Throughout history the faithful have been sustained in times of persecution and lack of priests by family pious devotions and the commemoration of saints and feasts in the home, an ancient way of life now called “liturgical living” in our modern age. We know the source and summit of our spiritual life is physically receiving the […]
Author: Genie
The Barefoot Abbey Super Simple 3 Step Guide to Setting Up a Home Altar or Chapel
Alright. Y’all have asked and asked about our home chapels and how your family can make your own space for prayer. And the requests have only increased as we approach this unusual Easter when many of us will only be able to celebrate at home. For the last couple of weeks, during free moments here and […]
Observing Passion Sunday at Home
As the name suggests, Passion Sunday, or the 5th of Lent, marks the beginning of Passiontide and signals that only two weeks remain until Easter . In our Lenten observance it marks the shift of focus from Christ’s time in the dessert to His impending suffering and Crucifixion.The most notable, visible change of this Sunday, […]
Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy When in Quarantine or Other Crises
Going back to the Early Church and through the old, pre-1966, Raccolta of Indulgences, a quarantine signified a period of penance forty days long. And with the Covid-19 quarantine it seems that God wanted us Catholics to take Lent up a notch this year. It has quite assuredly made this the most sacrifice-filled or lentiest […]
For the Love of St. Joseph Eat with Your Hands
St. Joseph is a HUGE deal around our house. He is our youngest son’s namesake and one of our family’s patrons. He is also one of the few saints that still has two feast days on the New Calendar (Universal Roman Calendar of 1969). His first commemoration is a Solemnity on March 19th and the […]
Lent Is Coming! Or Some Ideas To Get Ash Wednesday Ready…
Lent is coming, y’all! We are down to less than a week before Ash Wednesday when we need to have our Lenten Disciplines for this year set. So I’m sharing how our family creates a penitential atmosphere in our home during Lent and our philosophy for discerning the year’s sacrifices. I know how annoying it can […]
5 Ways to Celebrate the {New} Sunday of the Word of God
It is always exciting when we get to celebrate a new feast day that has been recently added to the Church Calendar. And today is one of those days! Thanks to Pope Francis this rarity has become a tiny bit more common with his reinstatement of the historic Feast of Our Lady of Loreto as […]
Bringing the Nativity Home: Our Solution for a Christmas Conundrum
Merry Christmas Adam, y’all! On this Eve of Christmas Eve let’s visit a question that came up about what we do on Christmas Eve. I thought I’d share our family’s answer here for anyone else who has run into the same issue.Christmas Eve morning is when we usually decorate our Christmas tree. Not that we think […]
Why We’re Not Celebrating St. Nicholas on Dec. 6th This Year {And Neither Should You}
In our house full of boys the feast of St. Nicholas is a HUGE DEAL. No joke. The feast gathers so much excitement for our dear ones that around noon the day before little shoes begin to multiply in front of the fireplace and some try to sneak in an extra pair or two. It […]
Everything You Need to Know about the Ember Days
In our home, the commemoration of the Embertides are a carry over from my husband’s and my college days when I was an Anglo-Catholic (Anglican, Church of England in America). Anglicans follow a form of the Old or Pre-Vatican II Calendar like those under the Pastoral Provision or Personal Ordinariate. It is similar to 1962 […]