Pascha - The Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ

He is risen! Hello everyone, and happy Easter! We had such a joyful Easter weekend, and I hope that you did as well. This year I wasn't able to get to my usual Triduum liturgies in the Latin rite, though I did pray Stations of the Cross on Good Friday with my friend Irena who was visiting us for the holiday weekend. And rather than the Easter vigil this year, we attended Divine Liturgy on Pascha Sunday in our Byzantine rite parish for the very first time!

🥳

And it was LOVELY. We walked in to prayers ongoing with incense. The sheets with the Propers for the day were already gone and in use when we arrived, so we were a bit like fish out of water with regards to the special verses and other liturgical notes for this solemnity. But I'm used to that in my Byzantine rite journey. 😂 There were LOTS of additional and substituted prayers in the Propers for Pascha, and I also noticed that we stood in a few places that we ordinarily kneel. It was all quite beautiful, but your resident Catholic Librarian likes to follow along in the book where she can. :-)

After communion, Father blessed some Easter bread, and we all were welcomed to take a cube after liturgy, and he also came around and blessed our foreheads with oil. It was sublime. We chatted with everyone out in the gathering space following liturgy, and the sense of community there is so strong. I'm looking forward to seeing what Paschaltide holds for us there as we journey to Pentecost!

For the remainder of the day, we enjoyed much Easter chocolate and ham. 😃 How was your Easter weekend, dear friends?

6th Sunday of the Great Fast - Palm Sunday

Hello all, and a very blessed Holy Week to each of you! I'm getting this post out a bit earlier than usual this week so that I can focus on Triduum liturgies and preparing for our Easter weekend, which involves a visit from a good friend from out of town. So lovely! This past Sunday was our very first Palm Sunday in the Byzantine rite, and I was ever so excited to discover the similarities and differences between the two! At this point in the liturgical year (remembering that this begins September 1st in the Eastern Church) we have only rarely ventured to Mass outside of Divine Liturgy at our new Byzantine rite parish. So I'm very excited to relay all of the deets to you!

But speaking of our Byzantine rite parish, a quick diversion to say that we helped out at the Easter Bazaar this past weekend! It was so wonderful to get to know some of the parishoners of the Ukrainian language liturgy, and really feel a part of parish life. I manned the sausage and kraut table. 😎The event was quite successful, and yielded much needed funds for the parish's operational needs! The lack of events due to the pandemic really hurt this small parish, and I'm praying that these fundraising efforts continue to bear fruit and help the parish to begin to thrive and survive well into the future.

Then the next day, we headed back for our very first Palm Sunday in the Byzantine rite. We had our home icon hung out in our kitchen since the vigil the night before! We were all excited to experience Divine Liturgy on this special day.

So, Catholic Librarian Nerd piping in with the details: the readings of the day were from Philippians with the do not be anxious discourse, and the Gospel of John story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. There was no reading of the full Passion narrative the way that there is in the Latin rite, that was one major difference. But these readings were perfectly aligned with the theme of the day.

At the conclusion of liturgy, I was *dying* to know what the palm tradition would be, and it was willows! 😍

Father read a special blessing and showered them with holy water, which of course we're quite familiar with, and we were encouraged to take a few on our way out. I couldn't hurry to the front to scoop ours up fast enough. 😂

It was a beautiful liturgy, and we are now incredibly excited for Holy Week!

We will be attending Divine Liturgy on Easter morning at our Byzantine rite parish and I can't wait to report in on that! I'll likely be attending other triduum liturgies in our Latin rite parish, which will be determined as Holy Week unfolds. How is your Holy Week progressing, friends? 

*heart*

Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (St. Mary of Egypt)

Hello friends, and welcome to our last post before Holy Week, WOW! This Great Lent absolutely flew by, and I've been trying to savor every moment. Holy Week is one of my favorite times of the entire liturgical year, so I'm gearing up for that big time. We have a busy weekend ahead with some enjoyable activities (plays and dance shows to see, the church Easter Bazaar) before launching into the stark splendor of Palm Sunday. This past weekend, we lit nearly all of the candles on our Lenten festal wreath, 5 purple candles. The final 6th candle will be swapped from purple into a special black candle just for Holy Week. 😍 Then the yellow candle for Easter day, and afterwards we'll move into a full set of white candles for the Easter season until Pentecost!

🥳

But first, we have some additional journeying to do this Great Lent. This past Sunday, the feast of St. Mary of Egypt, was the one year anniversary of attending my very first Divine Liturgy with my Anne. 🥰 I remember Father's homily about her quite well, detailing her life prior to finding Christ, and then her sojourning into the desert to live an isolated life of repentance and faith for many decades prior to her death. Not long before she died, she encountered Saint Zosimas of Palestine, who gave her the Eucharist, and promised to return the following Lent to give her communion again. But the next year when he looked for her, he found that she had died, seemingly soon after he left her the previous year, and thus soon after receiving the Eucharist. The story so made an impression on me that one of the first icons I ever purchased is of St. Mary of Egypt receiving communion from St. Zosimas of Palestine:

This past weekend also marked the closest Sunday to one of the 12 Great Feasts, the feast of the Annunciation, and Father was wearing his Marian blue vestments to mark the occasion. I invested in a bigger set of the Great Feasts icons to hang in our kitchen so that we can all see and learn from them much more easily when we sit down at mealtimes:

Well, I purchased the sets of the spring and summer feasts. I'll get fall and winter ones closer to September and the feast of the Veneration of the Cross, to divide up the cost a bit! Legacy Icons has a great system for that. 

My kids are both off from school for Holy Week, and thus this past week they had some liturgical activities and confession in lieu of that. I am very much looking forward to the special liturgies and prayers in the Liturgy of the Hours that are coming up!

How are you preparing for Holy Week? I would love to hear about it in the comments!

Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee

Hello everyone and happy February! Yesterday was the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord (called Candlemas in the Western Church) and I eagerly swapped out my little icon. I've definitely taken a fancy to the 12 Great Feasts and following along with them throughout the liturgical year. This icon will stay out until the next feast, which is the Annunciation in March!

Meanwhile, we continue to move closer to the start of Great Lent, and given that this will be my first one more heavily immersed in the Byzantine rite, I'm pretty excited. This past Sunday was the first official one in this pre-Lenten period of themes that the Byzantine rite focuses on, and I was looking forward to examining this more closely. As I anticipated, the Gospel and homily at Divine Liturgy focused on the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector, and Father spoke about the themes of faith and humility in our journey to Great Lent. It was wonderful! Talk in our social area after the liturgy focused on preparations for a pre-Easter bazaar and parish luncheon, so I will excitedly stay tuned for those. 

After I got home, I discovered this delightful graphic via my good friend, and Byzantine rite Catholic, Allison:

I mean 😍

I'm so excited to keep following along with these themes and liturgies! Our priest will be away this weekend, so I'm unfortunately not certain we'll be at Divine Liturgy since it will be in Ukrainian. We'll likely attend Mass instead, but either way I'll keep you posted. Lenten preparations should be underway for everyone right now, regardless of rite! If you'd like to share your Lenten plans, I'd love to hear about them in the comments. :)

Sunday after Theophany

Hello all, and happy mid-January! It was a bit of a tough week for your Catholic Librarian, but I'm persevering. The new year is starting off with a bit of an element of stress, but we'll get there. 

This past weekend we were once again back at Divine Liturgy, with the worship space still happily decorated for Christmas. The end of last week featured the feast of the Theophany, or the baptism of Christ, in the Eastern Church. I didn't make the connection until last Sunday that the Eastern tradition of Theophany is so connected to what we would call the Epiphany in the Western Church. When I think of the Epiphany I think of the Magi bringing gifts to the infant Jesus, which is separate from the celebration of the baptism of Jesus in the Western Church, usually the weekend after Epiphany. But it looks to me like in the Eastern Church, they celebrate these both as revelations of Christ's incarnation. I'm still learning about all of this, so I'm definitely making some surprising connections along the way, and not always making those connections particularly quickly! 

I did have all of our Epiphany candles lit for the feast on January 6th, and look at how beautiful! I cherished having this Eastern style wreath this year, I was so sad to tuck it away in storage until next year. The table feels empty without it. We have our Theophany icon displayed until the next Great Feast (Candlemas in early February):

And given the focus on baptism this week, I was delighted to hear in Father's homily his mention of the holy water vat being refilled in the back of the church, that we are welcome to collect in our own containers and bring home with us. One of the things I missed the most during the pandemic was the holy water fonts in the entrances to our Latin rite parish! I love having holy water in our home. Eastern Catholic Churches, in my limited experience, do not have this tradition, but they still value and bless water and offer it to their parishoners. So I'll be bringing my bottle in for a refill! Father even mentioned that holy water can be consumed, which I didn't know and never even thought about! 

Another focus last Sunday that accompanies the feast of Theophany in the Byzantine tradition is house blessing. I LOVE THIS. I overheard a few people asking Father to come bless their houses. I need to get in on this action next year, I was too afraid to ask this year since we're so new. 😂

So our first Theophany was a resounding success! I also enjoyed praying the Liturgy of the Hours for the Epiphany, and then concluding the Christmas season on Monday with the feast of the Baptism of the Lord in the Latin rite. 

My little blending of East and West is going well. How was your Epiphany/Theophany last weekend? 😀

Twenty Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Nativity Fast Week 1

Well, it was a bit of an anti-climactic first week of the Nativity Fast for our household, in that a snowstorm hit our area, and the bishop dispensed us all from our Sunday obligation as a result. 😬 In my immediate area, we didn't get as much snow as others, but we had high winds with blowing and drifting snow, making driving a touch hazardous. We were still under a travel advisory Sunday morning (and actually, our Latin rite parish cancelled all of the weekend masses, because the priest couldn't get out of his driveway to make his way over) and thus no liturgy for our household this past weekend. This also meant that we missed the parish Christmas Bazaar, which was a great disappointment. 

However, I'm eagerly learning as much as I can about this preparation time for the feast of the Nativity in the East. We lit our beautiful new Eastern style Advent wreath for the first time, and since I'm flying blind over here, what you see in the photo is what I came up with. 😂 The number of Sundays between November 15th and Christmas varies from year to year at either five or six, and this year we have five. I figure when that happens, we can light the first candle at the start of the Fast on the 15th, and then light the other five on the Sundays, so that's what did this year. Thus, why we already have two candles aglow. And Monday was the feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, so I lit her blue candle since it was the vigil of that Great Feast! And speaking of the feast day, here is the icon:

I now have this full set of icons of the Twelve Great Feasts, so we'll be breaking these out together throughout the year as the feast days come round. The next one is the Nativity!

This coming Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent in the Latin Rite, and I have to admit I'm feeling a little nostalgic for that tradition I've loved my entire life. But this has all been such a beautiful time of reawakening and learning in my faith, and I'm savoring every minute. Treasuring things from both traditions is so, so rich. We'll continue on this journey and see where it takes us at the end of the Eastern liturgical year!

How are your Advent preparation plans going? 😎