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Four Feast Days to Celebrate During Advent
It’s no secret that our Church is home to a lot of beautiful traditions. Traditions are like spices — they add warmth and depth and flavor to the rhythmical cadence of the liturgical year. Throughout the year (during Lent, Advent, Easter, Christmas, and Ordinary Time) the feast days of Saints are sprinkled like mulling spices in a hot cup of cider. These feast days help to break up the seasons and remind us of the remarkable men and women who have gone before — the ones who pave the narrow way. Choosing to celebrate these feast days can help add some of that spice into our own life, and breaks…
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Prayer Positions in the Mass (Catholic Calisthenics)
One of the things I hear people either complain about or be confused by during the catholic Mass is the variety of stances we as catholics through during prayer. If you are catholic—or have ever been to a Mass—you know what I’m talking about. Stand, sit, kneel … stand some more, kneel again, repeat. Like everything in catholicism, the different postures—often somewhat fittingly dubbed “catholic calisthenics”—that we take during Mass are not arbitrary. The fact of the matter is that we humans are physical as well as spiritual creatures. We pray with our bodies and the different postures during Mass are designed to help with this prayer. Knowing the reasons behind…
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July Devotion: The Most Precious Blood
Our beautiful Church has a myriad of ways to remind us of Christ throughout the year. One of these is through the tradition of monthly devotions. The month of July is especially close to my heart. This month’s devotion is to the Most Precious Blood. To non-Catholics — and perhaps to some Catholics as well — this devotion is slightly grisly sounding. I mean, isn’t focusing on Christ’s blood a little too macabre? And why would we call something so…well, bloody…precious? To start, let’s define what exactly Catholics mean when they talk about “devotions.” What is a Devotion? A devotion in the Catholic Church is, at its core, an aid for…
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Hand-Holding and the Orans Posture During the “Our Father”
What do you do during the “Our Father”? Whether using the Orans Posture, holding hands with your neighbor, or simply folding your hands together in prayer, it’s true that the prayer posture used during the “Our Father” is one of the most hotly contested points of the Mass. Nearly everyone seems to have an opinion. The question is, who’s opinion is right? Is anyone’s? Does it matter? According to the USCCB, “No position is prescribed in the Roman Missal for an assembly gesture during the Lord’s Prayer.” Because no position is prescribed, it is true that prayer posture during the “Our Father” comes down to opinion and personal preference. In other words, we as the…
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5 Ways to Continue the Easter Celebration
It’s been just over a month since Easter Sunday, and though the secular world has already hung up their bonnets, for us Catholics, the Easter season is only a little over half way through. I’ll be honest. I’ve forgotten it’s Easter. Easter Sunday passed me by, and I sunk back into my everyday routine. I gave in to the daily drone of life and forgot that it is not Ordinary Time. The feast of the Easter Season has not yet passed. There are times for fasting and sorrow, times for the everyday, the simple and the ordinary, and times for celebration. The Church has given us the liturgical seasons because…
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Remembering Advent in a World Focused on Christmas
Thanksgiving has passed and already I find myself turning on my favorite Christmas songs and dreaming of decorating the tree. Christmas decorations have been selling in stores for weeks and lit up houses have been speckling neighborhoods since well before Thanksgiving. But as I stand here with arms open wide, ready to embrace the season, I find myself wondering, am I forgetting something? In our eagerness for Christmas, something equally as beautiful often gets lost. That something is Advent. Advent, often called a “little Lent,” is the Catholic season covering the four Sundays before Christmas. It is considered a penitential season, a time of prayer and fasting as we eagerly…
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The Holy Trinity
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the truths of faith.’ The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God reveals himself to men ‘and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin.’ ” Catholics — and every other christian religion…
