Category: Faith

Things Every Catholic (and Non-Catholic) Should Know – {Review} The Catholic Catalogue

Posted April 18, 2016 in Faith, Reading, Review / 0 Comments

Things Every Catholic (and Non-Catholic) Should Know – {Review} The Catholic CatalogueThe Catholic Catalogue by Melissa Musick, Anna Keating
Publisher: Image (2016)
Hardcover (432 pages)
Via: Blogging for Books
Rating:
Reading Challenges: Read 2016

Synopsis

The popular mother-daughter team behind the hit website TheCatholicCatalogue.com helps readers to discover, rediscover, and embrace some of the smells and tastes, sounds and sensations, holidays and seasons of the Catholic life. This collection of prayers, crafts, devotionals and recipes will help readers make room in their busy lives for mystery and meaning, awe and joy.
This beautifully designed book will help readers celebrate Catholicism throughout the years, across daily practice and milestones. Like the most useful field guides, it is divided into user-friendly sections and covers such topics as the veneration of relics, blessing your house, discovering a vocation, raising teenagers, getting a Catholic tattoo, planting a Mary garden, finding a spiritual director, and exploring your own way in the tradition.
With more than 75 inspiring chapters, this book promises to be a resource that individuals and families will turn to again and again.

Find the book: Goodreads, Amazon, Book Depository

Find the authors: Website, Twitter

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March 2016 in Review

Posted March 31, 2016 in Faith, Life, Reading / 10 Comments

March 2016 in Review

Things that Happened in March

  • EASTER! The Easter Vigil is one of my favorite Masses of ever! Seriously, it is gorgeous even if it does get a bit long at times.
  • My little sister was able to come home for two days for Easter. It was great to see her.
  • I finally finished my application for graduate school. Now the nail-biting begins…
  • Things have been absolutely crazy at school. It has been so hectic that one of my co-teachers made the comment she has spent more time in the principal’s office in the last two weeks than she did her entire career as a student. Things definitely need to slow down soon.
  • I haven’t been feeling great this month. This is probably due to the stress of work and the students sharing their fun diseases with everyone they come in contact with.
  • My favorite book of the month was The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi. It was utterly amazing and beautiful. I shared some of my favorite quotes from it with my sister and now she wants an Amar. 🙂
  • My favorite reread of the month was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J K Rowling. In fact, this was the only reread this month.

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Triduum – The Sacred Days

Posted March 24, 2016 in Faith, Life / 0 Comments

The Triduum is known as the summit of the liturgical year. The USCCB gives us this definition:

The summit of the Liturgical Year is the Easter Triduum—from the evening of Holy Thursday to the evening of Easter Sunday. Though chronologically three days, they are liturgically one day unfolding for us the unity of Christ’s Paschal Mystery. The single celebration of the Triduum marks the end of the Lenten season, and leads to the Mass of the Resurrection of the Lord at the Easter Vigil.

The Triduum includes the following three liturgical services: Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, the Service on Good Friday, and the Mass of the Lord’s Resurrection (both Vigil and Morning Mass).

Holy Thursday morning usually includes the Chrism Mass at the Cathedral of the diocese where the Bishop of the diocese blesses the Oil of the Sick, the Oil of the Catechumens, and Sacred Chrism. (In case you were wondering, Sacred Chrism is one of my favorite smells in the whole world. )

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Holy Week! – Prayer and Preparation

Posted March 21, 2016 in Faith, Life / 0 Comments

It seems almost crazy that it is already Holy Week! Lent seems to have gone by both fast and slow. It is strange to think that we have just celebrated Palm Sunday of Passion of the Lord and that the Triduum and Easter are approaching.

My Daily Roman Missal said the following about yesterday, Palm Sunday:

On this day the Church recalls the entrance of Christ the Lord
into Jerusalem to accomplish His Paschal Mystery.

This is what the entire week is about. The whole week leads up to Good Friday when Jesus dies upon the Cross for all our sins. The whole week leads up to Holy Saturday when the Church awaits the coming Resurrection. The whole week leads up to Easter Sunday and the empty tomb.

The whole week is about the accomplishment of our redemption and the salvation of the world. This week is all about the Son of God, the Word, the Logos, the Lamb, the Son of Mary, the Christ, giving His very Life for us.

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{Review} One Ordinary Sunday – A Reflection on a Sunday Mass in Ordinary Time

Posted March 10, 2016 in Faith, Reading, Review / 0 Comments

{Review} One Ordinary Sunday – A Reflection on a Sunday Mass in Ordinary TimeOne Ordinary Sunday by Paula Huston
Publisher: Ave Maria Press (2016 - March 11)
eARC (256 pages)
Via: NetGalley
Rating:
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

The popular, award-winning writer Paula Huston draws on her spiritual wisdom and her talent as a novelist to provide both a moment-by-moment record of her experience of one particular Mass on one particular Sunday in her home parish in California and a theologically and historically rich exploration of the origin and meaning of the liturgy.
For Catholics, the Mass is the
“source and summit of the Christian life,” as the documents of the Church put it. Yet many Catholics might confess to not understand in any depth what goes on in an “ordinary” celebration of the Eucharist. In perhaps her most compelling and original book to date, novelist and spiritual writer Paula Huston guides us through a Mass on the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time at her home parish in Arroyo Grande, California. Huston’s personal and spiritual reflections offer fresh and often unexpected insights into the profound mystery at the heart of the Catholic faith.
A natural storyteller, Huston deftly illuminates what might seem either mysterious to those unfamiliar with the Mass or overly familiar to those who have lost an appreciation of its mystery. In the Mass “we are healed and restored and spiritually fed,” she writes. “We are handed strong armor against evil. We are unified and made whole as a people and as a Church. We get a little taste of heaven.”

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