piano lessons. She wants to learn Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, but I told her that Fur Elise was a more realistic goal. She'd like to take an online course through Johns Hopkins' Center for Talented Youth and learn to use the microscope she got for Christmas. Also, she's committing to ten minutes of daily mental prayer. Resolved: Learn to play Fur Elise, take online course, 10 minutes daily prayer.

6. Marga (9): Marguerite would like to win more first place medals in her gymnastics competitions this upcoming year -- five would make her happy. She's also worried about doing well in the New York State standardized tests for fourth-graders. She rooms with big sister Lelia and they frequently say bedtime prayers out loud together, but Marga would like to add more mental prayer to that. Resolved: 5 gold medals, pass the state tests, add mental prayer to bedtime prayer.

7. Cecilia (7): Cecilia wants to win as many gymnastics medals in 2016 as Marga did in 2015, so she's aiming at fifteen to twenty. She's also preparing to receive her first confession and First Holy Communion. And her mother would like to finally find a school subject that flips the switch on and gets C.C. really interested. C.C.'s last book report said she wouldn't recommend the book because it didn't have enough tragedy. Huh. Resolved: 15 to 20 medals, prepare for confession and communion, discover academic interests.

8. Emma (5): Our cutiest still has trouble saying words like "straw" and "strong" and sometimes she can't pronounce letter sounds well when she's trying to read. Her report card was not, um, what a kindergartener's report card should be. Plus, everybody says I spoil her. What!? Resolved: Better speech, more fluent reading, no spoiling.

What are your family's New Year's resolutions? Can you help them achieve their goals for 2016? Would love to hear from you in the comments.

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Monday, December 28, 2015

Merry Christmas from Our Family to Yours!

Our family has been through a lot of changes in the past year! Manny switched jobs from Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn to Mercy Hospital, part of Catholic Health Services of Long Island.

Lelia started high school this year in the Garden City public school system. She is on the honor roll and in the art honors program. She has lots of friends and has grown to be even taller than her mother.

At almost thirteen years old, Miguel is a few tests away from getting his black belt in taekwondo. Maria is not far behind him. Maria also took the School and College Ability Test for fourth and fifth graders, and her scores qualified her to take online courses with Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth.

Marguerite and Cecilia are both competitive gymnasts. Marga is USAG Level 3, and C.C. is Level 2. In their first meet this year, Marga won medals for floor, vault, and uneven bars, and C.C. won a medal for bars also.

Our sweet Elisa-Maria (Emma) is the littlest one at only five years old. She just started kindergarten at St. Joseph’s School, and she’s very excited about learning how to read. We hope that 2015 was good to you and that 2016 will bring you many blessings!

With love from Manny, Karee, Lelia, Miguel, Maria,

Marguerite, Cecilia, and Elisa-Maria Santos

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PLUS, BONUS VIDEO of Lelia singing O Holy Night in a stairwell.
Because ... stairwells.

Monday, December 21, 2015

Walk Softly, Pray Joyfully

Every year I try to limit my Advent commitments, and every year I don't succeed as much as I'd like. So when asked to review Teresa Tomeo's Walk Softly and Carry a Great Bag: On-the-Go Devotions, I did exactly what the author recommends and tucked it in my purse to read whenever I could grab a few moments.

Each chapter of this charming book is a two-to-three page meditation on growing closer to God through prayer and laughter. Sometimes the chapter titles say it all:

Don't Just Do Something -- Sit There!
All I Want for Christmas Is a Good Night's Sleep
Don't Cry Over Spilled Perfume
Little Prayers Mean a Lot

By the time I finished Teresa's book, I felt like I'd found a new best friend. I felt cheered up, encouraged, and motivated to keep fighting the good fight.

Walk Softly includes some great advice from Pope Francis that speaks straight to my soul. I have a tendency to get down in the dumps. Aristotle aficionados would say I have a melancholic temperament. Fans of A.A. Milne would just say I'm a bit like Eeyore, the gloomy donkey. But here's what Pope Francis has to say about grumpy Christians:

Sometimes these melancholy Christians' faces have more in common with pickled peppers than the joy of having a beautiful life.

Or as one of my spiritual directors once said, "Smile! We're on our way to heaven!" In response to Pope Francis' words about pickled pepper Christians (aka the Saturday Night Live Church Lady caricature), Teresa urges the reader to pray "that I can be a good witness by living out my life with a smile on my face and a real pep in my step as I proclaim and preach about your Son."

She also advises us to turn our misery into ministry. Our greatest hurt can intersect with the world's greatest need. A mother whose child was killed by a drunk driver started the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). A father whose son was abducted and killed cofounded the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Teresa and her husband began a marriage ministry based on their struggles to overcome difficulties and challenges in their own marital relationship.

Turning misery into ministry allows us to make sense out of suffering. Deep in the thick of struggle, no one wants to hear "Everything happens for a reason." But once we reach the other side, we can discover that the lessons we've learned are not for ourselves alone. Sharing our knowledge with fellow strugglers does give purpose to our pain, even retroactively.

I know that the struggles our family has faced because of my husband's four brain tumors have tested my fortitude and my faith in God. As a newlywed, I had a tendency to idolize my husband and put all my hopes for a happy future in him. But he's not in control of whether tumors invade his brain, and obviously neither am I. God is the senior partner in our marriage, the majority stockholder, so to speak. God is in charge of our marriage and our future.

The bedrock of a successful sacramental marriage is a willingness to turn the reins over to God. It will take more than just the two of us, my husband and me. It will take trust in God -- which is why all the practical marriage or relationship or communication tips in the world won't do a darned thing without solid spiritual formation. So the yoking of the two -- the practical and the spiritual -- has become the ministry that has grown out of the misery that my husband and I suffered during his sicknesses.

Like her meditation on misery and ministry, Teresa has included many nuggets of deep wisdom worthy of long reflection in Walk Softly. Read it and see which one speaks most clearly to you.

Many thanks to the author for the free review copy of this book.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

12 Gifts that Keep Christ in Christmas

I love giving religious-themed gifts at Christmas. It's a great way to evangelize and keep Christ in Christmas. And if some people on your gift list are your godchildren, then giving a religious-themed gift helps you fulfill your promise to educate them in the faith. Here are our top picks from the past several years.

1. Vatican Videos: The Vatican has come up with a list of great movies in the categories of religion, values, and art. We're giving a bunch of them as Christmas presents this year. Many of the films are on the older side (great for classic movie lovers), and some are more recent like Schindler's List, Gandhi, and The Mission (a personal favorite!).

2. Mass Bag for Little Kids: If someone on your list has toddlers and is new at the parenting game, they may not know about the Mass bag trick to keep their kids quiet in church. One Christmas, we bought all our kids these awesome Quiet Time Church Kit bags, easy to carry and filled with wooden rosaries, a prayer bear stuffed animal, holy cards, and a tiny kids missal to follow the liturgy. The kids loved carrying around the bright red bags and we did get some quiet moments out of them!

3. Donation to Charity: For the person who has everything, you can donate to a Catholic charitable organization in their name. My dad suggested that we buy a sheep for an African family (yes, that's a thing). But we have a local group, run by a friend of mine, which sends money to children in Kenya to help them get a private Catholic school education. Since my dad is a professor, we figured he'd like it if we helped poor children get an education instead.

4. Icons: One year, we bought icons for every kid in the family, since they were all named after saints. The artwork is beautiful, and kids are amazed to see their name on a gilded plaque with a picture of a supernatural super-hero. Icons can provide a cultural education as well -- one of our nephews belongs to the Coptic Orthodox church even though he's named after a popular Spanish saint, St. Francis Xavier. When we gave him his icon, he realized that the East and West both have a tradition of iconography.

5. Rosary Rings and Bracelets: Little girls (and big girls!) love jewelry, so rosary rings and bracelets are a great gift idea. You can include a tiny pamphlet on how to pray the rosary.

6. American Girl Doll - Catholic Edition: As each of our daughters got old enough,we bought them one American Girl doll from the historical collection. We bought our daughter Maria the Native American doll named Kaya, and Maria promptly renamed her Kateri after St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint. There are also many other dolls on the market meant to resemble certain saints in the first place (no renaming required).

7. The Princess and the Squire books: Author Jennie Bishop wrote a beautifully illustrated book called The Three Gifts of Christmas about a spoiled princess who took Christmas gifts for granted until she learned that it's better to give than receive. The same author wrote excellent modern fairy tales for both boys and girls about guarding our love and remaining pure. The books are also available in Spanish, and some come with an audio CD. Although they impart Catholic values, they do it in a very non-obvious way, so they're a good choice for non-Catholics on your Christmas list.

8. Gifts from the Holy Land: One Christmas (probably the same Christmas we gave rosary jewelry) we gave all the boys on our list gifts from the Holy Land. You can find carvings from olive wood, or vials of dirt and water from different places in Israel -- believe me, boys love dirt. Buying these gifts supports Christians in an often-violent area of the world, where they are frequently persecuted and struggling to survive.

9. The Weight of a Mass: The Director of Religious Education at our parish always recommends this book to First Communion parents. Similar to the Princess and the Squire books, it's a fairy-tale-like story, this time about the value of the Holy Eucharist. Spoiler alert: at the end, all the baked goods in the kingdom couldn't balance the baker's scales when a tiny scrap of paper with a Mass intention was placed on the other side. You can give the book together with a Mass card from your parish or a religious order.

10. Saints Biographies and Movies: Ignatius Press has a huge selection of saints biographies and movies. Besides plenty for adults, there is also a terrific series of saints biographies for children and cartoon movie versions of classics like Ben Hur and the life of historical figures like St. Bernadette and Christopher Columbus.

11. Gift Subscription: My husband Manny has an adult goddaughter named Helen, who converted when she was older. When Helen moved out-of-state, still as a newly-minted Catholic, we wanted to find a way to keep her grounded in her faith. So we bought her a subscription to the weekly newspaper, the National Catholic Register. You can also buy gift subscriptions to publications like the Magnificat, which has prayers and readings for every day of the month, or MagnifiKids, which is what it sounds like -- the Magnificat for kids.

12. JPII Paraphernalia: Thanks to Kendra at CatholicAllYear, I just found out about the JPII shop at Printable Prayers. It has quotes from St. John Paul II as framed artwork and on t-shirts, keychains, mouse pads, and even drinking glasses. I haven't gotten anyone something from this shop yet. And no one's gotten me anything from this shop yet, either. Ahem. Anyone?