Are you looking for resources for living the liturgical year in your home? When we first got married, we were eager to establish a liturgical home life of our very own. We had a few ideas, but we were looking for some solid Catholic resources. Over time, we have found three books, all of which have been wonderful guides to living the liturgical year in our home. We would like to share these resources with you!
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Living the Liturgical Year in the Church
The Catholic Church has a liturgical year, through which we celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as well as important feasts of the Church and His Saints. We experience this at our parishes on Sundays and other days during the year. The music changes, the priest wears different colors, items appear to enhance our understanding of the Divine Mysteries (like the Advent wreath or covering statues with purple cloth in Lent). The liturgical year is the context in which we call to mind and celebrate the mysteries of our faith. It begins with Advent and ends with the Solemnity of Christ the King. There is a logical order, a progression that makes sense and brings peace. But the observation of these times and seasons is not meant for church alone: we are meant to bring it home!
Living the Liturgical Year in the Home
There are so many, many days to celebrate within the liturgical year that it can become confusing (even overwhelming!), especially if you are not used to it. Both Joshua and I grew up doing some liturgical things at home, but when we started our own family, we decided we wanted our home to have a much deeper liturgical life.
The family is the domestic church: the church in the home. We are called to live the liturgical year not just on Sundays at church, but daily in our own homes. The liturgical year provides the fundamental context by which we are to live our lives. Through liturgical seasons, we learn that there is a time for joy and a time for sorrow, a time to fast and a time to feast. We show our children how to celebrate Christ and come to know Him in a deeper way. Ultimately, living the liturgical year in our domestic church leads us to union with Him at every moment!
Here we come to realize the true reason the Church takes so many pains to teach us how to celebrate, how to live life as one long, uninterrupted solemn feast. She does this so that, on the crucial day, we shall be able to apply the wisdom gathered over a long time and celebrate as the greatest feast of all our departure for the heavenly Jerusalem. If we show our children the festive side of this great sacrament, we may be sure that, when the day comes, they will not kneel around our bed sobbing and crying, but all of us together will be able to answer the priest with a peaceful heart. ‘If you love me,’ we will say to our dear ones in the words of Our Lord, ‘you should rejoice with me because I am going to the Father.’ This is the spirit in which we should talk about death in our families.
Maria Augusta Von Trapp
Around The Year with the Von Trapp Family by Maria Von Trapp
This was the first book I ever read on living the liturgical year as a family and it is definitely my favorite. Personally, I really like learning about how things used to be done before my time. Maria wrote this book in 1955. They had already been living in America for a while, but she includes many traditions from Austria, their homeland. Celebration was a way of life there, though the Austrian people had begun to forget what and why they were celebrating (she talks about this in her chapter on Sunday). You can find the newer printing of this book through Sophia Institute.
Around the Year with the Von Trapp Family includes:
- Austrian liturgical traditions from before World War II
- How the family’s liturgical living adapted once they moved to America
- Traditional Austrian recipes for different celebrations
- Songs to sing in the home for different occasions (sheet music included!)
- An AMAZING chapter on Sunday and how and why to celebrate it. I would recommend this book solely for this chapter.
*Note: This book was written before the Second Vatican Council. Some things are different now, such as the celebration of the Mass and the dates of certain feast days. Keep this in mind when reading.
The Year and Our Children by Mary Reed Newland
Just one year after the publication of Around the Year with the Von Trapp Family, Mary Reed Newland released her own book on living the liturgical year. This book is similar to the one by Maria Von Trapp but from a more American standpoint. The Newland family did not always observe the various celebrations of the liturgical year as the Von Trapp family had. They “picked them up,” as Mary puts it. Even about 75 years ago, mothers and fathers were trying to figure out how to celebrate the liturgical year in their homes—we aren’t the only ones! Mary notes that liturgical living begins with a change of heart and a desires to live this way: to celebrate the life of Christ in our homes in practical and concrete ways.
The Year and Our Children includes:
- Different prayers and blessings for throughout the year
- How to get materials to do all suggested activities for celebrations
- How to make space for all your materials
Mary also wrote We and Our Children: How to Make a Catholic Home, which is another excellent book on Catholic home life.
*Note: This book was written before the Second Vatican Council. Some things are different now, such as the celebration of the Mass and the dates of certain feast days. Keep this in mind when reading.
The Catholic All Year Compendium by Kendra Tierney
I just received this book for Easter and I haven’t finished it yet, but it is excellent! Kendra is a widow and mother to 10 kids. She is a huge advocate for living the liturgical year in our homes. It is the most recent book of the three (2018), so the approach is a more modern one, but it is still a worthwhile read. It’s style is more stream-of-consciousness compared to the two other books, but in a way that is really nice because it is such a chill book to pick up and read. It also contains the most information about celebrating different feasts in the Church out of all three books.
Catholic All Year includes:
- How to begin living the liturgical year in your home with small practical steps
- An up-to-date list of feast days
- A reference guide to different kinds of feasts in the Church
- Information about indulgences
- An explanation of the canonization process
Kendra also put out a Catholic All Year Prayer Companion that accompanies her original book. She also has a website with a blog and storefront.
Conclusion
We hope that you are able to borrow or purchase these books and read them (especially as a couple or a family)! They have been such great resources for us that we want to share them with you! There is a treasury of information here: these books will serve your family well whether you are just a couple, have brand new babies or kids of every age. Just pick and choose what works for you and your family. All the information can be overwhelming, but don’t worry: just choose one thing at a time to add to your family’s living of the liturgical year. God knows the desires of your heart and will take care of the rest!
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