While I was taking a break and planning my 2017 year of blogging, several fun feast days occurred. I broke my hiatus the first day, when I realized it was the Feast of the Holy Innocents, since that is, by far, one of my favorite feast days in the liturgical calendar. However, several other feast days – like, the Feast of the Holy Family, and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, were also celebrated within a week of Christmas.
I recently wrote about intentional parenting, and as the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Feast of the Holy Family, and Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God passed, I realized I also need to figure out “intentional blogging.” While I proudly am not quite like other Catholic moms, I have to admit I am a Catholic mommy blogger. So, I should probably take better note of the liturgical calendar, and plan blog posts accordingly.
Liturgi-what?!
That’s right – liturgical calendar. The ones they hand out at church look like this:
If someone had mentioned to me a few years ago that I would be attempting to “live more liturgically,” I would have snorted and asked them what they meant, because I had no clue how liturgical living worked, aside from going to church every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation.
Thankfully, the handy-dandy Liturgical Calendar came with a guide on the back… To be honest, had I not spent the past couple years immersed in chapel life, I would have been intimidated seeing this calendar for the first time.
Some Catholic families I know celebrate liturgically all year long – they try to do something special for most feast days. Let’s take a quick look at the Ordinary Time, in which we are currently:
Within the first several weeks of the period beginning with the end of the Baptism of the Lord on the 9th of January, there are 23 possible feast days to celebrate as a family! To me, that is also intimidating. And, unrealistic.
As I am planning this year of blogging, I am going to approach the Catholic topics in the same manner I do my parenting. I am going to pick and choose a few important days to me every month, and focus on writing about those.
For example, I have always had a personal love for St. Agnes (whose feast day is 21 January). I may choose to write about her during that week. However, I don’t know anything about St. Polycarp, so I most likely wouldn’t choose to write about his feast day.
So, now, I have to sit down and align my blogging calendar with yet another calendar, to ensure I don’t miss out on any fun Catholic Church celebration days.
And, in the future, I also now know to not take the week off from blogging after Christmas. Because, there are just way too many cool days of celebration during that week!
I think Catholics are thought of as being fuddy duddies for all our lenting and confessing and crucifixing. But really it’s where the party is at! There’s feasting going on aaaaall year round. 🙂
I know! I was going to make a rule about “only junk food or candy or something” on a feast day. Then, I sat down with our calendar and went, “wait a minute! There’s a Feast day almost every other day! Haha!