Share the faith at Christmas time

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Several new books make interesting reading for toddlers, teens and adults and deserve to be considered for Christmas gifts.
"All Shall Be Well: A Spiritual Journal for Hope and Encouragement" by Hilda St. Clair. Paraclete Press (Brewster, Massachusetts, 2016). 120 pp., $15.99.
Teenage readers and adults alike will find calm, inspired creativity and peaceful contemplation with this beautifully illustrated journal. Sixty quotes illuminated with bright watercolor are accompanied with activities to help focus the day on God. Hopeful and encouraging, the journal is a reprieve from a loud and hectic world. Ages 13 and up

Authors offer tips for improving relations, strengthening faith in kids

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  "Keep Your Kids Catholic" is a timely book written by husband and father Marc Cardaronella, who draws from his experience of leaving behind the Catholic Church after eighth grade and on into adulthood, to assist parents with strategies that may foster the lived experience of faith in their children.
Making a case against the assembly-line religious education programs that many parents blindly trust as a guarantee that the faith will be passed on, Cardaronella shares his own experience that is quite typical of many adult "revert" Catholics who went through a program without ever experiencing a living relationship with Jesus Christ.
One thing that is perfectly clear from this book is that any hope of having children living the faith must be preceded by parents who are fully engaged in living the faith. Faith formation that seeks adult conversion in children begins with an adult conversion for the parents.

Moms’ Faith, Health Important to Kids, World

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Two new books show that if mothers take care of their health and faith, the world can be a better place.
"Divine Mercy for Moms: Sharing the Lessons of St. Faustina" gives practical solutions for mothers to put into practice the Divine Mercy devotion. "The First 1,000 Days: A Crucial Time for Mothers and Children -- And the World" analyzes efforts to stop malnutrition at a very personal level by documenting the lives of several mothers and children in the United States, India, Guatemala and Uganda.
Although different in their nature and intended audience, both books address the value of motherhood for the spiritual and physical health of the world.

Author sees 500th anniversary of Lutheranism as a Catholic one, too

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It has been 500 years since Augustinian monk and theology professor Martin Luther set off the Protestant Reformation with his call for a debate on indulgences and other burning issues in the Catholic Church at the time. Prolific Lutheran writer Martin Marty centers his reflections on Luther's 95 theses on Christ's call to repentance, arguing that repentance formed the heart of Luther's spiritual crisis.
What might make this book challenging for many readers is the author's tracing of the history of Lutheran-Catholic rapprochement that led to a 1999 joint declaration on grace. While this topic is treated with sensitivity, it was the Catholic side that seemed to give more on the issue of grace as central to salvation.

Author Challenges Catholics to Live Church’s Social Teachings

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Stephen White is a fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. In “Red, White, Blue and Catholic” he challenges American Catholics to understand and to live out Catholic social teaching in its fullness in their daily lives and more.
In his foreword, he cites three different Catholics who made a difference in their own times and ours: St. Thomas More, Dorothy Day and Jerome Lejeune.
These three, he writes, represent the vocation of all lay Catholics to “bring peace, joy, justice and truth” to all humanity through the “sanctification of the world” and support for the family, the unborn and the poor.”
Such efforts, of course, include but transcend politics.

Bert Tranel recalls farming and faith

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East Dubuque man writes memoir

“Lucky 13: Rural Family of Faith” is a memoir of life on the farm in the far northwest corner of the Rockford Diocese.
Author Bert Tranel, the youngest of the 13 children, reflects on his life and the importance of faith to his family, from which came two priests for the Rockford Diocese and two sisters for the Sinsinawa Dominicans.
Tranel’s informal memoir has the tone of casual conversations in the family. In each section, he writes of a family member or a time in his own life, dropping in extraneious facts to help place each memory in historical perspective.
His father died shortly after the author was born, making young Bert the only family member who didn’t know him. “From then on, with the help of God’s grace and mom’s faith, we pulled through the rocky roads ahead,” he wrote.

Available on Amazon:
“Lucky 13: Rural Family of Faith”  by Bert Tranel. (River Lights Publishing, paperback) 167 pp., $17.99

Enter by Oct. 17, 2016, to win both books from The Observer Book Club. 

Joan Aubele considers her cure miraculous

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Somonauk woman shares her cancer fight

By Louise Brass
Observer Correspondent
Doctors thought she would be dead by the end of the week when the young mother of three, Joan Aubele, 29, was admitted to the hospital with stage-four acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
“My cancer was actually so advanced upon admission to the hospital that my chemo was postponed until the end of the week, assuming I would probably be dead by then,” Aubele said.
It seemed pointless to give her chemo at this stage — that was in March 1990.
Despite the diagnosis, and the anger and fear she was experiencing, she prayed and believed that somehow, someway her prayers would be answered.

“I was actually in constant prayer, begging God to let me live for the sake of my husband, and for my three little girls,” she recalled.