All posts filed under: Feast day

Holy Week at Home: A Pandemic Guide

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Thank you to Jay and Emelie Thomas for putting together this guide to Holy Week at Home. We are grateful to be able to share something tailored specifically for this year, in addition to the resources we already have. Jay and Emelie are young parents who are constantly learning how to “raise up their children in the way they should go” through the historic rhythms and practices of the Church. They both hold degrees in English Literature from the U.S. Naval Academy. Jay is a Postulant in the Special Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy (ACNA), and both Emelie and Jay are resident in the Anglican Diocese of Christ our Hope.  The COVID-19 Pandemic has brought with it an uncannily sheltered and isolated Lenten season. Many have commented that it is perhaps appropriate that we have endured this societal fast during a season of fasting. Although we do not intend to say the same, we will say that as we prepare for Holy Week, the Triduum, and Eastertide – as much as this season …

Holy Week in the Domestic Church

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I can hardly believe that Palm Sunday is in a few days. This is going to be a very brief post sharing what we have available here on this site to help us celebrate Holy Week at home this year. Family Prayer for Holy Week and Easter Last year, I put together a this family prayer booklet  to help families go through the collects and events of Holy Week. It’s essentially family prayer from the 1928 Prayer Book. The suggested readings follow the events of each day of Holy Week. I’m also going to print out the images above. I formatted an image a day with the collect for the day and we will look at the painting during our family prayer time. I’ll then display it on our “little oratory” throughout the day. Here is the Holy Week Family Prayer Booklet (and here it is as a PDF with pages arranged as booklet) Here are the Holy Week images with collects. (Please email me at thehomelyhours@gmail.com if you would like any of these files in another format …

The Conversion of Saint Paul

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On this day we celebrate the conversion of Saint Paul, formerly Saul of Tarsus. He had been a persecutor of Christians (present at martyrdom of the Deacon Stephen) and was confronted by Christ Himself on the road to Damascus. This feast has been celebrated since the sixth century. For the feast, the epistle lesson is Acts 9:1-22 and the Gospel is St. Matthew 19:27-30. Here is the collect: “O God, who, through the preaching of the blessed Apostle Saint Paul, hast caused the light of the Gospel to shine throughout the world; Grant, we beseech thee, that we, having his wonderful conversion in remembrance, may show forth our thankfulness unto thee for the same, by following the holy doctrine which he taught; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” John Chrysostom reflected on Saint Paul: “Paul, more than anyone else, shows us what humanity really is, in what our nobility consists, and of what virtue this particular animal is capable. . . The most important thing of all to Paul, however, was that he knew himself …

All Saints’ Day: An Unpolished Reflection about Prayer Book Liturgical Living

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Today is All Saints’ Day. What will my family be doing? It’s very simple. This morning, we prayed a shortened version of the Morning Office together (i.e. Lord’s Prayer, Revelation 19:1-16, Te Deum, Apostle’s Creed, Collect for All Saints’). After I write this post, I’m going to pull all of our saints’ picture books out and let my kids pick some to read. Then, tonight, our church has a potluck and a Holy Communion service, where we will sing the classics — “For All The Saints,” “Who Are These Like Stars Appearing?” “The Church’s One Foundation…” And we will partake of the bread and wine as one body, in gratitude that “we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people.” Here are some of the things I could have done, but didn’t: We’re not dressing up as saints. I didn’t get any special meals together. I didn’t print out any of those fun All Saints’ printables. But, even though I’m a person who …

All Saints’ or Reformation Day?

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Thank you to Anna-Kathryn Kline for this reflection on All Saints’ Day. Anna-Kathryn is a military spouse who uses the liturgical year to provide stability and familiarity to her home. She is the privileged stay-at-home mother of three little girls and spends her days rediscovering her childhood by coming alongside her girls in the pursuit of wonder. This is the first year my family will be celebrating All Saints’ Day and I’m really excited about it. And, quite frankly, I’m excited to be excited. For the past few years, October 31st (Reformation Day) and November 1st (All Saints’) have been strange days for me full of new feelings. Our new catholic (lower case) beliefs have given us a strong desire to see the unity of the Church and grief over the lack of brotherly love and unity we see before us: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.” 1 Cor. 12:12 “Forbearing one another, and …

Michaelmas, Not Autumn

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In the heat of southern Texas, it is hard to believe that Autumn is soon coming. My Pinterest home board is full of autumnal crafts where you shouldn’t need anything but nature lying just outside your door. Sigh . . . I have no colored leaves or pine cones. However, I have discovered a secret and I’ll let you in on it: Michaelmas.  Yes, again, the Church, our mother, who is tasked with nurturing our holy imaginations and providing us the comfort of life rhythms, gives us a celebration on September 29th that is not dependent on where you live. Michaelmas can be a magical day for little children. In our house, we prep for the day. I tell them the story of the Great Heavenly Battle for the whole month of September. Long, long ago, before Adam and Eve sinned, there was a Great Heavenly Battle. . . .  After about a week, my 5 and 3-year olds are play acting the story. Later, I may gently turn their imaginative play into something slightly …

Coloring Page for the Transfiguration

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Thanks to Michelle Abernathy for making this coloring page of the Transfiguration of our Lord! Here is the collect for the day: “O God, who on the mount didst reveal to chosen witnesses thine only-begotten Son wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening; Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may be permitted to behold the King in his beauty, who with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.” The Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ is recorded in Matthew 17:1-13, Mark 9:2-13, and Luke 9:28-36. Jesus took Peter, James, and John to a mountain, traditionally Mount Tabor. As Jesus prayed, he is transfigured before the disciples — his clothing becomes radiantly white and his face shines like the sun. And then, Moses and Elijah appeared and talked to him. Peter responded ( apparently not knowing what he was saying) with a desire to build three tents and commemorate the event. A cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of …

“Life by the Kalendar”

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From Spiritual Proficiency, by Martin Thornton: ” ‘The Christian is, in one sense, successively becoming what, in another sense, he already is. He increasingly makes his own the supernatural and eternal life which is the life of God. Hence on the supernatural plane he transcends the separation of past-present-and-future.’ [Mascall] The importance of this theology is that the Church’s year, incorporated in the Kalendar, is of private as well as corporate significance. In practice, life in the Church, and recollection of that life, means life by the Kalendar and we must believe that the little bit of time-space experience we call ‘June the twenty-ninth’ really means something definite to all the saints in heaven and to St. Peter in particular. The Office and Mass on that day, and therefore our private prayer as well, are no bare memorial to one of the Apostles, but the expression of this time-eternal, earth-heaven, nature-grace, link. . . . . . the Church’s Kalendar provides not just a useful means of conducting services in an orderly way, but a practical basis …

The Fifth Week after Easter (Rogation and Ascension)

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Feast Days Sunday through Wednesday, May 26-29: Rogation Sunday & Rogation Days Collect for Rogation Sunday: O Lord, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that are good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The word “Rogation” comes from the Latin “rogare” or “to ask.” The Rogation Days began in 470, after a series of natural disasters in Vienne, France. The Archbishop Mamertus called for a fast and said that the people were to process around their fields with litanies and prayers just as the crops were beginning to sprout. These processions took hold and became a custom. Gradually, the Rogation Days became a time of festival, celebrating the advent of spring. The members of a parish would process around the boundaries of the parish, which could take a whole day. You can learn more about the Rogation Days here. At our church, we will have a blessing of the …

Preparing for Holy Week and Easter, Part 1

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As I’ve been in the midst of preparing for Holy Week, my mind has been lingering on this description from Gertrud Mueller Nelson: The sacred mysteries of the coming week, the very apex of the Church year, are brought into our homes. Actually, we move gently back and forth from the sacred rites at church to folk and family traditions and then back again to the richness of the Church. The tangible signs of our inner transformations are found in materia in the ordinary and daily things around us, renewed and charged with meaning. . . Bread and meats, kiss and cross, oil and water, water and fire, passion and praise, candles and eggs and dress and chants, primal laments and bursts of thanks, fasting and feasting, silence and sounds, all these mix and point up the poetry of paradoxes which the sacred mysteries celebrate.  The simple objects are within our reach at home. The simple gestures done at church and then at home with reverence and consciousness can bring the mysteries straight to hearth …