I’m a liturgical year geek…we’ll just blame it on that.
{Page by Scott Richert}
December 1st falling on the first Sunday of Advent, thus lighting the way for a new Church year, makes me happy.
I like when ALL of Advent falls in December. It’s a month I can put aside our autumn orange, yellow, and brown foliage and welcome everything white and blue and purple and pink.
There’s no intermingling of the two. I love that. My plans love that.
It’s a small obsession of mine. I’m geeky that way. 😉
Catholic Icing has a delicious Advent Christmas Planner. Maybe there’s still time. Definitely.
Especially if we cast into the cold the perfectionist tendencies found in all of us.
Jennifer Gregory Miller has begun writing on the Liturgical Year at Catholic Culture. She shares at her blog:
“The plan is to write a weekly column with reflections on living the Liturgical Year. I will feature some of the rich materials on Catholic Culture, but besides talking about liturgy and customs and traditions, I also would like to discuss some authors and books, and perhaps some Catholic cultural history, particularly relating to the Liturgical Movement. I won’t limit myself now, because the Liturgical Year interweaves every part of our lives, and I love to witness and discuss the beauty.”
I have written at Amazing Catechists how I use the feasts and fasting of the Church’s liturgical year (and an encyclical by Pope Pius XI) to weave beauty and meaning into my home church parish’s religious education formation program.
I have a heartfelt belief that this is important to do so. My heart weeps for the children who do not receive the beauty of the liturgical year within their homes: never seeing an Advent wreath, never lighting candles, never hearing of humble beginnings, never knowing true heroism outside of what the media sells them, never knowing that pink, purple, green, and white mean anything other than colors in a crayon box. So I intentionally expose it to them each week. We change altar clothes in our classrooms. We light Advent wreaths too. We do an Advent match-up of traditions. We present heroic Church members and guess who they are by their 3 clues. We bless our classrooms every January. We bless our throats every February. We feast at St. Joseph’s Altar every March. We walk the holy way with Christ every Lent. We listen to the words of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John on a weekly basis. I’ve shared a bit of what we heroically do—in one hour a week—here: 10 Ways to Share a Breathing, Bleeding, Being Faith.
We can’t do much in one hour a week. We can only expose, invite, include them to what is golden. We make an offering of what we do and entrust the children to prayer and the Holy Spirit the rest of the week.
Jennifer is by far superior than I to write on this magnificent subject so I am thrilled to see her following the Holy Spirit’s prompting and sharing the riches of the liturgical year with us. I anticipate a richly rewarding learning experience by her hand-led tutoring. I’d be pleased if other catechists joined me in supporting Jennifer in this endeavor. I’m starting off with subscribing and getting this free eBook download: Liturgical Year 2013-2014
It’s a win-win situation. Best way ever to start the Church’s New Year!
