Liturgically living has been on my radar the past few years. As our girls get older, I feel this pressure as a mom to add traditions into our daily life that they will remember and carry into their future homes. We do this with birthdays and major holidays, but the past few years I've realized that our rich Catholic Faith gives us so many days to celebrate.
This past year we added celebrating All Saints Day, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Nicholas, and St. Patrick. None of these were traditions in our Catholic home growing up. We celebrated Easter, Advent, Lent, Christmas and went to Mass on Holy Days of Obligation as well as Sundays. But we never really celebrated feast days or dug into the richness that our Faith has to offer for each of the liturgical seasons.
When Jen Frost from Faith and Fabric reached out and asked if I wanted to read and review a copy of her new book, Make Every Day Blessed: Living the Liturgical Year, I immediately said yes. I knew that this short and simplistic journal/book would be the perfect way for me to reflect and learn more about living liturgically.
 |
Make Every Day Blessed: Living the Liturgical Year is part of the Stay Connected Journals for Catholic Women series. Throughout the book there are scripture passages to read and reflect on, questions to ponder and respond to, and spots to pray and share what is on your heart. There are places to answer these right in the book, so no separate journal needed.
The book is divided into liturgical seasons: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Holy Week/Triduum/Easter and Ordinary time. You could use this journal all at once and focus on the entire year. Or you could read it throughout the year and focus on each liturgical season before it starts to help prepare your heart and home for the upcoming season. Even though I read through the whole book, my plan is to go back and focus on the journaling before each season begins, so I can plan out how we want to intentionally celebrate.
What I love about this book, is that Jen doesn't make it overwhelming or unattainable. She gives simple ideas of ways her family celebrates different seasons or feast days. It isn't a list of all the possible days you can celebrate. It is very simplified (perfect for beginners in Liturgical Living like me) and doesn't overwhelm you with ideas. This is exactly what I need! I get overwhelmed at the idea of adding all of these things to my to do list that I need to remember and implement.
The section that really caught my attention was Christmas. We celebrate and have all kinds of traditions for Advent, we go big on Christmas, but then the rest of the 12 days of Christmas we neglect. We leave our tree up and remind our kids that Christmas isn't over yet (despite what the rest of the world wants us to think), but we've never really celebrated any of the days that Jen mentions like the feasts of St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, the Holy Family and Holy Innocents. I'm excited to do some research and find some simple ways we can add this to our daily lives.
I think something I've struggled with as far as living liturgically is remembering the holiday, having an easy low prep and meaningful way to celebrate and being consistent about it. I'm excited that this book can sit on my nightstand and serve as a reminder to think about, plan and prepare for the liturgical season before it happens.
If you are looking for a simple way to add more liturgical living into your life, check out Make Every Day Blessed: Living the Liturgical Year. You can learn more about how to live out your Catholic Faith at home without feeling overwhelmed or like you are adding a million things to your to do list.
Need some help to get started with liturgical living? Check out my post about Baby Steps to Liturgical Living. You can also grab my free planning guide by filling out the form below.