The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross: Sept. 14th

What does today’s feast day celebrate? Overall, it is a celebration of God’s gift of salvation to mankind through remembering and honoring Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection and ultimate defeat of death so that we can have eternal life in Heaven with Him. Today’s feast also commemorates when Saint Helena found the cross that Jesus was crucified upon, and when the basilica that was build upon Calvary, where Jesus’ was crucified, was deducted. Here is a great article I read that gives a good overview and background for today’s feast day.

Today to celebrate this wonderful feast day, my family began our morning with “Eggs in the Cross” for breakfast. I used a cross shaped cookie cutter to cut crosses out of pieces of bread and placed them in a frying pan. I then poured eggs beaten with a little bit of milk into the cross cut outs and when they were finished cooking on both sides served them with grapes and/or strawberries. This was a yummy and filling breakfast that helped us begin our day by focusing on the cross.

Craft time!

For today’s craft, my family decided to offer Jesus a spiritual bouquet by uniting something we planned to do today with Him on His cross, as well as pray five “Our Father” prayers together as a family. We wrote our offerings on brown construction-paper crosses and our children colored a flower filled background for our bouquet. Spiritual bouquets are a beautiful offering, and uniting everything you do—even if it’s just sweeping the floor—to Jesus on his cross, can teach your children the value of offering everything they do as a sacrifice to Jesus. In Saint Faustina’s diary, she talks about offering and uniting her suffering of sickness and tasks she did for sinners. Can you imagine what the world would be like if everyone offered everything they did throughout the day for the conversion of sinners? Peace? An end to hatred? The amount of grace following from the Heavenly throne and filling hearts would be overwhelmingly AMAZING!

We also made a red paper chain, since red is the liturgical vestment color priests wear for today’s Mass, to go around a crucifix centerpiece for our table. I hope you and your family have a wonderful day celebrating The Exaltation of the Holy Cross!

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