Celebrating the Feast of Pope St. John Paul II in the Home, with a Printable

I am on a ridiculous (and completely unintentional) streak of two weeks of almost daily blog posts. We can't keep this up forever. I'm trying to stop. Really I am. But there's been all the guest posting and sponsored posting to tell you about. And Frankie was grumpy at the fair and you guys NEEDED to see THAT, right? And people were mad on the internet! Anyway, one more post I agreed to write that is coming almost, but not quite, too late to be of any use.

Ashley asked me to share how we celebrate the Feast of JPII in our home, and we wouldn't miss it, because our Jack is named John Paul in his honor. And that feast day is today: October 22nd.



Quick story about that: While I was pregnant (in 2002), Jim pointed out that the Pope was ailing and perhaps he would die before the baby was born, and we could name the baby after him. And I said I was pretty sure that people don't have to be dead to have babies named after them. It turns out I was right. So we named the baby John Paul. But we call him Jack.

Anyhoo, it is Jack's name day. Normally he'd get to pick anything he likes for dinner. But I bought kielbasa at the store because it was on sale AND because it was Polish. So I pretty much told him that he could pick anything he wanted for dinner as long as it was kielbasa and sauerkraut. He countered with kielbasa + potatoes + brownies and he didn't have to eat the sauerkraut. Deal.

recipe at Taste of Home

I plan to poke some gummy worms into the brownies after they cool down, for the "fisher of men, also of fish" thing.

credit: Mama Gone Green

In her question to me, Ashely had the best idea yet for how to celebrate a great outdoorsman like Pope John Paul II: Take a hike. I think ours will just have to be a nature walk around the suburbs. But we will definitely be walking today!





I will never, ever get tired of looking at JPII in the out of doors.

If we tire of walking, we are fortunate enough to have the awesome Ignatius Press movie: Pope John Paul II on DVD. But in case YOU don't, it's available live streaming from the Ignatius website!


It stars Jon Voight as the elder, and Cary Elwes as the younger Karol Wojtyla. (By the way, please tell me you've read this: The Dread Pirate and the Pope. It just makes me so happy.)

And we own these two great books, also by Ignatius Press.

Check out the full review at CatholicMom.com