3 best Catholic books for moms when you need direction

Let me share to you these Catholic books for moms that give no non-sense approach to the noble vocation of motherhood. Read them while you breastfeed or when the baby sleeps, and most especially when you feel lost and need direction:

Are you a mother who struggles with the daily demands of managing a growing family?

Oh wait. That’s not a question. That’s the reality all mothers face.

Whether you’re a working mom, stay-at-home mom, a mom of a newborn, or a mom of six human beings, we all have struggles to overcome. And when exhaustion and confusion gets the best of you, how do you find direction to keep going on?

When I lost direction during the terrible two + newborn stage

My daughter was two and a half two years old when her baby brother arrived. She was barely out of the terrible two stage. And I know moms can immensely relate that terrible two + newborn stage is not a walk in the park at all. I was exhausted physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Everyday seemed liked a series of monotonous episodes that leave you burn out and exhausted. It didn’t help that we were new migrants and just navigating the whole spectrum of overseas life. And we had no immediate family members on site. I felt like I was an invisible homemaker.

Million grains of self-doubt and questions compete in racing through my mom brain everyday.

‘What am I doing in this new country?’

‘Where am I doing wrong that I can’t discipline my two-year-old and I can’t make the baby sleep through the night?’

‘Why am I doing all these anyway?’

I had the motivation. There’s no question about that. My motivation was and is my love for my children. If it weren’t for love, I would not take bullets and saliva-filled leftover food for them.

But I was lost and I had no direction. I felt like I was driving on a highway at full-speed without knowing where to go. I lost grasp of my map or GPS to motherhood.

3 Catholic books for moms when you need direction

These three books were real life-savers.

1. The Christian Mother by Rev. W. Cramer

Have you ever experienced being in a very dark room and was so glad to have found the light switch? That’s how I felt when I read Rev W. Cramer’s The Christian Mother.

You see, it was my first realization to how mothers are deeply valued and dignified in the Catholic Church as compared to how the role is perceived in the modern society.

The first chapter of the book is about the mother’s first entry to the Church after giving birth. This ritual is called the Churching of Women. How amazing is that the Church has designed a special ritual for mothers who have recently given birth. It speaks volumes that rise up to Heaven.

By tradition, this ritual is given during the Baptism. Sadly, it has been discontinued in the modern times.

Another thing heavily emphasized in this book is this:

We, mothers have a very, very terrible obligation and that is to raise our children for Heaven! That we have to nourish not just their body, but also their souls which is even the most important and supernatural one.

Being a Catholic, this should be as basic knowledge as one plus one, but unfortunately, even the essential Catholic catechism gets so drowned in these modern times that we Catholics forget this. What a sad epoch we are in. We need constant reminders like this if we want to reach Heaven!

Other chapters of the book include the following:

Duties toward their children and how to fulfill them
The proper love they should have toward their children
The examples both good and bad that they give to their children by their actions
How and when to introduce the children to the truths of our holy religion
How to behave with regard to the faults of the children & how to rid their children of faults
To obtain for a son a vocation to the priesthood

At the end of the book, you’ll find the history of the Archconfraternity of Christian Mothers, an organization founded in Lille, France in the 1850s and was brought to the US by the Capuchin friars. The author, Rev. W. Cramer most probably belong to this same Capuchin order.

One of my favorite chapters of the books is The Dowry for your Children. Fr. Cramer beautifully explains that the best gift we could give as mothers to our children are not expensive clothes or a lofty inheritance. But the best dowry begins at the formation of the child within the womb. And when he has come out into the world, that child’s foundation has already been laid out. Whatever you thought, felt, and spoken during pregnancy has been passed on to your child. That is your dowry. So make it a best one.

2. How to Raise Good Catholic Children by Mary Reed Newland

If the Christian Mother book answers the ‘Why’ of motherhood, then Mary Reed Newland’s How to Raise Good Catholic Children answers the questions of ‘How’ in motherhood.

In her book, the mother-of-seven Miss Newland explicitly outlines the solutions to the common struggles of Catholic mothering, or parenting as a whole.

She provides practical and common sense-based approach to raising children to be good Catholics.

The book includes the following chapters:

The habit of regular prayer
Genuine love of the Rosary
A sense of the dignity of work
Devotion to Mary and the saints
A proper love for the things of this world and for the things of Heaven
Attentiveness at Mass
Love for the Eucharist
An understanding and love of purity
The ability to make good confessions
And dozens of other skills, habits, and virtues that every good Catholic child needs

The book’s first edition was published in 1954 and republished in 2004.

One of my favorite parts of the book is about how to explain baptism, which we even adults lose grasp of. She gives the analogy behind an inheritance. A wealthy or poor man can give inheritance to his children as to what he only possess. When our first parents Adam and Eve were created, they were given sanctifying grace. But when they sinned, that grace was lost. And the inheritance that our first parents has passed on to us is Original Sin. Every new baby born into this world (except for the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist) are born stained with original sin, to which the helpless cute baby has no fault of. But that’s how inheritance works. But there is hope! How to remove that stain and restore the sanctifying grace? Through baptism.

Click here for a preview of How to Raise Good Catholic Children by Mary Reed-Newland.

3. Christian Warfare

The Christian Warfare is not just a book but is a manual of prayers that is complete from A to Z!

The Latin Mass, Litanies, Prayers for the Sick and Dying, and Morning/ Evening prayers are packed in this compact book that easily fits in your hands.

Why am I including this?

Because of the Morning and Evening prayers!

They are the ones every mothers should read every single day. And it takes so much effort as our days and nights are busy. And though we know that our work is a prayer itself, we have to kneel before the Lord and the Blessed Virgin Mary because we really, really need grace in this act called motherhood.

We need grace when we have to go through contractions. When we have to change dirty diapers for the nth time. We need grace through the peaks of motherhood. We need grace through the monotony of daily life.

All the books we read and psychology research on child development are not the formulae for raising good Catholic children. Even if we think that we have done all things right, it is only by the grace of God that our efforts will prove futile or fruitful.

So pray girl.