On February 2, we commemorate the Presentation in the Temple and bless the church's candles for the coming year. You can bring your own candles from home to be blessed as well.
Groundhog Day—ahem, I mean—the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord seems like a nice opportunity to talk about the Why behind liturgical living. As my children grow, I continue to see that what is good for them is good for me; it's a gift to use them as an excuse!
The church calendar is re-ordered time, inviting us, year after year, to follow "further up and further in" to the life of Christ. The mystery of Christ is so great that it's never one-and-done in terms of our learning. We are children—humans—who need to hear, feel, taste, see (smell!?) that the Lord is good, day after day, week after week, season to season.
Therefore: light a candle at dinner!
Observing church seasons and celebrating church feasts turns out to be a gentle, joyful way to catechize ourselves. Here are a few resources that give food for thought on how that might look in a particular household, with kids or not:
Ashley Tumlin Wallace walks us through the historical and theological background of the church calendar month by month, with simple, tactile, often delicious ways to mark feast days. On Candlemas, we can read the Song of Simeon, eat tamales or crepes, and/or make candles! (If you're on instagram, following Ashley will keep you up to date.)
Grace Space Notes is a monthly newsletter from Center for Children and Theology (where some of our catechists have trained) with seasonal suggestions for family prayer, music, and time together.
This primer offers ideas for making a CGS-style prayer table space at home.
I read Kim John Payne's Simplicity Parenting when I had a baby and a toddler, and I particularly remember his admonition to incorporate candlelight into our lives. Turns out, the elements of fire, wind, and water are not solely the domain of crunchy Waldorf parents! Forty days after Christmas, halfway to spring, in our churches and homes and hearts, we recognize Jesus as the "Light to enlighten the nations." Bright Morning Star, arising!
Happy Candlemas,
Josie
P.S. Let me know any particular facets of liturgical living that you'd like us to address. I think it's very fun.
P.P.S. Below, I've included a bit of CGS/liturgical calendar background reading, if you're into it!
Join me if you'd like to meditate on this further . . .
I loved doing some background reading today from the work of Sofia Cavalletti and Gianna Gobbi, who developed the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. Cavalletti beautifully describes the mystery of liturgy, the mystery of Christ, and why it's important to "live it" with the children. It's too rich to select snippets so I'm quoting at length:
The Church has its own calendar, which we call the "liturgical calendar." It does not merely serve to orient us to religious life in the same sense as the civil calendar orients us to secular life; rather, it helps us to re-live the various phases of the life of Christ. The difference between a civil commemoration of an historical event and the great feasts of the liturgical year is this: in the first case we are remembering events that happened once in time and remain forever in the past, because the protagonists in those events are dead. We can only commemorate them, remember them, seek to keep them in our consciousness as much as possible. However, in the great Christian feasts, we celebrate events which not only happened in the past but continue to happen because the protagonist of these events is gloriously alive in Heaven and continues to be realized in each of the faithful."
[...] [T]he liturgical feasts really have nothing to do with "commemoration"; rather, they are celebrations of events that continue to be realized, events in which we are given the opportunity to participate.
The mystery of Christ—which as we have said, is summed up in his death and resurrection—is rendered present and actual in fullest form in the Mass [the Eucharist]; therefore, we can say that when the Mass is celebrated, it is always Christmas because God-Made-Man is present; it is always Easter because God-Made-Man, who died and rose, is present; it is always Pentecost because God-Made-Man, who died and rose, sends the Holy Spirit to us. The "primordial feast" for the Christian, therefore, is Sunday, when the people of God gather to celebrate the Mysteries.
Though every Sunday is Christmas (and every day is Easter and Pentecost!) Cavalletti goes on to say that the Church wisely lifts up "principal elements" of that mystery in succession, like an art historian pointing out a painting's details to help us comprehend the whole. She goes on to speak about how catechists approach this with younger children:
This year we will not speak explicitly about the liturgical year with the children; rather, we will seek to live it with the children. Our words might succeed in helping the child to mentally understand the liturgical year, but we do not wish to nourish only the mind of the child; rather, we want for the whole person to be engaged, and with this goal in mind, there is no other way to live the mysteries we have spoken about [of Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection] other than through those means which the Church has adopted: namely, the liturgy. [...] The aim is to assist [the children's] participation in the life of the Church; so that they might join the faithful in recognizing the mysteries that are unfolding before their eyes and be conscious actors in the liturgy.
TL;DR: Replace your "Live Laugh Love" pillows with embroidered "Live the Liturgy" pillows. Who's with me!?
I love the balance of the always-ness and particularity of Christmas-Easter-Pentecost. The high points of the church year that we point out, even with the youngest children, are those three feasts. It helps me to think in terms of these rhythms and organize around them: Easter is the high point of our year; Sunday (a mini-Easter) is the high point of our week; the Eucharist is the high point of our Sunday.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
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