#yearofgrace

What I say to you, I say to all: stay alert!

Matthew 13:37

A few weeks ago, I started reading  The Catholic Home: Celebrations and Traditions for Holidays, Feast Days, and Every Day by Meredith Gould. The Catholic Home is one of those books I've had on my "to-read" list for quite awhile, but could never quite get to it. There is something to be said for serendipity, because at just the right time, just a few weeks before Advent, I had finally had the time to get to it.

Wow.

I thought what I'd be reading would give me a few ideas on how to make some holidays a little more "special". I thought I'd maybe make a few extra decorations or maybe bake a different treat. Maybe I'd find some activities I could do with some of the kids in my life, help them engage the seasons more fully in that sneaky-holy-but-fun way of teachers everywhere. 

What I did not expect was to realize that I was missing out on an awful lot when it came to engaging the church year, even though I thought I "kept" the seasons pretty darn well. Advent is my favorite liturgical season, and last year I posted to my blog daily Advent and Christmas songs that were thematic to the week - Hope, Peace, Joy, Love. I sang the O Antiphons. I always have a Lenten discipline. I wear red on Pentecost!

In just the first few chapters of Meredith's book, though, I found myself wanting to go deeper, to know more... to explore my faith and what I believe within the context of the Liturgical Calendar, from the seasons to the feast days, to be truly be aware of why I'm doing what I'm doing.

And thus, this blog. It's called Living Mysteria because in Sacrosanctum Concilium, it says:

Within the cycle of a year, moreover, she [Mother Church] unfolds the whole mystery of Christ, from the incarnation and birth until the ascension, the day of Pentecost, and the expectation of blessed hope and of the coming of the Lord.

(Sacrosanctum Concilium, paragraphs 102 and 105)

There's more:

in the various seasons of the year and according to her traditional discipline, the Church completes the formation of the faithful by means of pious practices for soul and body, by instruction, prayer, and works of penance and of mercy.

When I returned to the Roman Catholic church after years of sojourning in various Protestant denominations, I was really tired. And broken. For years I had been trying to do daily devotions, to try to read Scripture everyday, to set aside time for prayer, and nothing was working. I had prayer books and one-year Bibles and reading plans and lists and lists of prayer intentions... but I couldn't do it. Finally, I found a podcast of the Divine Office. I could download the prayers to my iPod and just listen. It was easy to set aside 10 minutes at the end of the day for Compline before I fell asleep. The beauty of the Divine Office is that it's all right there for you. You don't have to reinvent the wheel - and it's based on Scripture - the Psalms - which cover every single emotion and concern you could have in prayer.